Guests stole and left us with $1000 + bill for 1.5 months stay

[Anh7]

Hi All,

I am very upset with the two guests from China stayed at my place from middle July to beginning of September 2017.

First of all, when they need information from us about the place, she was really responsive. However, on the day where my dog went to the hospital and I needed to get her Medical documents from my place, she ignored our request.

Secondly, after her stay, everything looked neat as she is a mom living with her 7 years old son so I did expect her to clean the place a bit. However, some of the house decorations have gone missing after her check out. She also left many of my cooking wares burnt. On top of that, the water tap in the shower was broken and she never said anything until we got bad review from the guest after her. 

I never complained about anything above until a month later when I received my power bill. I was utterly shocked with the amount written there. So much that I called my supplier immediately to confirm is it was for the correct address. For the period that she stayed, the amount was roughly $800 for power alone. I am requesting a visibility on my gas bill as well and expecting it not to be pretty. If my estimation is correct, gas and water is going to be another $300 plus $120 Internet. According to the power bill, it is worked out that she used approximately $110/day on power ALONE. What irony is, I let my place so cheap at $75 per day for a two bedrooms apartment in up-scale area, and I even threw in 10% discount for long stay. Now I am left with $1220 (expecting) bill and emotional damages.

For those reasons above, can you please help me to find some ways to at least get my money back. Those bills will leave me and my family devastated and broke for a few months.

[Helen3]

Hello @Anh7

It is a shame you didn't make a claim for the guest damage to the shower, pots and pans etc at the time.

You can't claim for additonal bills.

I was puzzled that you weren't aware that the shower was broken until you got a review from the next guests. Who checks your apartment post check? Do you do this directly or do you have a local manager. 

Whoever does it should check all facilities are working post check out.

I don't know what to suggest about utlities. Is there a way you can monitor virtually. Maybe other others with remote listings can advise.

[Anh7]

Hi @Helen,

Thank you for your response. The place i'm hosting now is actually my home. We had to move out for 4 months so we only intended to rent it out during this period. I have a set of rules that my cleaner passed to every guests coming to the house which included not to use heater more than 4 hours in a period (afternoon, morning or night) and let us know immediately if anything is broken. We also have a cleaner coming after every check out to make sure the place is clean and everything is intact. 

On that day, she did check the shower and it looked fine. Unfortunately, she only used one of the tap which is the cold one assuming the other would work as well. The guests tried to stick the hot water tap back to conceal the damages. we found out about the kitchen wares first and then the shower tap, nonetheless we gave her a break. I do not mind changing them at our expenses as we are not making profit on our place anyway.

However, the damages they caused to the house is nowhere near what they have done to my utility bills. I literally cried thinking about how much could I have done with $1200 instead of paying random people come stay at my home and damaged it. I have come to Airbnb as an unprofessional host, thinking I might have my mind at ease and some sort of protection because in the end, aren't us, the hosts are opening our doors welcoming strangers sleeping in our beds. If Airbnb do not have a policy protecting the hosts from guest like this, I reckon we are all left being vulnerable in some way. 

[Cormac0]

@Anh0

Therefore, people on Airbnb should avoid longer stays, Guests tend to spend more time in the property then with short stays, ergo more use of utilities and ware & tear with no lease other than Airbnb protection which is more miss then hit

I dropped my prices by 40% and Walla, I start getting request for longer stay, I usually never look at people profiles but in one case where there was no picture and his name was "P" I decide to have a look, boy was I glad I did, apparently in his previous booking, he requested the heating be turned up to 27c (80.6F) which with my 3.12m (10ft) ceiling would be astronomically expensive.

Some person mention ware & tare with regards to your pots and pan, the next guest who goes to use them won't be as accommodating in their view and may even refuse to use them!

My maximum stay is 28 days and I'm keeping it at that, there are too many uncontrollable variables, Electricity, Gas, Water, Bedlinen etc to allow a person stay for longer without a deposit I control and lease to protect me in case of catastrophic damage.

I think, there is a case that if the utilities cost fall outside the nominal range of use (there are statistics covering this) an additional charge should be levied, in my case the highest was 7% and the lowest was 1.85% to date. I would be interested to know what percentage the utilities were of the gross fee YOU received?

Regards

Cormac

The Explorer's Club Krakow III

[Karen579]

I am learning very quickly if I give an inch guests will take a mile. I had a guest recently who obviously went in to my room and took my personal jewelery.  I did not notice until an hour or two after she left. I felt I had no recourse. It was not valuable enough to report to my insurance yet it was valuable to me! When I contacted Air b and b to report this there seems to be nothing I or they can do. I wanted t o leave a review warning other hosts to not host this guest. However, because everything is posted openly I could not leave the review I wanted to for fear she would make up something about me and post it. I take my reviews seriously. What else could I or can I do ???

