Guest complaint lodged a health/safety flag on our account...due to bugs outside!

[Matthew1347]

A guest is staying in our property which is located in the desert (Tucson, AZ). They were set to stay for 1 week and just checked in yesterday. They accessed the property late at night around 2am and immediately submitted a claim to Airbnb about there being black widows on the driveway and by the front door outside of the house.

Now I understand that spiders are creepy, and Black Widows can provide an even greater scare, even though they are unlikely to bite humans. So I offered to have pest control come out early and spray around the property for their peace of mind. However they decided to leave early saying they did not want to stay any more with black widows around. It's up to the guest to make whatever decision they want so fine with that, but my concern is that Airbnb validated their claim and added a flag on our account and said we failed host standards by providing a property that was not safe for guests due to pests, vermin, mold, etc. 

Given that the same guest did not report any evidence of any pests of any kind inside the property (nor has anyone, ever), there is no risk to health at all staying in the property as intended. We professionally clean the property each and every stay, and we have nothing but 5-star reviews for cleanliness and people raving about how well-kept everything is (Superhost here). This includes the porch, and backyard areas.

As well, spiders, much like other insects, etc are nocturnal! So if you decide to wander the desert at night, whether the front lawn of your home, or the walking path by the park, there will more than likely be spiders, scorpions, rattlesnakes, beetles, you name it. And while we do control (as much as possible) what pests get inside of our home, I find it highly unreasonable and impossible that we would be expected to stop every desert-dwelling critter from roaming around in their natural habitat when they are normally up and about.

By that standard, it seems if the outside air-quality is not up to a guests standard, it seems they can file a claim and win saying we failed to meet Airbnb's health standards again, because we didn't control the outside air quality "around the property".

So what gives Airbnb?

[Sarah977]

@Charles224  Well, obviously no one should be hosting in Oz. The entire continent should be banned from Airbnb, it's just way too scary and dangerous. 🙂

[Fred13]

This case is the height of ignorance, on the part of the guest and Airbnb. An environment like that in Tucson, AZ comes alive at night especially because it is desert country!

Trying to force it into submission with repellants is moronic and probably illegal considering many species are protected by law, even dangerous ones. I could only imagine what these mind-sanitized guests and this child at Airbnb CS would think of a highly-protected but fierce-looking Preying Mantis.