Hello all,
TLDR: A guest I kicked out after violating my house rules somehow was able to leave a hateful and discriminating review on my listing. And Airbnb finds it's completely ok.
The long version: My wife and I recently listed one of the rooms in our house on Airbnb. The guest "V" booked for a week and showed up on the check in date. My wife greeted him after he arrived while I was away traveling. When I came back 2 days later, she showed me all the texts that V had sent to my wife of him being very demanding asking things that weren't listed in our listing such as "coffee, lotion, iron, etc.."( in a very demanding tone). We also noticed V left a mass in the bathroom where there are urine stains all over the floor and also around the toilet (Not in there where they suppose to be). Not only the urine odor were all over the place, we also found out that there are strong cigarettes odors inside his room, and there were empty cigarettes packs everywhere on the table, inside the chest drawer and in the trash can. I was a smoker before, and I know the differences in smells when people smoked inside and the smell they bring back to the house after smoking outside.
I cleaned the mass in the bathroom and opened the window in his room, later that day I asked him if he has been smoking inside. Although he said no, but i highly doubt it. I told him to keep the restroom clean and the window open when he leaves during the day. fast forward to midnight, he went outside to smoke several times around 2 am and the noise woke up my wife.
On the next day, he left a similar mass in the restroom (smaller urine stains again, i say smaller because its only been a night since I cleaned them) and I tried to talk to him again about the bathroom and to try to convince him to keep the smoking to a minimum at night because we are really not appreciate it to be waking up by tenants sneaking out to smoking in the middle of the night. (I did tried to call Airbnb to remove him by violating the non smoking rule earlier, but I never heard back from it. So i figure I will just have to stick with him for the next 2 days.) He then turned back to me and complained that there are odors in his restroom and wanted me to clean it again for him. And this was where I am triggered because the odor came from his own piss! I finally had it enough and asked him to leave, called Airbnb again and thanks to god they were able to figure it out and removed him.
On the other side, V called Airbnb as well and started to message us in the Airbnb app and putting out all kinds of lies. He was being very aggressive and started calling us names and accuse us being liars which I have no idea why. Airbnb has filters in their app, so i don't know what he really called me. He then started yelling in frond of my face, and threatened my wife and my 6 month baby who was asleep downstairs at the time, and also trying to find every excuses he could think of to refuse to leave. He also mentioned that our dog tried to bite him during the day where as the dog was with my wife the whole day at work. Our dog is a 2 years old whippet (a very calm and easy going breed, pretty much a median sized greyhound, which is also a coach potato who sleeps 20 hours a day) that never bite and even barked to anyone in his life. I think he was doing this to try to get all his money back from the reservation. At one point he even wanted to stay for the night for free. But Airbnb decided to modified his reservation and sent him elsewhere for his last two days, they even refunded him the difference despite of him violating my house rules first. (Also the Case Manager stated that the guest won't be able to leave us an review due the cancelation, even if he did Airbnb will be able to remove it. But more to this later...)
And it was not over, although he did left my house, he stayed in his car for a hour which parked in front of my house. It was very late at night, and I was afraid if the guy was going to sleep in the car. I had to call the case manager from Airbnb again to get him removed too, or else I was ready to call the police.
At last, we are glad that he's gone and we don't have to put up with his bs anymore. But in that afternoon, I was surprised that he was able to leave an review under our listing which I found is very hateful and discriminating, and also full of lies. I cannot believe Airbnb would allow him posting such comments after being kicked out from my house by violating my house rule.
Now the next thing I need to do it to try to let Airbnb remove the hateful comments from him and to see if can get the cigarettes smells out of my room. I may end up hiring professionals to do the job if I can't get rid of them myself, but I have read somewhere that the guest and Airbnb will not pay or reimburse the costs if there was no security deposit in the reservation.
Here is the review he left and my wife's response:
https://ibb.co/SrxY21H
My comments to his feedback:
We have normal sized toilet, the guy seems about 200 lbs but either way that doesn't justify him not peeing inside the toilet. He's old enough to not let anyone teach him how to piss.
The touch pad smart lock he mentioned is brand new, I installed it two days prior to his arrival. He was the only one using it, my wife and I usually go through the garage because we park our cars there.
We are using two accounts, I am the co-host of the listing and my wife is the primary host. He either simply can't tell the difference in our profile photo or just being an racist by mocking our names.
The location complain is out of our control. The data was taken from google maps without accounting any traffic. If you would include the traffic during rush hour in Bay Area then I don't know what to say.
Insulting on people's accent and their culture doesn't make him any better. Treating people this way won't return him any favor and he definitely shouldn't be expecting any respect back from us. I am surprised that Airbnb would allow such comments to exist without taking any actions.
More rant:
We were super-host 2 years ago, just recently picked up Airbnb again. Our new house is only 15 years old and it was remodeled 2 years ago. There are no smells whatsoever and if we cook we always keep the kitchen door closed. And btw we don't eat rotten fish!
Airbnb will be doing nothing:
After 2 days of silence, I had to call in to check on the status of my ticket, then I was able to get in touch with a Case Manager Jerry discuss about my case. It appeared to me that Jerry had 0 zero knowledge of my case and I had to explain to him the whole situation again. Oddly enough, he did not find the review aggressive, hateful, nor being discriminating in any ways, and thus he wouldn't do anything to the comment and the rate. He couldn't even explain to me how he end up with this decision. And he also said that the guest have every right to leave a review as long as he stayed in my listing, exaggerate or not, and doesn't matter the fact he was being kicked out after violating my house rules. The call went on about 30 minutes, and I was put on hold for several times for no reasons and even without being noticed before hand. A lot of my questions were simply ignored during the call and I think I was just put on mute for the most of the time. (He did not response, and for several times I thought I was disconnected) The guy just didn't want to listen and speak to me! Then when I asked Jerry if he could direct my call to someone else or perhaps a supervisor of his, guess what! Jerry just hang up the phone and left me in a void.
Now this leaves me a whole different level of problems I have to deal with. I am shocked that Airbnb would have such poor customer services. Although they were able to escalate my ticket to a higher level department after I called in a second time, who knows what I will end up with.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story, and apologize for any grammar mistakes as English is my not my first language. I hope you guys as hosts would never have to experience the nightmare we just gone through!
