Guest intentionally brought dirt into my space in order to get a refund

[Sam44]

Okay, so this is a new one for me.  How can we prevent guests from bringing dirt in, or from grinding chips into the carpet, taking pictures, and then asking for a refund?  

Are we going to be forced to take before/after photos of the space before each guest arrives in order to prevent this kind of scamming?  

Honestly, I am at my wits' end with these newbies and their games.  Airbnb needs to do something more to protect hosts from this sort of nonsense. As if life isn't hard enough. . . 

Any suggestions?

[Paul154]

Sorry, scams like this do require you to take pictures beforehand. Not difficult, but bothersome.

Keeping records like this will even help your improve your eye and methods.

Alternatively, at checkin you could send them a standard picture and ask/state
"Your prepared room is now available. Please advise timely if anything is amiss."  

[Alain311]

it's a bit your words against his/her words.

except that your reviews and the reviews your guest received might make the difference.

if you only have good reviews, high cleaning ratings and are recommended by your previous guests, airbnb will see it and should take it into consideration.  And if the guest is not recommended by other guests, airbnb will should also take into consideration.

If the room was (really) dirty, the guest should have mentionned it to you right away to fix it, or complained to airbnb to get a refound or relocation.

I dont think, taking, before/after pictures for each guests is really usefull, can't proove the before picture is really just before.

I'd be curious to know what airbnb tells you and wich action they will take.

[Paul154]

@Alain0,

I am assuming that pictures come with embedded dates which savvy Airbnb techie's can uncover. (I may be showing my ignorance.) 

Host could take photo with date written on it (or a newspaper)

Just theoretical musings...

[Elizabeth429]

@Sam44,

I sometimes wonder how much this forum is helping some vicious guest to learn to trick the hosts into refunding them or else. We talk a lot about different ugly/disgusting/scary situations and how Airbnb seems to look to the other side to favour the guest.

I, on the other hand, have never had any trouble with "newby" guests. They mostly seemed fearful of respecting the system and the host´s home. As for the so "well recommended" ones, I feel they have learnt how to cheat the system by bringing more guests than they originally booked for, they are looking for ways to take advantages of hosts, even thread hosts with bad reviews, etc.

I also hate seeing a guest´s profile with 5 OK reviews, but only two recommendatios. Why on Earth would a host write "Everything was fine. Good communication" if they arent recommending them?!?

[Fred13]

Hi @Sam44, have you ever considered raising your price, considering where you are located and how it may help  in lessening the chances to encounter scammers, since higher prices makes their chancy game more risky.