Help with damage reimbursement, review in retaliation

[Zaw17]

The guests rented the entire house and left with significant damages. In the reservation, they mention only 1 guest. The guest has zero review.

- Ripped all the outdoor chairs

- Broke/Damaged patio blinds

- A hole on the master bedroom door

- Broke toilet bowl flush lever

- Knives were missing

Not sure what other damages are yet to be discovered.

Here are my questions to airbnb support and my fellow hosts.

We have 14 days to submit the claim or there will be confusion with other guests.

How would you submit a claim without affecting the reviews?

I would want to wait until the review period is over and then submit a claim to avoid unfair review. The review period is 14 days as well.

The damage would cost well over $800 to fix/replace. Please advice me the best to go about this sort of situation. Did you message the guests?

Thank you all in advanced.

[Anonymous]

@Zaw17   It's not an accident or coincidence that the window for reviews extends as far as the window for damage claims. It's very much by design that hosts are made reluctant to pursue compensation out of fear of a bad review. You're not going to game this system.

Your choices would be:

a) default to your private STR insurance when you've suffered substantial damage and leave Airbnb out of it. or

b)  pursue a damage claim when its monetary value is worth taking a nick in the reviews for.

I'm not gonna lie, your particular case will be a tough one to win because it's dispersed across so many different items. I would definitely drop the missing knives (you can't get anywhere on theft without a police report), and if one outlier item accounts for the majority of the claim value, your best chance would be to stick to that and leave the others out. The more simple and straightforward the claim, the greater its chances of success.

You will have an opportunity to publicly respond to a review if you feel it's untruthful or biased. It's not the end of the world. And of course, you can still review the guests too - although I would wait until after they've responded to the Resolution process to write it. Let's face it, for both you and the guest, the fact that there was a damage issue was ultimately the most relevant detail of the stay, and how you each chose to deal with it really does matter to future hosts and guests!

[Mark116]

@Zaw17  I have never done this, but some hosts say it has worked for them.

Do the review before the 14 days have elapsed and before you have contacted the guest to mention any damages, some say this will lull the guest into a false sense of security and they will do a review that isn't in retaliation.  Of course it can work in the opposite and they will give a bad review after they see your review, so it's risky.

In your case, with that much damage it seems unlikely the guest doesn't fully realize the destruction, so they will either plan to do no review at all or once they see your review or your claim they will do a revenge review.

It's a tough situation.  If you think you could provide enough evidence for Airbnb that they had an illegal party at your property that could be grounds to get their review removed, but from reading this forum, that is also tough to get reviews removed even when there is much evidence of a party.

[Zaw17]

Thank you both. I do appreciate for the inputs. I took all the pictures for proof. I will remove the missing knives in the claim. The review will not be removed since it's not violating airbnb terms and conditions.