Reporting an Issue to Airbnb about Guests that have just departed

Sonya5
Level 1
Oeiras, Portugal

Reporting an Issue to Airbnb about Guests that have just departed

HI, can anyone advise if as a Host we can contact Airbnb to raise a dispute with Guests that have left?  I had Geests that departed today and when I went to clean the room, alot of my white towels and my bed clothes have been ruined with various stains e.g. food and red wine stains... My bedside lockers have also red wine stains... Is there anyway that Airbnb can try get some money from these Guests which I would use to buy replacements?

9 Replies 9

Contact Airbnb in your country and open a claim. This must be done before 48 hrs after check out. Take pictures, submit receipts for replacements. Hopefully you have a security deposit because that makes things easier.  For more info, search posts with key words resolution center.  Best of luck to you. By the way- have you tried to remove the stains? There are many posts with suggestions about that as well. Elaine 

Thanks a mill Elaine... I've already washed the items and now I am trying to bleach some of the towels... 🙂

Beth4406
Level 2
Grand Junction, CO

I so need some advice about this.

 

I'm a new airbnb host, though I did join briefly back in 2016, to find that my daily workload didn't allow for giving full attention to guests. However, I did receive a glowing review from that period.

 

After starting up again, I hosted my first guest a few days ago. She requested a stay for one, and then changed that to two, once we began messaging and i realized her 11 year-old daughter would be accompanying her. She arrived in a camper van that had doodads glued all over it, with a hoarder's supply of more doodads jammed in the cab and camper. She was quite a free spirit, she informed me, adding that her ex-husband was summoning her to court to claim full custody of their daughter. But she'd written a letter to the judge during this pre-trial stage, explaining why she'd pulled her daughter out of school and was traveling around the country with her. Sort of a free-spirit school, I gathered. She also shared that she 'used to be a horrible alcoholic.' I asked if she was in the AA program. No, she said, that hadn't worked for her. Apparently she'd simply swapped the addiction to alcohol to the love of affixing doodads on doodads.

 

She began moving her collection of those into the apartment, and spent the first day jamming the place with them. For some inexplicable reason, she invited me in, and I noticed brown stains on the wall-to-wall carpet. Yes, she giggled, she'd tripped while carrying the coffee pot from the kitchen area to the couch. No big deal.

 

She invited a guy friend over, and he wound up spending the night. Meanwhile, I noticed that her camper van was leaking oil like crazy. Her parking area in the driveway would have to be pressure-cleaned. She responded to my concern about that by sending message after message, long epistles that detailed her childhood sexual abuse, the unfairness of the custody battle, the shallow aspect of life in general, as lived by people other than the free-spirited types. And finally, after I hadn't responded to those, a real chiller of a message detailing my abject standing as a decent human being.

 

Only one more day to go, I thought, though I did plan to register a complaint against her as soon as the oil-leaker rumbled out of the driveway.

 

She worked throughout the last night and morning hauling her boxes of doodads back to the vehicle. Quite a bit of junk was left in the apartment, as well as a filled heavy-duty leaf bag of souring remnants of fast-food meals. Many of my things were missing-- forks from the matching silver service set, the kitchen-scissors from set of knives in the butcher-block holder, books from the bookshelf,  matching towels from the bath. The embroidered kitchen towels were stained badly. The bed cover had a blotch of some sort of glue. The frig was full of leftover food.  The interior of the microwave was splattered with what appeared to be a combination of spaghetti sauce and meat fat. The exterior patio grill was covered with grease from the guy friend's go at making hamburgers.

 

I've communicated with the dispute department at airbnb, and initially, it looked like this guest would be banned from the service. There were a few overt threats in her messages to me. As well as plentiful evidence of emotional instability. But yesterday one of the leaders of the dispute department called to let me know that this guest is still allowed to write a review of her stay here.  Of course, I would be allowed to dispute a negative review, if it turned out to be so.

 

For the life of me, I can't understand that reasoning. And it sounded like the ban, which we had discussed earlier, was now simply a figment of my imagination. The guest was still being referred to as an airbnb guest, with the full rights of normal guests. "But she isn't normal," I pointed out. "You've  read her messages. How can anyone consider them 'normal'?  Nevermind the damage she'd done to my property.

 

This morning I received a message from the dispute department. The case is now closed. All I can do is pray that this woman doesn't take up her poison pen again and trash me as a host, for prospective guests to read.

 

If any of you have the least idea of what I can do from here, please let me know.

 

Thank you,

 

Beth McKee

Grand Junction, CO

Beth McKee

@Beth4406 Please do review this guest (carefully or your review will be removed) for the sake of your fellow hosts. BUT do so just before  the 2 week deadline so there is no 'trigger' for her to review you. If she does review you then be careful how your respond as it is not relevant to her but rather to your future guests.

@Mike-And-Jane0 @Sonya5 She did review her stay here, referring to me as the devil and evil and shebab, whoever that is, and all in caps. I asked Airbnb for help, and it was deleted.

Beth McKee
Brian2036
Level 10
Arkansas, United States

@Beth4406 

 

Congratulations on getting that insane review deleted!

 

Better luck next time. I don’t think it could get much worse.

 

Just a hint based on experience and that of other people here: You should consider raising your prices.

 

For some perverse reason, people assume that that if the price is below average, there must be something wrong.

 

Airbnb’s suggested price is usually absurdly low.

@Brian2036  Thank you for your feedback, Brian. I've been told by guests that my prices are quite low for this area. One of the current guests is a professional photographer and filmmaker, and he's taking photos of both listings, so I'll be able to show the salient features in more detail. After I put those on my Airbnb site, i"m definitely going to consider raising my prices. 

Beth McKee

@Beth4406 Excellent - it is one of the few occasions when being personally insulted is positive as it breaks the review guidelines and allows the host (or guest) to remove the review.

Brian2036
Level 10
Arkansas, United States

@Sonya5 @Beth4406 

 

Try to look at the bright side: the miserable guest is gone, never to return.

 

It could be much worse.

 

Your review will help other hosts to avoid similar experiences. We all need to work together to flag people like this, and we need to check guests' profiles before allowing them to book.