Host Guarantee - A Superhost's Experience

[Ash51]

One of our recent guests left us on the verge of house fire.

The guest smoked weeds inside the unit, made the whole house smelly.

We entered the unit 24 hours after he was gone and found a burning candle by the curtain of an open window.

We were shivering in fear, anger and frustration. 

In pandemic restrictions, we didn't find a professional cleaner neither we wanted to delay. So we cleaned and trashed all the smelly linens.

As advised by Airbnb customer support, at first we asked money to the guest then it went to the Host Guarantee claims Department. 

The entire process was time-consuming and very annoying.

Quickly my claim was declined one the ground of smell is not a damage by their definition. 

They don't pay if you clean by yourself as if your time doesn't have any financial value.

In frustration, we almost delisted our property. Some of our fellow hosts in our city advised to add more booking restrictions which would reduce our earning significantly. 

Lessons learned - Airbnb Host Guarantee cannot be trusted. They have many lame excuses to decline any claims.

Thank you for reading our bad experience. Be careful. Stay safe and healthy in this bad time of pandemic. 

[Ash51]

I wasn't aware of the fact that smelling wasn't a damage.

I also learnt that they don't pay if we clean by ourselves (without an invoice).

This policy doesn't go in shared economy e.g. for short term rental hosts. 

Aibnb should change this policy.

We all the hosts should be united to raise our voices to value our times and energy.

[Branka-and-Silvia0 · Accepted solution]

@Ash51Airbnb should change many things to become fairer to its hosts, but I wouldn't hold my breath to see it happen.

[Ash51]

That's so very true. 

[Louise0]

Not sure how bundling up linens to throw them out is any more/less safe than bundling them up to throw them in the washing machine, why you think that simply because someone smokes weed they're an 'addict' , or why that's even your concern or why you'd throw out perfectly good bed linens rather than wash them.

I'm not surprised Airbnb disallowed your claim and I, like others on here, am wondering if hosting is really your thing.  I understand that you're upset about the candle and the potential threat it posed, however if I was you, I'd be more concerned as to why your smoke detector didn't keep sounding the alarm during the entire period the guest was creating smoke.

[Ash51]

I feel like you prematurely judged our decision and questioned our ability of hosting. You read part of the story and we faced the reality. 

We are on the ground and we took decision based on our best understanding. Definitely, you can ask questions about our decision but do not judge our ability. Please. 

Not only smoking weed was the decision factor. The additional "crime scene" indicated that the guest was a possible addict. We didn't feel safe to deal with an addict and their used staff. Possibly there were needles.

For your information, our smoke alarm system is very updated (I mentioned somewhere) and we got first notice from our fire alarm. Then the guest, closed the bedroom, opened the window and covered the alarm system to smoke and use substances inside the bedroom. The guest was horribly bad with no respect for any house rules. Despite of my messages about alarm, the smell, and the air filter change, the guest continued to smoke inside. Later he had to leave early.   

After seeing some of the linens, we used sticks to trash instead of our hands with gloves. Hope you understand now. 

Nobody can believe the level of mess he made if you do not see the scene inside the unit.  

Regarding linens, someone here in this discussion compared with hospital and hotel linens. They clean even if those are badly soiled. Those are commercial operations with industrial machines whereas ours is in-home laundry machine. (Please don't question about our washing machine :)).

Please remember, we are in shared business not a full fledged business operation. We treat our guests very friendly and provide clean linens. 

Also, in hospital, the policy is to clean all the linens but practically, they sometimes discard  linens everyday for various reasons including extremely soiled ones. 

I'm not sure why are you are supporting a weed smoker who smoked inside our home for labeling him as an "addict" and why are you happy for disallowing my claims.

You do not have to answer but I am trying to understand your attitude. 

Weed smoking is a good gateway to addiction. That's a long discussion. I don't want to discuss about that here. 

Regarding our claims, I got a call from Airbnb this morning to reverse their decision. I said, if you give us more tools to avoid risky guests that would be great. This could shrink our earnings but those bad guests could harm some of our fellow hosts who might get first time bad experience like me. I wanted all my fellow hosts (including you) to have some good hosting experiences and avoid damages int heir properties. And I see that you are attacking me instead of showing any fellow feelings.  

If I had a way, I would have asked that guest to book your place. But you are in Down Under. The guest doesn't have a location in his profile but I believe he lives somewhere in North America. Too far. 🙂

I shared our (bad) experience to aware our fellow hosts. I do not appreciate your judgmental attitude. That's not a fellow feeling. 

Thank you for your time.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Ash51  

"..... I said if you give us more tools to avoid risky guests that would be great. "

You said the right thing,  and we all share your opinion but unfortunately, Airbnb took away these tools one by one within the last 3 years. There are numerous posts where hosts tried to explain to Airbnb why we need them but Airbnb doesn't care

Thank you for sharing your experience and warning us, we really appreciate it. Again, we understand how you feel and why you did what you did. On the second thought, I would also be furious and probably throw away all the sheets as you did 🙂

It seems guests are worse than ever. Take care Ash

[Ash51]

Thank you @Branka-and-Silvia0 for your notes.

I appreciate you for taking time to respond to my post. 

[Sarah977]

@Ash51   Of course other hosts sympathize with you having a bad guest who ignored your rules and left a horrible mess.

But making assumptions about your guest being an "addict", because you have some faulty notion about pot smoking being a "gateway", and saying "there could possibly have been needles"???

There either were needles found or there weren't. And I can tell you that I've known hundreds of pot smokers, some of whom have been using it for 50 years, and none of whom have ever used any other drugs.

Is milk a "gateway" drink to becoming an alcoholic because we all started out drinking milk?

[Ash51]

@Sarah977 

You have a point here but as mentioned, that's a huge argument that I don't discuss here in details about the definition of addiction. Your comparison of "milk to alcohol" may not be appropriate here either. 

Please note that I didn't call him addict only for pot smoking.

The reason we thought the guest was a possible addict was a combination of smoking weeds and the mess we saw. We were really horrified to see our place.

You read part of the story here and we faced the reality on the ground.

A well-behaved and normal person cannot do that kind of mess. Definitely, the guest was out of control. I think you missed an important part.  

Another important point here was about the way Airbnb dealt my case. I do not appreciate it. 

I believe your friends who smoke pot for many years are doing fine. I hope they smoke for a reason and that's fine. You know them as good persons and your friends. 

For my case, I didn't know anything about my guest and got pot smells and extreme mess. So I assumed him as a possible addict and I took my preparation to clean the mess.

I hope you do not have to deal with such guests.