Oh yeah, finally I've got the first difficult guest. Sorry all for the long rant but I do need some place to speak out.
I had a single guest who stated as relocating to Sydney and booked a month-long stay one month in advance. Good review history, nothing special until his arrival. However, he started to complain from the very first minute.
He said there was disruptive noise at an unbearable level coming from upstairs. Very loud thump noise, like someone stomping around on the floor on purpose or moving furniture all the time.
I was very surprised. As actually this is my home and I had never found any noise to be so terrible in the last 3 years. (And per my all 5 star reviews, my other guests had not either) Upstairs do have timber flooring so I sometimes can hear footsteps above but it would mostly just be footsteps.
Anyway as soon as I received his message, I contacted upstairs in no time. 10mins later upstairs replied they just arrived home. So I asked the guest if he still heard anything and he said "no more at the moment". Then about 20mins later, he messaged me again about the same problem. Then I contacted the neighbor living next door asking if she heard anything unusual. She replied nothing special as well. The guests kept complaining about the noise for the last 2 whole days. However each time I asked if I should send my cohost (another neighbor living in the same building) down and have a check, he declined "weird I just don't hear it right now, but I swear it was noisy for the last 20 minutes" It happened 2 times and even ABB CS noticed it from transcript and said it's a bit suspicious.
Then I decided to check my CCTV at the main entrance (of course I have this listed clearly in my listing). It's sound & motion sensitive, so if anything loud happened it should be triggered on. To my surprise, the guest was not traveling alone as he said. He's got a female partner with him all the time. She even stayed over-night. He didn't notify me at all.
On the 3rd day (today), he said he's finally enough for all the bad experience and requested to cancel the rest of his stay. My guess is he actually has got somewhere else to stay (new female partner's place maybe). But as this is a long-term stay and he would not be eligible for any refund. So he was just lying and making excuses that he can leave early without compensation.
However this is my home, so I don't want to irritate him to make any potential malicious damage. I called ABB CS and asked for mediation. I asked CS not to raise what I have discovered to the guest. Even he's lying all the time I'm still happy to exempt most of the rent and let him go as peacefully as possible. I asked ABB CS to request only one week's rent. However ABB CS replied the guest was asking for a full refund and just sent them a long list full of bad factors of my place which he had never raised to me at all.
I was beyond furious at that time. So I did some small witch-hunting and found he's just started his new career in a world-famous travel website's Sydney office (thanks Linkedin). So obviously he's been in the travel industry for long and might even be more familiar with all the ABB tricks or loopholes better than me. And I'm also surprised to find actually I know someone working in the same company (thanks Linkedin again). I'm now having an urge to tell this wonderful story to that friend of mine.
Yes I understand I should never say anything to the guest including I see your behavior via CCTV or I know someone working in your company. As this may be considered as some kind of threat and would set myself fall into an even passive position.
He's still in my place. I would truly appreciate any advice about how can I solve this dilemma as quick and peaceful as possible. Yes also about the coming retaliate review.
Thank you so much