[Cormac0]

@Karen579

Give her a Thumps down...

Regards

Cormac

The Explorer's Club Krakow III

[Karen579]

Will do! I was waiting to write anything! Not sure what she would see or not see. And of course I had to worry about her reply in public!

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Anh7 If your house energy use rules are so strict that you have a complicated schedule to follow regarding “four hours of heat a day”, you need to control the thermostat remotely. Recently our power company started allowing you to see your power usage by the hour from the previous day. Our power bills were similar to yours at about $650 a month. I started tracking, what in the world is using so much power? I investigated every electrical use trigger. I switched out every lightbulb in the house to LEDs too. Well our pool pump was usingabout 1.3 kWh but the AC unit was killing me, at one point I was using about 178 kWh a day. I noticed that as soon as a guest would arrive, woooshhhhhhhthe AC went on full blast for the duration of the time they were in the house. Well first, my AC unit was at least 12 years old and very inefficient. The old unit was a 3 ton and it had some sort of malfunction on Labor Day weekend that left the house with no AC and it was 110 outside that day. We upgraded the AC unit to a 5 ton unit. Well, we also installed a Ecobee3 WiFi thermostat control. This device allo you to have complete control over the ACand heating from your iPad or phone. It also allows you to “lock out” users and you can set a temperature range from say 68-77. We have been using it for about a month now and here are my observation. The power company predicts your bill and will give you a forecast of what the bill will be, my forecast went from $678 to $230. I control the temps remotely and I’ve only had one complaint so far and that complaint was a text “is it possible to ge5 the password for the thermostat? It’s too cold”. I had the AC set at 74. I quickly sent a message that I will handle the adjustment remotely, which really impressed them. The power company also gave me a $125 bill credit for buying the “smart thermostat “, which made the purchase of the Ecobee3 from Amazon about $30. So I almost doubled the size of my AC unit, installed a “smart thermostat “ and I cut my power bill by 2/3. The payback for the new AC unit is one yearand the pure awesomeness of control over the use of power is empowering, pun intended. You need a Ecobee thermostat. 

[Christine168]

Hello,

I just had someone stay and suddenly felt concerned that she is trading crypto currency at our house- it makes for incredibly high electricity bills- tis is something all hosts need to be aware of.

[Letti0]

@Christine168   Get a rental agreement with government ID and have them sign it. I doubt AirBnB will pay for it, but a small court claim would. Here's what I have in my agreement. 

Energy Consumption – If the property has a pool, unless specifically stated in this Agreement pool heating is not included in the rental amount. If pool heating is desired guest shall contact owner to determine availability and additional cost. Note: Gas and electric usage in excess of 50% over the monthly-occupied average for the last six months may be deducted from the security deposit. Reasonable ordinary consumption should avoid any extra charges.

[Christine168]

Hi

I don't host anymore. I just want the airbnb community to be aware of CryptoCurrency traders. I think this may become a BIG deal for hosts.  

[Sandra126]

Hi @Anh7, I tried to see on your profile where you are, but it only says Victoria. If it is in a really cold place like the snow fields I can understand a bit of heating happening, but $100 a day? Is your house enormous/has an outdoor spa/what? I let guests heat the house to whatever they want (and they want) and my costs are nowhere near. I am also in Victoria, in the highlands. What heating do you use? A cheap portable will use a lot of power, and maybe if you have a few of those going full on 24 hours you might reach a bill like that. Find it hard to see how the cost rose, please enlighten. It is also possible that guest brought their own fan heater. I once checked in a guest who had a couple of those in the car, in case my heating was inadequate. I was not thrilled, they are BIG energy users. But they didn't need them. However, if you say 4 hours a day of YOUR heating, she could use 10 hours of HER heating if that makes sense.

Don't think you can limit to 4 hours a day, a guest wants to be comfortable.  I actually encourage heating being left on all day if they go out, otherwise they will return to a freezing house and it will take hours and hours to heat up again. Better to leave it on thermostat and a well stoked fire.

[Anh7]

Hi Sandra, I live in Melbourne which is relatively warmner than most part of Victoria. Even in the coldest nights, the weather rarely drop to 1. I admitted I was a bit naive when reading airbnb guildance and believe what they say about “set out a rule” for the guests and they will follow it. My place is a 2 brs apartment which is less than 70m2 including front yard and I have 2 panel heaters fixed in both of the bedrooms. You were right when saying they wouldn’t follow the 4h rule as I have later on acquired the power usage from my supplier and it shows that both of the heaters were used for at least 15h a day

[Sandra126]

That's just mad. But I would immediately take out the panel heaters if they are old style power hungry and replace with Econopanels of the right size, if they are undersized or oversized they will use more than necessary. Even if you are not renting it out at the moment, it will help in your personal usage.

Melbourne is warm!

[Donna473]

What is crypto currency?