Backstory
Last week we had 6 guests, whom police agreed were likely dealing drugs out of our unit for two days. This guest listed one adult and two children on the reservation, and said they were coming into our city to help “run her husband’s restaurant.” During the next day and night, we collected security footage of a total of 6 adults in 3 cars coming and going constantly.. At least 23 times in one day. We were reserved about kicking them out because the last time we kicked a guest out for throwing a party, the partiers got to leave us our only bad review among 125 5-star reviews.
After checkout, we entered the apartment and it reeks of smoke. Two hours and 22 minutes after check-out, two of them trespassed inside to retrieve “something they forgot”... which was a sandwich bag of drugs that our cleaner saw them pull from under the mattress. Our cleaner called the cops, but by the time the police arrive, the guests had already left. We explain to the police what happened and they agree that the guests were probably using our home to deal drugs but now that they’ve left there’s not much we can do. Our cleaner continues cleaning and finds a joint left in the apartment. We take a picture of the joint.
AirBNB’s mishandling
I call Airbnb and explain all of this to “General Support.” I repeated several times, “Please do not contact the guest because we don’t want them to retaliate.” The Airbnb employee refused to confirm to us that AirBNB would not contact the guest. She instead dodged the question each time and told us that “Trust and Safety” will call us back within an hour.
No call. The next night Airbnb support messaged us saying “We will reach out to your guest about this matter and will educate her about the house rules….”
Alarmed, we call AirBNB about contacting the guests because they are drug dealers who have no problem breaking into our home when people are in it. The guest broke house rules, yes, but they also broke several laws. After getting transferred between two departments, we eventually talk to a supervisor of the “consumer [sic] service department.” We explained why contacting the guests put us and our property at risk. He told us he couldn’t do anything about it and that a supervisor from Trust and Safety would reach out to us tomorrow morning. By this time it is 1:44am and we have no confidence in AirBNB’s support.
Again, Airbnb never called. Two days later, another case manager from customer service (not Trust and Safety) attempted to call once, but when it went to voicemail they sent us an email saying that since we didn’t answer the phone, the support case has been closed. We call them back, and after 2 hours and 12 minutes of playing “ring around the department” again, we finally speak with someone useful. He apologized profusely saying he’s embarrassed by how grossly our case has been mismanaged. He was helpful and we had a productive discussion. He was sympathetic, competent and explained several specific policies in detail. Sadly, AirBNB limits what he is able to do, but we did come away from that conversation learning a lot. Here’s what we want other hosts to know:
AirBNB has several incidentally anti-host policies.
- AirBNB is not very concerned with the quality of guests. The drug dealers we hosted received a strike on their account and nothing more. Hosts cannot see a potential guest’s ratings or if other hosts would host them again, only the text of the comment. (Unless you turn on instant book, in which case you can see their overall star rating.) AirBNB does not want you to screen guests. AirBNB runs background checks, but ignores a long list of criminal backgrounds. (https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/FYI-hosts-run-your-own-background-checks-Airbnb-s-checks...
- AirBNB’s mediation is slow and heavy-handed. If you have a house rule of no smoking, good luck enforcing it. If guests throw a party but there doesn’t happen to be visual property damage, the most you will get from AirBNB is a couple “Sorry to hear that was your experience.” Even if you have proof of extra guests or smoking in your listing, AirBNB will not follow-up on punishing guests or providing hosts with compensation.
- Enforcing house rules is difficult for hosts without facing penalties from guests. Guests who are not immediately kicked out the day their booking starts will be allowed to leave a retaliatory review. (And Airbnb encourages you to “give them a second chance” and let them stay... https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Guests-admit-breaking-my-House-Rules-but-won-t-leave-Air...
- AirBNB’s support is a bureaucratic nightmare. Unlike long-term renting, you can easily see 75 bookings per listing per year. Things will go wrong. You will never be given a direct form of contact with your case manager. Your calls will always be routed to general support workers who aren’t able to do much more than take down notes. If the notes aren’t taken down correctly, the correct department may refuse to field the ticket. Even with video evidence, multiple testimonies of a large party, and the guest admitting to throwing a party, we are still waiting for someone at AirBNB to resolve a ticket from October 25th.
Pro Tips for Navigating AirBNB Support
Learn how to cancel a reservation properly. If there’s any chance the guest will retaliate after hearing that you’re shortening their stay, kick them out immediately. We once had a guest get a noise complaint and display highly disrespectful behavior after 1am. We made the mistake of shortening the guest’s stay instead of ending it on the spot. Had we canceled it, the guest would not have gotten to leave a retaliatory review and we would not have had our bedding destroyed with human feces. People who flagrantly disregard rules likely will not appreciate any small kindness you extend to them.
When canceling a reservation, know that if the stay is shortened the guest will get to leave you a review. If you smell trouble before the first night, follow your instincts. When talking to AirBNB Support, confirm whether or not the rule breaking guest gets to review you. If they throw in any words of uncertainty, ask them to confirm. It may be worth it to cancel their booking outright because the cost of one bad review is far more expensive than the reservation itself. Ratings matter. Any overall rating below 4.9 gets visually rounded down to 4 and a half stars on mobile. The competitive properties on search results are ones with 4.85+ ratings.
