Guests asking for money after the vacation is over or they will publish a retaliation review

Guests asking for money after the vacation is over or they will publish a retaliation review

For some time Me and my friends noticed there is a new “thing” when guests, knowing the power they have of the review, are asking for money back at the end of their stay. Since that I am doing a tour to the guests at the check in to make them varify their are getting a clean wonderful apartment and ask for approval. Also, I am hiring a full time cleaning lady to help the guests if he need . Nevertheless, a guest just checked out after he had a wonderful time according to him.. and ask for money back since he said he found crums at the folding part of the table. He did not ask for Cleaning and did not escalate his problem to me but simply asked for money. As I was not approving it since so can’t check if there was a reason and he chose not to use the free cleaning lady he published a terrible review. Usually I just pay the silent fee but not today.. I decided to have this bad review hoping Airbnb would see and help. What do you say? Has it happen to you too? 

8 Replies 8

I must say I paid before those refund requests knowing I can do nothing but pay to prevent the guests from retaliation. 

Letti0
Level 10
Atascosa, TX

@Sharon534  If a guest threatens a bad review if you don't refund, that is extortion and his review can be pulled. Use the AirBnB messaging center and say something like this: I just wanted to be clear if I refund you money you will give me a good review, if I don't refund you will leave me a bad review? Whether he replays or not you have documented it, which is enough to get the review pulled. 

Cool advise! I will definitely try this when it happens again ! Thank you

Thanks for highlighting this problem. I have not had this problem so far but just got a guest who 3 weeks after checkout is now trying to get reimbursed because she just complained this week that cleanliness and maintenance were not up to scratch. I could not believe it. First day after checkin i went over and saw that her comments were unfounded. When i left them they said things were fine. Now i get this claim. If abb give in and debit my account with them  it would be a travesty of justice. They would be playing judge which is actually illegal. No company can take the law in its own hands and be a judge in a claim of a guest against a host. That is the function of the judiciary. 

@Rudolf32 Concentrate on the scamming guest, who is the culprit, not Airbnb who is not thus far that is. Keep in mind that with Airbnb they rather cater to the guest than the host, so expose the guest to Airbnb as the hustler they really are.  

Thanks for the tip Fred. I did in fact give it my best shot, and showed at great length that it was just a scam, and that the 7 photos submitted by her did not even show any lack of cleanliness, except for one showing a couple of fingers with a tuft of hair allegedly taken from the shower drain. Considering that all the other allegations were clearly unsubstantiated, the small tuft of hair could easily have been from one of the guests themselves after having taken a shower the previous day.

Despite my exposing the guest airbnb refused to listen and has insisted as judge and jury to reimburse hundreds of euros back to the guest.

After a 3 year honeymoon with ABB when I had no problems at all with all the other guests, this has now changed everything. I was naive not to realise there are such scam artists out there, and that they would plan the whole thing to trap you. Because of those few I will have to take all the precautions with all guests and take nothing for granted. I suppose it is like locking your car. 98% of persons passing by would never think of stealing it or something in it, but you need to keep locked at all times to protect yourself from the other 1 or 2%. Sad really, but that is the reality.

Great comments!

Rudolf, I loved your analogy to locking the car.. 

 

Fred13
Level 10
Placencia, Belize

   My personal style is that I have macro limits intended to cover 100% the possible behavior of my guests, but  then micro instruct personally any guest that I suspect 'do not know better'. The reason is really that I choose to sell my place and self as a very lay back, easy going operation, run by a nothing-is-a-problem host. 

    Of course, this wouldn't be possible if I didn't meet and walkthough all my guest personably.