Guest threatening to sue me if I don’t refund Airbnb service fee

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone.

Hope someone can assist me with this.

My cleaner forgot to update her diary and therefore she forgot to clean my property today. A new guest checked in and phoned me immediately to advise me that the place wasn’t cleaned. I contacted the cleaner right away to tell her this and she said she would be there in 20mins to clean the place. 

I phoned the guest back but, by then she had decided to cancel the reservation. I agreed to issue her with a full refund, and offered her my sincere apologies for the mixup. As soon as her cancellation came through, I gave her a full refund of my expected payout.

But now, the guest is saying she’s out of pocket by $100AUD (it’s actually $50AUD but I feel in her panic and rage she has miscalculated) and wants me to refund that.

I couldn’t figure out what this was initially but, I eventually figured it out and told her that this was a service fee Airbnb charged- not something I had charged and as such, I could not refund. I even phoned Airbnb Customer Support to check this and to ensure I hadn’t made any mistakes with my refund. They confirmed that I hadn’t made any mistakes and advised me to tell the guest to contact them directly.

She’s however, refusing to do so and is arguing that I should be the one to refund it. She’s also now threatening to sue me for this. Is there anything I can/should do here? 

Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

 Thanks 

[Emiel1]

@Anonymous 

The Airbnb Guest Service Fee is charged by Airbnb for the services (like use of the platform) Airbnb is providing to the guest. The guest need to contact Airbnb if she wants that money back. She better could have contacted Airbnb in the first place to ask for cancellation, as she probably would have be refunded all the money at once. Direct the guest (again) to Airbnb, also the party she needs to sue if no succes in getting back the fees.

Best regards,

Emiel

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your response @Emiel1. 

[Emilia42]

@Anonymous 

"I have refunded your reservation in full. Please contact Airbnb directly to see about retrieving the fee that they charged you." End of conversation. Block her so she cannot contact you again. 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your response @Emilia42.

[Yadira22]

Hello @Anonymous 

and if she gives you a bad review for this and you have written proof see if you can potentially have it taken down under an indirect “extortion” reference. Good luck to you! 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thank you for taking the time to respond @Yadira22 

The guest has indeed threatened to leave us a bad review unless we refund her the Airbnb service fee! I thought that was a pretty low thing to do/say. Especially considering I have issued her with a full refund for her stay. We will see what happens.

[Elena87]

@Yadira22 

Sometimes bad reviews are fully justified. 

[Yadira22]

@Elena87absolutely! But threatening one with a bad review regardless of it being accurate or not for exchange of a payout or discount is extortion. 

This situation is very unfortunate as it comes down to an admin error (and one I imagine the host would be careful of in future) but as mentioned above the overall situation especially from the guest should have been handled differently. You want someone to help you even if you are in the right, kindness goes a long way. Truth be told no one has to do anything... Threatening to sue especially when someone has already helped you or is doing it, is not the best way... at least from my own experience.

This was my main point and I am sorry if I did not express it properly before! 

Have a great day! 🙂

[Anonymous]

@Elena87 Thank you for your input.