Poor customer service and experience with AirBNB

[Don229]

Dear Community:

I am a host of a cabin up on Lake Texoma, Texas.  Last month, I had a guest book for four (4) people and I confirmed that he would only have four (4) people . The guest showed up with six (6) instead-- Nevertheless I went ahead and checked them in.  I have an apartment next door and when I woke up the next morning I noticed ten or more cars had showed up late in the night.  I then began to see younger guests going in and out packing up their supplies. There were at least twenty- five guests that had stayed all night partying and drinking. They left the place trashed out and there were at least three locations in the unit where they vomited. They moved furniture around to accomodate their abundance of people. They broke Decor on the wall and removed Decor off the wall. 

I took pictures of the cars, broken items, and sent in to Air BNB requesting compensation for this horrible situation. My online rules state only 12 people max-- and any guest amount over that there is a $20 fee per person.

It is going on four weeks now and AIr BNB has given me the run around and said I did not have enough evidence. I thought my pictures, along with the statement of myself and my girlfriend, along with my online rules, would be enough to request the deposit.They are now asking for time stamped pictures............. this is ridiculous.

We will be ending our association with AirBNB.  Last year we stayed at three of their properties in Wisconsin, and one of their hosts was abusive to us.  AirBNB took forever to verify our story, and made the situation unbearable.  It literally ruined a couple of our vacation days.

We now have done business with Air BNB on both sides--as a guest, and as a host.  It is not worth it.  Their poor customer service, their lack of training,  and the hiring poor employees makes it very difficult to have a good experience with them.  Thus, we will be removing them from our lives forever.

No vacation, or no business opportunity should be considered along with AirBNB.

Don

*sensitive information hidden*

[Batul0]

@Don229  I am so sorry to hear of your experience.  I can't even imagine how traumatizing it must've been to see your cabin disrespected and trashed to such a degree.  It's unfortunate but I've been seeing more and more stories like this on Airbnb.  I'm not sure if it's just that cases are getting reported now or that the frequency has gone up.   

Airbnb's customer service, the offshore team in particular, leaves much to be desired.  The teams based locally, in the US, tend to have better training and I've found them to be more transparent and helpful than the offshore teams.  In many cases, that I've read or seen, the burden of proof lies on the host and it can get pretty ridiculous very quickly.

I know you've been burnt by Airbnb but should you decide to re-consider, here are a few ideas that might help you out (Many of these are things I've implemented at our vacation rental as well).

- If you don't already have it, you may want to get vacation home insurance on your property.  Most regular home insurance policies won't cover damages caused by short-term rental guests so having the vacation rental insurance policy will provide you additional coverage/protection on top of what Airbnb offers.  It may be easier to deal with them instead of Airbnb.

- Consider getting a wireless electronic keypad where you can track the # of times your property is being accessed, in real time.  If it's a high frequency at all hours, it'll be a red flag.

- Consider getting an outdoor security cam- you'll need to declare this on your listing and I'd triple check to make sure the guests are aware that there's a camera outside so that there aren't any surprises.

Again, I'm sorry about your situation and hope the info. helps you.  Majority of guests, I've found, are wonderful.  It's just the few, bad apples we all need to watch out for!

[Mark1412]

If you live next door there is no reason you should not have put a stop to this before it got out of hand... but that is water under the bridge at this point.

If you photos don't have a time stamp, you can get that information from fotoforensics. Upload your photos and click on metadata.. The site will take show you the data within the photo such as time, date, camera style, location of where the photo was taken, possible the direction the camera/phone was facing.. and whole lot of information is included in the photo. Hopefully Airbnb would accept the metadate. Airbnb could do it themselves but I doubt they would take the time to do it.

[Leticia178]

I’m very sorry to hear that, I had a few situations myself with guests, finding condoms in between the mattress and box, poop on the sheets, cannabis.... you name it. Airbnb haven’t done anything about it since this day

they should value a bit more their hosts, without us there’s no Airbnb! 

We are always dealing with the BS and cleaning up peoples mess, they should consider our word more than anything else 

[Anonymous]

@Leticia178  (apologies for the digression from the OP) What is it that you felt Airbnb should have done for you on the occasions you mentioned? I can certainly understand the disgust at having to clean condoms and poo, but they don't register as permanent damage that one could expect compensation for. Nor would they necessarily disqualify a guest from future bookings; your best recourse on that matter is to leave an honest public review.

[Mary1551]

I have a person cleaning every check out, she charges me a flat amount a month for regular cleaning, everything beyond normal is charged extra, not even the extra charge to cover my expenses with cleaning were considered 

[Gordon0]

Hindsight is a wonderful (if unhelpful) thing, @Don229, but as your place screams 'party', a little more policing might have been prudent. While I appreciate you're 'done' with Airbnb, good luck in finding a more suitable partner to do business with. 

[Ian-And-Anne-Marie0]

@Don229 They are now asking for time stamped pictures.........

Every digital photograph has a date stamp. It's called EXIF information. If you sent digital photos from a phone or digital camera, provided (in the case of a digital camera) the date was set on it the evidence was already there. If not, don't change anything on the camera and shoot todays newspaper with todays date and a public time display. From those things an accurate time and date of your previous photos can be obtained.

If mobile phone pictures then the time and date is already set.

[Anonymous]

@Don229  It is unfortunate that you've had your cabin trashed by a Trojan Horse Guest, and I hope this never happens to you again. But if you look through a few posts on this forum you'll see that you should NEVER assume that Airbnb will grant your deposit claims, nor that simply stating extra fees in your listing is enough to have them charged retroactively.

