Guest booked for a party and Airbnb is rehousing him

Inna22
Level 10
Chicago, IL

Guest booked for a party and Airbnb is rehousing him

I got a reservation for this weekend from a local guy with one 1.5 star review. According to review, he threw a party. I read him my party riot act (I check IDs, have counter installed, etc). Silence for a few days, my calendar is blocked. This morning he tells me that he was planning on bringing "a few" friends over and they tend to be loud so he better cancel. Now airbnb is calling me to give him full refund so they can rehouse him "and help him have a good time"! When I questioned the caller how this works with the new anti party policy, she said she will not discuss it with me. When I pressed further, she said they would only do anything if it is active party in progress. And what are they going to do at that point? Send out a SWAT team? Which is short for Stop Wild party Airbnb Team who are a group of professionals trained in speed dialing 911 and putting out press releases? 

43 Replies 43

And a few rounds of ammunition, because apparently that's what Americans bring to Airbnb parties these days.

Who goes to a party without it? 😉

@Inna22   Shame on Airbnb. But this part had be confused:

 

Now airbnb is calling me to give him full refund so they can rehouse him

 

Do you mean Airbnb asked for your consent to grant a full refund, or that they overrode your cancellation policy without your permission to "help him have a good time"?

 

 

@Anonymous they were Asking for my consent 

@Inna22  I truly hope you laughed and hung up the phone. 

 

Airbnb has endless resources to supply travel credits to anyone they want. But they have a very limited capacity to attend to customer support cases. So why are they wasting CS time asking hosts to forfeit their own income to appease dodgy guests? 

 

 

 

Mark116
Level 10
Jersey City, NJ

@Inna22   They really, truly don't care if guests trash the house and the neighborhood.  I don't understand why they don't care, since this irresponsibility has brought them a mountain of regulations as well as increasingly bad PR, but obviously, if when they find the guest who has already behaved badly, who admits he wanted to have a party in a no party house, so he should go high up on their risk assessment scale, and their response is to try and steamroll the host into giving his money back so he can find somewhere else to trash and party, it is truly hopeless.  

Rebecca181
Level 10
Florence, OR

WOW, @Inna22. I am copying link to this thread here onto the Orinda Mass Shooting thread. And I will flag Laura at Corporate on it as well - She was part of the '10-Day Sprint' addressing 'Party Houses', etc, that followed the five Orinda murders.

Rebecca181
Level 10
Florence, OR

@Susan17 You need to read this.

Sorry @Rebecca181, just seeing this now - still no notifications for me when I'm tagged.. 

 

This comes as no surprise whatsoever. It's always been Airbnb's standard policy to re-house disruptive and destructive guests with unsuspecting new hosts, but at least in @Inna22's case, it appears that they're willing to uphold her cancellation policy. In the vast majority of previous similar instances that I've heard and read about, the offending guests have been fully refunded by Airbnb - invariably against the hosts' wishes.

 

With the current media spotlight on Airbnb though, it really wouldn't be helpful PR right now for the company to be caught red-handed, penalising hosts (financially or otherwise), for cancelling either upcoming or active bookings, from guests who they have strong reason to believe have nefarious or criminal intentions.

 

So if they have any sense at all, they'll play nice with hosts, at least for the foreseeable. There appears to be a sudden epidemic of "If you have a juicy Airbnb story to share, contact this reporter at ******"-type notifications popping up all over the place recently, even in publications and online outlets that were previously very blatantly and fiercely pro-Airbnb - not something I've ever seen before (and I think it's fair to assume, it's probably not puff-pieces or gushing testimonials the newshounds are sniffing out - nor that there'll be any shortage of aggrieved and disgruntled Airbnb users lining up to spill the beans on their own nightmare experiences)

 

Funny enough, on the very day the news of the Orinda tragedies (and the Vice scamming article) broke, we were just discussing these exact issues, on a thread about the Airbnb Guest Blacklist FB group being shut down - and relating how Airbnb had been rehousing rogue guests with unsuspecting new hosts even after the Blacklist Group mods had provided irrefutable proof to both Airbnb and the unsuspecting host whose home had been targeted for massive parties.

 

Interesting to look back on that thread now and see that, despite Airbnb's very loud and very public gung-ho "zero-tolerance for party-houses" protestations, their reassuring words, their "exciting updates" and their placating, damage-limitation press releases... the truth is, sweet FA has changed, from that day, to this. 

 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/let-s-be-careful-out-there/td-p/1168374

And it's a miracle that there weren't many more fatalities at this Airbnb party just last weekend...

 

Woman Injured After 55 Shots Fired During Party At Portland Airbnb Rental

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/12/woman-injured-after-55-shots-fired-during-party-at-portland...

@Susan17, well at least in the above instance, they're saying that they'll stand by the host with their "guarantee", not that they've delisted the host for being an unfortunate victim.

 

55 shots fired from multiple guns. Brutal.

@Susan17  This is how Airbnb should have responded to the Orinda shooting. Appropriately acknowledge the 'bad actor' guest and get them off the platform, And, stand by the host. Which they did NOT do in the Orinda shooting. That host is now being sued. As is Airbnb. Very bad move.

 

Brian Chesky really had some crappy advice from his 'team' after the Orinda murders, that's all I can say.

@Rebecca181 @Jennifer1421 

And another one... 

 

Over 20 Rounds Fired At Philadelphia Airbnb, Leaving Man In Critical Condition

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/over-20-rounds-fired-philadelphia-airbnb-leaving-man-critical-c...

Kelly149
Level 10
Austin, TX

@Inna22 I had a similar situation once... the best language I found to get CS and guest off my back was that they would be paying "an inconvenience fee" bc they took up my admistrative time and also blocked my calendar such that it had prevented others from booking. I asked for a nice round number that was less than their booking total but enough to be worth messing with them. I wanted to make sure that it was a number that CS would back me up on and that the guest could stomach, bc in the end no way was I letting these people come to my house and I knew that CS had the ability to give them back all their money anyway AND I made sure all this happened prior to the 24 hour rule for guest to get to review.

let us know what happens!!!

@Kelly149 so far they upheld my cancellation policy. But that’s not really the point. This will keep happening if Airbnb will keeping endorsing this behavior