Hi everyone, we have only been hosting 5 months and so far its been great with fantastic guests and good experiences. We had the first experience which has shook our confidence and now we need to know how to deal with a review which will be lying about the guests experiences with us.
We had a booking from a young woman (profile said she was from Canada but she was obviously a local when we met her). 2 days before check in she states there will be a work colleague coming with her. I thought it strange she didn't just change her booking, but I asked her to sort out the extra cost before checking out. Being new to this I wasn't sure of the usual protocols.
Day of arrival they asked for an early check in due to bad weather, so we cleaned our guest space in a hurry and went out of our way to make the two women very welcome. They wanted an early checkout on the Saturday morning and my husband even offered to get up before 7am and make them a hot cooked breakfast (because its the middle of winter here). The girls seemed very happy and impressed with her experience here and left.We were sure of a good review.
Later that day we realised she had not paid for her colleague and then when my husband was cleaning the rooms he found a rubbish bin full of used condoms . We felt really shocked about this as the guest suite is inside our family home, we live here with my 82 year old father and it would seem that our guests must have been letting strangers inside when we were asleep. Well - what other explanation could there be? believe me, we have been trying to think of them!
Instead of making accusations or jumping to conclusions I wrote a polite message to the guest reminding her about the outstanding additional guest fee and also wondering that if they had any extra 'visitors' they would be kind enough to pay the extra $20 PP extra charge too. The guest became very angry and aggressive after that, asking for my evidence and what reason I had to think there were extra visitors? I then had to be blunt and say what we had found.
She called me and I was totally shocked at the way she over reacted and tried to deflect the whole thing back on us.
She admitted the rubbish bin had been totally empty when she arrived and that they must have appeared during the night, but she accused my 65 yr old husband of 'planting ' them there to frame her in some way (!!!??) and was highly offended and outraged by us even daring to suggest that she may something to do with it.
She then emailed me to say she would be requesting a refund from Airbnb because (actually )they just remembered that they had had such a terrible night at our place , that we were having loud parties (yes us old and disabled hosts really love having raging parties just to annoy our younger guests) and that our home was really unsafe with strange men wondering around in the night (all the doors are locked with chains each evening and people can only get inside if someone lets them in).
I called Airbnb and they were very understanding about the situation, they have refused her refund due to lack of evidence, but they cant (or won't) remove her very bad review so we have 3 days left now before this appears on our listing.
To review her or not?
If we don't review her, do we get a chance to reply to her review of us?
What could we write as a response?
Obviously we do not want to draw attention to the bad review but is it better to ignore or write something ?
Sorry for the long story but I still feel shaken and totally confused about why anyone would behave like that after we've worked so hard to get Superhost twice this year so far.
Many thanks for all advice !