What this means is that hosts have to take all plausible steps to prevent their properties from being abused. That starts with setting firm, unambiguous rules and enforcing them from the get-go. That means you insist that everyone who will enter the property is accounted for and paid for in the original booking (or 48 hours before check-in if you feel like being more flexible), and that no additional visitors are permitted on site at any time. @Batul0 had some great suggestions on how to monitor the number of people entering the property, if you're a heavy enough sleeper to not notice a wild party next door.

And finally, you must be willing to act immediately on any violations of your rules, since you can't wait for Airbnb to do this for you. It's painful to kick a group of people out of your house, but it's far worse to do nothing and let your place get trashed. It's your property; you're the boss of it, not Airbnb.

[Christine615]

I've been doing this for almost two years and it's been mostly good. But honestly - think of this as YOUR house. If someone books for 4 and shows up with more than that, you are not obligated to let them in. That was a red flag.

Also, Airbnb tends to be awfully unresponsive on complaints like this if the host allowed the guests to enter. My suggestion:

1. complain to Airbnb right away.
2. Make sure your listing says NO PARTIES or Celebrations without prior permission.
3. Only guests named on the reservation may enter the premises.

Next, get a Ring doorbell so you can monitor who is entering. I have a strict 3pm check-in but discovered one of my guests (someone who was not named) checking in at 11:45 am. I could see him getting the keys from the box.

As an alternative, Blink cameras are not currently two way - but you can put them on the exterior and see who is coming and going. They're not expensive and actually have a better battery life than my Ring doorbel.

Good luck whatever you do. But once you allow other people into the property who weren't on the list, Airbnb kind of washes its hands of it. So we have to enforce with guests that it's our home, not a party palace. So far we've gotten stable people who honored our requests.

[Mike1034]

@Don229It is very nice of you to allow parties in your cabin. On your listing, I saw that there is no rule banning a party in your house. It seems that the group with party left a good review for you and indicating that your house is a good place for having a party.

Even if my friend has a NO Party rule in her listing, a guest still lied and held a party in her house which is listed to rent in its entirety. What can you expect the result of a party invovled with alcohol? Definitely trash will be everywhere. Things will be broken. There was a video doorbell installed which connects to the internet. But that group disconnected the router from the power. My friend called Airbnb support and it was the same response like yours. I think that it is truely not a customer service issue. The root is Airbnb top management that sets the policy to prevent hosts from getting damage claims.

Should we as hosts urge Airbnb to createa penalty policy for guests who break the house rules? If there is nothing to be penalized to the rule violation guests, nothing can stop bad guests from damaging hosts' properties. It is definitely a violation of both house rule and Airbnb rule for bring extra guests.

Feedback can be sent to Airbnb link below

https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

[Thomas1033]

@Don229  Wow that sucks!!!  Our place is right above our heads on the 3rd floor.  While we’ve had extra people show up beyond what we allowed in the past, that won’t be happening anymore.  We now have an extra charge above 5 breathing bodies of $100 per person per night.  If they want to pay that they can cram on in!  We’ve been lucky with only a cheap wine glass being broken but we of course weren’t told and I found a piece with my foot when cleaning.  Apparently Airbnb has us agree to “their” ideas of rules we are to follow and supposedly we get a one million dollar host guarantee.  I’ve read enough to realize it’s worthless and because of that we adjust the rules to suit our needs now.  In our case all human people count towards max occupancy infants too and absolutely no emotional support animals of any kind will be allowed as they are not service animals period.  And guess what?  We are still here.  I suggest tightening the rules of your place along with a complimentary knock on the door to check if everything is going okay.  And yes to outdoor cameras!  Best wishes going forward.  Yvonna (cohost)

[Anthony608]

My customer service experiences have been hit or miss for the most part. I had one situation where my bathroom was professionally cleaned, scrubbed down with chemicals and industrial cleaning products, but when the guest left, he reported a "3" in cleanliness and stated the bathroom had been filthy. I contacted him and got him to admit that he had seen brown tiles around the toilet - this was actually the natural color of the tile. AirBNB was sent photos and took down his review. To be safe, I replaced those tiles with white ones to avoid a repeat in the future.

On only my second AirBNB guest, I had what amounted to a full-blown scam. A couple from West Africa did back-to-back reservations with the clear intention of getting into my home for more than 30 days then claiming residency in the state of Maryland. I talked to AirBNB *at length* about the situation and also went to the county housing office and the police. In the end the couple paid for over a month (it was a lot of money, I will admit) so I let them stay but watched them like a hawk. Since they had two separate bookings, county law didn’t recognize their claim as having lived in my home over 30 days, yet at the end they asked numerous questions about staying another 30 days and paying outside of AirBNB. I told them the whole upstairs was being renovated, with the power and water shut off (which wasn't true) and they needed to leave when they were supposed to. Only after they left, and attempted to tell the county they were residents in my home (which didn't work since they didn't have a lease) did Air BNB listen to my complaints and took me seriously. Still, AirBNB told me they flagged the account but from what I can tell both the husband and wife are still active on AirBNB.

My last experience happened actually just today. A woman who lives in my city tried to book my room for a weekend then started repeatedly calling my cellphone with odd questions about would I know if more people came in, could she pay me later, and how big was the downstairs for large parties (my house rules say no parties). She also thought I was not living in the home and when I told her I was, she immediately cancelled the reservation but then sent texts asking me to refund her money, saying there was a problem with AirBNB. I did not reply but called AirBNB - a man with a *very* heavy Indian accent essentially rambled on about thank you for calling, we are so sorry, but in the end he didn’t have a clue what I was even trying to tell him. I finally just gave up, said thank you and hung up, and then blocked the woman's number on my cell phone.