Good afternoon guys,
A couple of days ago we had the worst experience of our hosting career so far (for me above 3 years). Our customer found a humidity and a spider web and asked for a refund to what we told them to contact airbnb if they had any issues since we were also travelling (and by the way staying in an airbnb). I understand we should have adviced them about the humidity but the spider web was in such a hidden corner we didn't even realised it was getting formed. This means our guest had to actually looked for it very hard to find it. Or even worse: they wanted to stay in our house for free so on purpose they were looking for things to report on to later request a refund. But let's try not to think the worse.
After that they became silent. Stop responding to our messages even after we asked them kindly to let us know when they were leaving and to please leave the keys in an specific place. We panicked since we were away and we had no way to check everything was Ok with the house. Maybe they did something to it so the whole experience also ruined our trip.
When we came back we were absolutely anxious but thank God they didn't destroyed it. However, we did find our guests were taking a lot of advantage of our house. They ate part of our food, played with our play station on top of the games my boyfriend already started, left some garbage around and cooked all the time and funny enough they also took with them one of the adaptators we have for foreign guests coming to our house. All of this without asking.
It didn't look in the end they were so unhappy with the humidity and the spider web. And indeed these things showed they were trying to get advantage as much as possible of free things.
They eventually ended asking for the refund even if they stayed the whole 3 nights and as said, enjoyed the house. After my rejection Airbnb contacted from the Help Center and we started the process or "evaluation". I have to say the agent who attended me was very gentle and I know he was following general guidelines and rules. However my peace of feedback is not to that particular agent (who did a great job) but to the general policies you guys have towards Hosts.
First, you don't directly force hosts to activate the instant booking but unless the people searching for a house selects the option to see also the ones that are not under instant booking you don't even appear on the search. So that is a "soft" way of forcing instant booking. The problem with it is that, even if you ask the guests booking instantly to meet a certain criteria you obviously cannot add loads of interesting details to that criteria, which in the end means you could get anybody with a passport and a verification. By the way, this is the way these hosts ended up booking our House.
Secondly, there is no way you can complaint about a host you had or even ask Airbnb for a compensation for minor issues. If a guest complains about lack of cleaning you force us to give them a compensation for the cleaning fee they paid which I agree with but, why I cannot request a guest to pay more cleaning fee if when they leave the House is totally untidy and full of trash?
Don't forget guys that hosts are not a company and that we are leaving our House to strangers and we are not even protected enough or compensated enough against these type of people. There is no guarantee we will be covered. However, because I have to say your Customer Service is great, any guest can get a high refund if they find the smallest issue with their booking. So next time I travel I will do as my guests and try to find the not so perfect things, take a picture and get a refund and probably a cupon. Free Airbnb.
If you want to know how the story with this guests ended up, you should know that based on general guidelines we were forced to refund them part of what they requested. In the end money is not the issue and I am happy to do it if my guests were not 100% happy but this is more a matter of principles and equality. If my customers said my listing was not accurate and they get compensated for that, well I also want a compensation for the food they ate and the way they use the house, since this was also not established in my listing. Therefore they also violated the rules.
Not only that, we had such a horrible unfair review that our overal star score went down more than 0.5 points and we received an email from Airbnb saying that our listing will be deactivated if we go lower than that score...
But guess what, I am sure as a host nobody is going to bother with this message. In general, I feel guests are treated very unfairly and that general airbnb policies don't cover our back at all and are very focused on the guest satisfaction. Burt don't forget you also need hosts to support your business, and that we cannot be treated as hotels in where if the guest is not following the hotel rules nothing will happen. These are our houses where we live every day and cannot be treated as hotels.
Just so you know, I hope to be able to escalate this and publish my experience out there so other hosts can be aware. In the end I will continue using the service cause sadly there is no other platform in which I can be a hosts with more guarantees, but just in case you care a bit, you have lost a high promoter of your Host program he
