Hello everyone!
I'm a first time host along with my mother to a condo near the beach in Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, this easter weekend we welcomed our first guest wich was her first time being a guest according to her profile.
Everything seems fine in our conversations and up to the time that my mother greets them to the condo. She made a reservation for 5 people, our listing can accomodate 8 but she shows up with 2 extras, kids in their early teens. My mom thought well thats ok, it's not like we charge per guests. The weekend goes by and by the time they check out the guests advice my mom that there were some damage done to the property and she was very anxious to replace the damage items, a hanging bookcase and an old clock wich were completly destroyed as seen in the pictures below.
Now, i don't know for sure what my mom and the guests discuss at this point but they left the property as planned, when she starts cleaning the place she noticed that one of the toilets was completly clogged and it had a broken toilet seat for wich we had to call a plumber to fix this issue.
Our listing shows that it has a security deposit for this kind of things and the guest was very aware of it since she requested not to be charged up front, I explained to her that the amount was only chargeable if they were any kind of damage done and in any case it wouldn't be charge the full amount, she understood that and still booked the place. So i went to the Resolution Center to request money for this damage, it came for a total of $73US, she declined and send an extensive message saying that this was not their fault, that the items apparently fell during the night and broke and that they have no recognition of ever using the bathroom ( -.- ) We reached to them over the phone, since they knew my mom already she was the one who spoke, the conversation started very educated but all of a sudden it completly changed with them shouting and complaining about the place over the phone. Please remember that this is our first time hosting and we are very aware about ratings and comments so my mother try to calm things down explaining over and over about the broken items and the security deposit. At this point she says forget about the bookcase and clock then, you guys will be charged for the bathroom issue only (it comes to a total of $37US) the guests still are complaining about it, keep shouting and all and hungs up. Since they refused the first charge, i sent another request for the 37US wich they havent responded to and today will be the 72 hours deadline.
Now, my question here is, should I continue pursuing this action with this particular guest? Should i just move on and let things be? Because i have a feeling in my gut that this guest has done this before even though her profile was open in December'18. Should i leave a comment for them? If i do i will for sure give them a bad rating and I'm sure after all this that they will leave a really bad review for us and it will be our very first very bad review.
Any thoughts? commments? Please help! 🙂
