Does Airbnb Want Us to Have Crappy Sheets and Smelly beds???

Dennis574
Level 2
Cleveland, OH

Does Airbnb Want Us to Have Crappy Sheets and Smelly beds???

I recently hosed someone that said they where a neighbor and needs a place to stay while there carpet was being cleaned. Turned out this was a lie they where having a party 12 plus people drug dealer and all. I called airbnb for help but they would not even contact the guest.

 

They stole a set of $120 hospitality sheets. Airbnb resolutions said there policy is to refund for the average price of sheets. The tenant also put a peed on the bed and they only want me clean steam clean the mattress.

 

The guests turned up the heat and opened multiple windows on a rainy night, smoked black and mild cigars in the unit among multiple other things.

 

After all the emails we get from AIRBNB about providing nice cleans linens. Cleanliness in the home ect the total resolution they gave was a little less than $130

 

 

 

Dennis

 

5 Replies 5

@Dennis574  Sadly, this problem with people renting Airbnb homes under false pretenses to have parties has become extremely common. What hosts need to know is that Airbnb is not your daddy. They conned a lot of hosts into misplacing their trust when they bigged up this "Host Guarantee," but when you look at the fine print it's not going to make you whole when you lose control of your property - especially if you don't happen to have your own STR/contents insurance.

 

Airbnb is a big company, it's not concerned with the particular conditions in any given host's home so much as the numbers being fed into its database. If guests are rating your property 5* for cleanliness, then no matter how crappy your sheets are you are considered "sparkling clean." And if you've spent a fortune on your furnishings but get low ratings, you're as good as dirt. It's not personal - it's just that everything is run on automation, not on nuanced ideas.

 

It's a difficult task in a time of social distancing, but if you're going to be renting a property to strangers off the internet, you can't rely on your listing service to protect your home. You need to have your own system in place to screen your guests in the request process, to monitor your property and spot excess visitors, and to enforce your rules if they appear to be flouted. If things escalate to the point that a party with drug dealers and bedwetters has occurred, you've already dropped the ball - if you're a remote host you might need to consider hiring a local Co-host to oversee things.

 

Also, it's completely up to you whether you furnish the home with expensive linens or budget ones - Airbnb has no policy on this. Of course it's wrong for guests to steal them, but once a set of linens has been used even once, it's no longer worth anything near its retail price. My approach would be to keep your guest furnishings proportional to the price of the listing, with the expectation that heavily used items like sheets will have to be replaced regularly from normal wear and tear. But also, you have to be on guard against the typical scams such as a local guest renting a whole house for just a night or two. That's textbook Party Guest - no doubt, after this awful incident you won't be so easily fooled again.

Andrew Are you a host? or perhaps it is different in Germany? In the US Airbnb constantly emails us telling us how to get better reviews and they even send emails saying they require hosts to average 4.3 stars. The message they are sending is 2 star amenities are not acceptable.

@Dennis574  I think you misunderstand what leads to 5 star ratings. (and don't pay attention to Airbnb's tips, most of them are ridiculous) It's not about having 1200 count sheets or anything necessarily expensive. Of course no host who wants good reviews is going to use stained or worn bedding or towels or have beat up furnishings.  But a 5* review isn't based on how much money you spend furnishing the place. 

There are plenty of very modest places that get consistent 5* ratings. They get them because the place was spotlessly clean, it was found to be accurately described, the amentities listed were indeed provided and in good working order, and maybe there were a few nice extras the guest didn't expect. Add to that that the host was quickly responsive to guest messages, was clear in all communications, was friendly and attentive, maybe gave the guests some good tips for restaurants or other places of interest a tourist wouldn't normally know about, and unless the guest was some entitled, impossible to please fusspot, you've got a 5* rating.

Guests have no idea whether you went out and spent a whack of cash on the bedside tables, or whether you found them for a few bucks at a garage sale and refinished them.

I'm a home-share host, listing one bedroom for one guest only, with a private bath and shared use of my kitchen. I've never spent more than $40 on a set of sheets, and mostly I find them on sale for less than that, I've never spent more than $8 on a bath towel. Yet my guests comment on the nice bedding and one asked me how I keep my towels so nice and fluffy (I don't do anything special, just wash them and hang them on the line). I do like to make things artistic and pretty and I'm quite fastidious about cleaning. I've had lovely guests and 5* ratings since I started hosting over 3 years ago.

My guests especially love that I offer to pick them up at the bus stop (most arrive that way) which is 5 minutes from my house (which is hard to find) and drive them back when they leave. I don't mention I do this in my listing, in case one day I might not be able to. A good host mantra to keep in mind is "Promise less and deliver more". You want guests to feel they got more than they bargained for, not be led to expect luxury and then feel justified in complaining because everything wasn't up to their high standards.

There's plenty of hosts who get great ratings without spending a lot of money on what they provide for guests. Conversely, you could have a really fancy place with expensive everything and get poor ratings because the guests didn't get timely answers to their questions, or the host was inattentive, or there weren't clear instructions as to how everything worked.

It's the stay itself that leads to the ratings. If the guests had a good time, without any hassles, they will tend to rate highly. If they had a bad sleep because the neighbors played loud music until 3 AM, even though that was out of your control, they'll leave a bad rating, even if the bed was fit for a king.

@Dennis574  I had to look at your listings to put this question into context. I see you've had over 300 bookings across several properties, but - there's no way to put this gently enough - the ratings and reviews on some of these are so low that you might as well shut the listings down altogether.

 

It's normal that you'll get an outlier review every now and then, but you've had some very consistent negative feedback from guests about the condition of the appliances and cleanliness, among other things. Your responses mention a "cleaning service" but overall you leave the strong impression of neglect, that you're not regularly checking your properties and putting attention into their upkeep. I don't know whether that's really the case or not, but undeniably, an attentive guest is not going to book with you based on such reviews.

 

When it comes down to it, the amount of money you've invested in your amenities is worthless unless guests feel they are fully functional and clean.

 

My suggestion would be to delete the listings that have fallen below 4 stars average, as these are only going to attract bad guests who ultimately given you more trouble. 

Helen3
Level 10
Bristol, United Kingdom

Sorry to hear about your recent guests @Dennis574 .

 

It sounds as if you don’t have CCTV outside your apartments though if 12 people were able to stay in a listing booked for 2. Something to address to minimise your risk of this happening going forward?

 

if you have a problem with your guests in this type of situation all Airbnb can do is cancel the booking. It is up to you as the property manager to go to the listing and evict your guests (assuming your house rules state only guests who have booked and paid can be at the listing)

 

I have to agree with @Anonymous though. I haven’t  seen such consistently low ratings across a set of listings for quite a while.

 

What are you doing to address the consistent complaints you are receiving cleanliness, linens left in your washing machines and poor amenities? It seems these complaints have been happening across multiple listings you run over quite a ling period.