Renter admitted to the damages but refuses to pay and challenging to sue host.

[Emmy21]

Host quickly informed renter about the damaged bar stool upon check-out. Renter admitted to the damages but refuses to pay. He even use coarse languages and argued that the broken stool might had caused injuries to him and he might want to bring up to legal case. 

Host has filmed the short video to show renter about the broken stool , in comparison to another existing good condition stool, which both were purchased at the same time (about 4 months old) . Renter argued that host must had intention to cheat on him and insisted the  broken chair must has been in bad condition upon his check-in time of stay.

Host felt threathen and tried to avoid any further unnecessarily issues arising, hence, call off to the damage claim resolution. 

Can anyone please advise on the rights of being a smart host, please??

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

@Emmy21

You can spend a lot of time and energy trying to get money from a guest for relatively small damages. If you involve AirBnB they will want proof from you that the guest did the damage. Do you have admission from him on the AirBnB platform? If not, then you will find it very difficult to get AirBnB to rule in your favour. 

Personallly for a small item like this (unless it was a very expensive bar stool) I would leave it be and put it down as a cost of doing business.

We put a small amount aside from every booking to cover accidental damage - we also have host insurance in place which is much easier to claim on than via AirBnB's host cover etc

Good luck

[Mark116]

@Emmy21  You might try contacting airbnb to at least try to get the guest kicked of the platform for the extortion threat of suing you.  But, I'd say that unless they were very, very expensive, irreplacable bar stools, that it's usually not worth it to claim such things, there are other platforms that take a real security deposit which you could consider.