Last week a group of 11 young adults probably 21 years old or less rented my home. There is no way for me to know how old he is or the age of his guests. After three hours of arrival they broke one bathroom toilet and plugged up a second one which messed up the pipes to the first toilet and the pipes to the septic tank. The guest confessed that they had drank a lot of alcohol the first day but he didn’t know about the broken toilet that his friend with the girlfriend broke. The plugged toilet, because it’s on a septic tank, caused problems to the first toilet, and caused sewer water to come out of all the bathtubs/showers and the two toilets. The third toilet is not connected to those lines but because they broke the toilet in half and the tank separated from the bowl, water also poured out onto the floors. Luckily he took responsibility and paid for the damages on the cleaning.
We should be able to put an age limit on the guests who rent our properties. VRBO has this option. VRBO also gives the host an option for customers to buy insurance or ask for deposits. Airbnb doesn’t have that option to purchase insurance. And Airbnb hassled me on the last 2 to 3 claims where I’ve had to ask for reimbursement for damages from customers. Airbnb chooses the side of the guest and not the host, in my cases. Another big issue is Airbnb‘s customer service is out of the country and we get service reps who are not familiar with, in my case ,California climate and fire zones. They don’t know what propane fire pits or fire zones. One guest absolutely went against my house rules and created a wood fire on my propane grill and the kid scribbled with ink on my indoor sofas. Ashes stained my outdoor sofas. He only wanted to pay a cleaning fee that he felt he should pay and Airbnb to this day has not required him to pay the balance of the extra cleaning fees nor take the matter of making a fire in a fire zone in California seriously. That guest also left wood actively burning in a bucket on the patio at the time of checkout. We had some slight winds which could’ve caused that bucket to go downhill and cause a major fire in the Yosemite area. The Airbnb rep in the safety team, did not take the matter seriously.
