Hi guys! I've been a host for a little over a year now with 2 different homes I Airbnb. I had the most frustrating thing happen to me last night and was wanting to see what your opinion is on this situation.
I had some guests book one night at my place. They arrived around 10 pm and messaged me around 10:15 pm saying "I found some bugs in the bed, so I will be staying at a hotel. What's the best way to work out a refund?"
I'm asleep at this point and was woken up by a call 5 minutes later where they informed me of the same thing their message said. I promptly offered them a new set of linens for the bed (we've never had issues with bugs in the bed but it is summer and we did just have our kitchen exterminated because bugs were getting in-- so it's plausible that some migrated). They declined and said they were going to a hotel and wanted a refund.
I reached out to the guests the next morning (actually awake enough to have some semblance of a conversation this time) and asked what the bugs looked like, how many, etc. They told me they found little black marks on the sheet (we have white sheets but there are these little black dots that look like someone marked it with a sharpie in one of the corners that I just can't get out --I'm actually pretty sure they are ash/burn marks-- but don't want to throw away an entire sheet set because of this, especially when the whole sheet is spotless white other than a few tiny black marks). They then found one hair (hair tends to stick to these sheets in the dryer--I make sure to lint roll them when I put them on the bed to avoid hairs--because eww--but obviously sometimes they get caught in folds or just get missed--not saying that's ok, it just happens). This one hair caused them to investigate at which point they found a pencil tip-sized bug between the fitted sheet and mattress protector.
Now, the point of this is not to debate whether I should get a 5-star cleaning review--I shouldn't and can completely understand and empathize with why I would not. I do my best and work tirelessly to keep this place in tip-top shape and I get a "sparkling clean review" 9 out of 10 times but occasionally things happen--as much as I would love to achieve perfection, it has eluded me haha
The question I have is--is it really fair for them to demand a full refund when the only issues they had were the ones mentioned and I offered to give them a different set of sheets (even though the ones they had were clean, it was more about making them feel at ease). It seems to me in a situation like this, the guest should leave a less than a 5-star review but not entirely leave and demand a refund. If this were how people operated, that would mean that if anything were off just a bit, people could just storm out and demand refunds leaving our calendars booked out with $0 in payments. There are definitely situations where the host is in the wrong and a refund is completely understandable and expected--(such as pipes breaking, bug infestations etc.) but this is a situation where I feel I provided a solution, it wasn't a bug infestation, there was one bug and the place was spotless and adorable (according to them) other than the above mentioned.
What are your thoughts?