We just had an Airbnb Plus evaluation on our apartment in St. Louis. The apartment is one of my favorites in our group of Airbnbs as it has a cool industrial modern design. First, Airbnb insists that their photograper take photos even if you have paid for first rate professional photography. There was no evaluation of the existing photographs...just a requirement. The evaluator recommended 17 changes to my apartment including purchasing a "mattress" for the futon in my living room. That seemed totally odd.
There were some good recommendations like add more personal touches like framed photos on the night stands, greenery, a printed Guest Book and the like. I'll pursue those recommendations.
To your point, Kristen, I have not had much luck collecting on the $1M in insurance when guests damage my property. It hasn't happened often, but recently we had a guest have a party in our Urban Cottage unit. (Not the above photographed unit which is Urban Haven) The guest smoked in the unit which is a posted "no-no" for which there is to be a $200 cleaning fee. We have purchased an ozone machine to use in our units then guests cause a less than desireable odor. The cleaning crew uses the machine to address the smell. The machine was $137 and I have the receipt. The cleaning crew charged an additional $124 to clean up after this guest for a total of $174 when added to the normal cleaning. Airbnb would only reimburse us for the $124.
Now, I suppose I could have called an outside company to deodorize the place which would have cost more. Perhaps Airbnb would have refunded me the entire amount had I gone with a more expensive solution but we all know that doesn't make sense. We always hope the companies, first, hire people to perform customer service that have critical thinking skills and, second, give them the lattitude to make logical decisions in their and their customer's mutual interets; not the case in this instance.
When it came to all of the damaged sheets, towels, bathroom rug, broken coffee mug and missing spoon, the Airbnb process was so ridculously complicated that I gave up. They wanted photos of the damaged items, the original receipts for the items and replacement receipts. I sent photos and the receipts that I could find for original materials. Why not just decide on a fair price for each of these types of items and agree that you will reimburse at a higher level if a customer supplies an original receipt for something special. This would save everyone time and money.
Oh...and the naughty guest...he never responded to my or Airbnb's efforts to reach out. Yet, Airbnb insisted on trying to reach him repeatedly causing further delays, more communication between customer service and me...yada, yada, yada...