Is your safety at risk? When you call Airbnb support, be very clear that your safety is at risk and don’t give any more details until you are talking to someone who is allowed to make decisions. Otherwise, your ticket may get mishandled and the support agent may do the exact opposite of what you request.
Keep calling. If Airbnb doesn’t call you back, call again. As a host, if you don’t hold Airbnb support accountable when they don’t resolve issues sufficiently, the problem will only get worse. In our experience, they are more than happy to draw out a resolution if they think the host will go away. Call them out on bad processes and don’t just give up because it’s too much work. What’s the saying, the squeaky wheel gets the worm? We need to be the squeaky wheels when it comes to being able to trust guests and trust AirBNB. The entire system is based on trust, and trust can’t be one way.
Have an issue with drug dealers in your home? Don’t say “weed” and say “trespassing” instead of “coming after check-out time” or the Trust and Safety team skimming the case notes will read “weed” and refuse to take the ticket. Airbnb does not care about people smoking marijuana in your home.
List a fee for breaking house rules in your “additional house rules.” This can deter guests from breaking the rules in the first place (since they view and agree to the rules when they book), but the fee may become enforceable (without jumping through hoops).
Submit your requests where they’ll get read. If a guest breaks one of Airbnb’s standard house rules (no smoking, no pets, no parties), and the host has reasonable evidence (security footage of extra guests, guest admitting in a message that they threw a party, photo of cigarette butts) we believe the guest should forfeit their right to leave a review for the host. Many hosts are afraid of enforcing their house rules because the guest will leave a bad review. But these are our homes and disrespectful guests cannot get away with it! The helpful Airbnb employee we spoke with recommended that we submit this reasonable suggestion where it will actually get read by Airbnb’s decision makers, here: https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback. If enough hosts submit similar feedback to call attention to the problem that hosts cannot enforce rules for fear of bad reviews, Airbnb is more likely to implement the suggestion.
General AirBNB Pro Tips
While the platform is actively sabotaging its hosts’ abilities to screen guests, we plan to help other hosts by writing clear reviews that explicitly state if we would recommend the guest. When instant book isn’t on and hosts are filtering potential guests, other hosts cannot see the number of stars a potential guest has, they can only read the text reviews. We recommend other hosts write clear reviews too. Warn your fellow hosts about even the mediocre guests.
Turn off instant book. If you feel that AirBNB is not supporting hosts properly, turning off instant book is a very loud and clear message to AirBNB’s senior leadership. Instant book grows AirBNB’s platform, but comes at the cost of hosts losing control over their property. As much as AirBNB strongly recommends instant book, we have had it off for more than 6 months. We haven’t seen a shortage of bookings. We are still in the same position on searches. We tried enabling for highly reviewed guests, but that wasn’t good enough. We’ve hosted at least one group who passed through instant book with a 1-star rating for partying, trashing an apartment and urinating in another host’s parking lot. They weren’t good guests.
Hesitate to accept guests with limited reviews. Problem guests usually have zero or a few generic reviews, are vague about why they are coming, or act entitled/impolite in their first message. Prevention is easiest since as you’ve seen, problem guests are hard to get rid of without suffering. The booking money is almost never worth taking a risk on a guest that shows a red flag from the get-go.
Don’t accept guests from your own city. If there’s something they don’t want to do in their own home, do you want them to do it in you home instead? There are exceptions, of course. Message the guest and understand why they want to book.
Don’t discount last minute stays. Most of our worst guests booked within 2 days of their stay. Guests that pay less than your listing is worth and can’t plan ahead are far more likely to cause problems.
AirBNB, Are You Listening?
We have put a lot of effort into making our guests feel at home. We have 125 5-star reviews and a wall of guests whose reviews glow with how special their stays felt. The vast majority of our guests are wonderful and we want to provide them with an exceptional experience. However, we will not put that kind of effort into hosting guests we can’t trust. Here’s how we recommend you balance things out, so hosts can put more faith into guests again:
- If a host can prove a guest broke house rules, the guest should forfeit their right to leave a review. Otherwise, hosts may be reluctant to enforce rules since they get penalized.
- Stop financially penalizing hosts when they have to kick guests out for breaking rules.
- Take pets and smoking seriously. Pet dander and smoke smell ruins comfort for future rule-abiding guests. Hosts should not need to show cleaning invoices to be compensated for the loss in property value. If the standard AirBNB policy is that breaking house rules results in a fine or other repercussions for the guest, maybe problem guests would think twice about disrespecting hosts’ homes.
- Put out clear guidelines about repercussions when guests bring extra people. Uninsured guests is not only abusing the host’s hospitality, but putting them at serious risk. (https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/A-guest-damaged-my-property-and-Airbnb-refuses-to-pay-un...
- Stop hiding ratings from hosts. Already, ratings mean far more for hosts than they do for guests. Hosts should have the right to screen risky guests.
- If you have information about guests having criminal records, don’t hide that from hosts.
- Your support forum could use action against the regular derailing and bikeshedding of threads. Hosts are trying to express legitimate concerns. Guests, inexperienced hosts, and others are so concerned with irrelevant details that they’re ignoring the fact that hosts don’t trust the people entering their home. (https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Unfair-to-hosts-guests-break-your-house-rules-you-remind...