Hello-
I am a fairly new Airbnb Host-Since November 2016 and have had pretty good experiences with hosting guests in our rental. Recently, I had a reservation for 3 nights-Checked the guests in and explained all the rules and information about the house/area. Little contact between guests after check-in besides calling a taxi for them to go out at night. The following evening while I was at work I recieved a message from our guests saying they had electronics stolen from one of the bedrooms-Our house is a story house with a bathroom and kitchen on the first floor and a spiral outdoor staircase leading up to the two bedrooms-Each bedroom has seperate enterance doors, but shares a bathroom inside.
Upon checking the guests in I mentioned how important it was to always keep the house locked whenever they leave-I thought this was common sense, but several times guests have left the house wide open thinking because we live on the property we are always around to watch over the house-this isnt the case-we are not always around. I did mention it might be okay to leave a window open, but really locking the house is best because their belongings are inside. Previous guests have left the windows open upstairs and had no problem.
I told the guests right away to contact the police-on the fridge is emergency numbers and we give guests access to a landline-free of charge. They didnt make any effort to call the police. I was working at the time, but said I'd be home in the night to talk about what could be done. They "claim" they noticed phone chargers gone on the first night, but didn't think anything of it-The next morning they looked for cameras, but couldn't find them to use on a snorkeling trip they booked. Instead of looking further-they left for the day trip and returned in the evening-after 2hrs of searching and no ipad,cameras,kindles etc to be found-they contacted me.
I say claimed to have stuff stolen because I don't know if they had everything upon arrive to our property. They say someone must have gone up the stairs onto the balcony and carefuly gotten into the window-this has never happend before. When I asked if they had travel insurance-They said the deductible was $1,000 and it wasnt worth the effort to put in a claim. We offered to drive them to the police the next day ( they had no transportation) to file a police report, they said no. After telling me many times how this was my fault for saying they could leave a window open, they told us how this was the worst airbnb ever-began stating little things that were broken in the house. Next they said they wanted a refund of a night and would be leaving a day early because they felt unsafe.
The morning they left-the guest proseded to tell my boyfriend that if they didn't receieve a refund-they would write a very bad review.
I phoned airbnb to explain my side and don't know what to do
