Need help with guest requesting refund.
We are fairly new (7 months) to hosting and have had this issue twice and need help with a review.
We had a guest check in late one evening and sometime between the last check of the apartment just about an hour before their arrival and them getting settled in, 2 flying insects accessed the apartment. We don’t know for sure how but at 3:30 am we got a message as follows:
There is either a wasp nest in the house or they are entering through a hole in the ceiling. The house has been charming, my mom said the mattress in the bedroom was comfortable but we can’t stay another night. My mom killed a small one while she was in the bath. Then, while she was sleeping, she heard two more enter the bedroom. We got in pretty late so we got to bed late. We are sleep deprived and now are trying to kill the wasps so that we can get a bit of sleep before an early day. There is no spray to combat them with. We had to close off the bathroom and can’t kill the one in the because we can’t hit the light fixture. We will be leaving in a couple hours. Full disclosure - I picked up some spray to try to kill the wasps with and did not realize it had bleach in it so a few of the washcloths were bleached.
They were booked for a 2 night stay and decided to leave after the first night requesting a refund of both nights. We had the exterminator back to investigate and he found 2 mud daubers (harmless flying insects that don’t bite or sting humans or animals) He freely admitted to me that “his sister is afraid of grass” and brought them to rural Texas to hike a primitive state park.
We refunded more than one night’s stay to which he acknowledged and requested the remainder of the second night or would call Airbnb. To date we have a 4.87 rating with guests all 5 stars except the other guest we had that demanded a refund as well over noise that they never reported to us until after they left.
Back to the topic….this gentleman has been a member since 2016 with a 1.5 rating and complaints of leaving the place a mess with the only other host that he’s stayed with. In our apartment, they used almost every linen in the place, left the bathtub filthy, bleached the entire bathroom except the tub obviously, ruined monogrammed wash clothes and the mirror. We figured our costs including damages and came to the number we refunded in the spirit of good hosting.
He has reviewed us an I can only imagine what it will look like! I understand the issue fully but don’t know how as hosts, we deal with people’s phobias etc ? What should I include in my review? Need some feedback, please?
