Smoking deposit collection best practices

[Inna22]

I put together this guide to help other hosts collect their smoking deposit. I have been successful in doing so and there seem to be a number of posts from hosts who were declined by CS and frustrated. Please add what have worked for you

1. This will seem obvious, but start by making sure your guests do not smoke in the first place. If you have a no smoking rule, I am sure your goal is to have a non smoking place, not to collect a deposit. I have it in my house rules on the site, I email a reminder with my welcome message and have signs throughout the property. I also say that there is no smoking on the entire property, including the yard and garage. The reason for it is that some people smoked in the doorway in the winter, in the yard with windows open in the summer and the house reeked of smoked just the same. I tell them they would need to physically leave my property to smoke. This also made it easier to collect proof for CS as even if they smoked in the house, most of the time they threw the butts right outside and since the whole property was covered by the rule, those pictures were accepted as proof.
2. Have a clearly stated separate smoking deposit. Make it high. Mine is $500. If you have a small deposit, someone can potentially choose to smoke and pay the fine.
3. Once you found out that a guest smoked, take pictures. I have never not been able to find some evidence, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. Something to watch out for: I once thought a guest drew a line with a cigarette on the decking and submitted it as evidence. A very detail oriented CS representative found the same line in one of my pictures posted on the site and denied the entire claim. Make sure your pictures are of the new damage by this particular guest.
4. Save receipts for dry cleaning, filters. I used to buy filters in quantity but CS questioned the date on it. If you are changing filters due to guest smoking and hope to collect the deposit, go out and by a new filter at that time. If you need extra cleaning supplies, buy them separately and save that receipt. You can rent a carpet cleaner from Home Depot. They are fantastic. I actually purchased one and it comes in handy often.
5. Have a detailed invoice from a verifiable cleaner. If you clean the space yourself, all you will be able to get is expenses listed in point 4 even though you have the smoking deposit. Airbnb will cover your actual cost, there is no punitive component. Even if you do not use a cleaning company but an individual, ask your cleaner to create an invoice on their letterhead. Perhaps even help her/him put it together. It should have their name and phone number, it does not need to be anything complicated with a logo but still have valid details. CS verified my cleaning company once. Have a detailed description of the extra work they did. For example, they would probably need to wash all the bedding you keep in the house, not just what your guest used. List everything (so many top sheets, pillow cases, etc). They should wash the walls with water and a bit of soap to remove the tar, list that. List everything.
6. Be calm and polite. This is a piece of advice I got from one of my favorite posters here. I used to let CS have it. No. Thank them for taking the time to work with you, be factual and polite no matter how ridiculous their response is. Be patient. They will sometimes take weeks to respond to you but will demand that you answer within 48 hours. Breathe in and out and come here to vent.
7. Ask for a manager if all fails. They will get one

In terms of getting the actual smoke out, ozone machine is magic. I got one online for about $70. I still need to do all the washing and cleaning but the smell lingers until I use the ozone machine.

Good luck!

[S14]

@Inna22No we cannot make the window between bookings any longer without losing a full night -- which often results in a full weekend -- of bookings.  We already ask people to check out at 11am and most guests find that difficult. We already don't allow check in before 3pm -- which is later than many guests want. We have one small storage closet for luggage but that can only be used by one guest/group at a time (and there is physically no space for more storage). We need four hours to do a regular cleaning for our 3 bedroom, 2 bath, full kitchen bnb. If we added another 4 hours to make it 8 hours between bookings, we would just have to block another night. Not feasible.

LOL -- yes, most people who don't live in NYC have the mis-impression that it's fast, modern, you can get anything you want anytime -- that "city that never sleeps" myth. That is the opposite of reality. NYC is like a third world country. Seriously. Except that most of the 1%-ers in the country live here too. But they are not bnb hosts and they pay extraordinary amounts for everything that you and I could not possibly consider. NYC is the land of the Haves and the Have Nots.

To illustrate this environment, our housekeeper needs to take one day off, a Sunday. I have spent hours calling all over town to find a housekeeper to come in just for a regular cleaning. We cannot afford the ones that charge $100/hour -- those are for 1%-ers. The ones that charge a third of that are within our budget and fit into the cleaning fee we charge. Emergency fast cleaning? Ha! I've been working on this for 10 days so far. Nothing. Today, I spoke with someone at a larger cleaning service where they claim to have over 80 housekeepers employed. They told me that they sent out a request to "all" of them but "no one wants to work on a Sunday." Unbelievable. I have disabilities so it is difficult for me to just do it myself -- but I will probably have to try unless I can magically find someone. Emergency Cleaning? That's a fantasy in NYC. You wouldn't believe how difficult things are here unless you've lived here a couple of years. You just have no idea. Oh sure if I could pay $1,000 I could probably get emergency cleaning. Not going to happen. I can't get someone on a Sunday with two weeks notice. And market prices are so low here that we cannot afford to block nights between bookings in case we need extra cleaning. No way. The economics of that do not work here.

PS -- If you google housecleaning services that service Brooklyn, you'll find some. But they are not all valid. For example, just this past week, I sent three days corresponding with a firm found on Google. They have 50 5-star reviews. Great, right? Wrong. As a wise friend pointed out, no one has that many 5 star reviews without even one review even one star lower. Anyway, I asked all my questions and got a nice price and lots of "yes we can do that." Then, I asked meaty questions like "What is your method of payment; How can we confirm for Sunday March 14; What is the first name of the person who will be coming." Guess what the answer was? "Yes." That's it, "Yes." Fake company. Probably a shell for something illegal. There is a lot of that in NYC. Like in the movies. I lived in Michigan for the first 30 years of my life and I never would have imagined that a city is really like this. It is.

[S14]

@Inna22 IMPORTANT -- Please see my post in the other thread. Airbnb will no longer reimburse for remedial extra cleaning, even with invoices to prove payment. They no longer consider that to be "damages." Horrible.

[Inna22]

@S14 you have to have a smoking deposit in your listing. You are not asking for damages, you are asking for your smoking deposit and drawing the money against it based on your expenses. I was lucky to have a streak of really good guests and home it continues but inevitably sooner or later will have another claim and will make sure to update everyone here

[S14]

@Inna22  Yes, we wanted to do a smoking deposit. Please read carefully how the "deposit" works on Airbnb. It is utterly useless. In reality it does not exist. Airbnb does not support deposits. Cannot do it. It would take me a long time to describe how it works, but please read up on it carefully. I"m afraid you will withdraw your suggestion. It is absurd that Airbnb won't do this, but they don't! If you don't find it, ask me again and I'll tell you what I found. I wasted a lot of time researching it and speaking with many people at AIrbnb. Not happening, unfortunately. That would indeed be the most sensible way to handle this problem. Does Airbnb care? No.

[Inna22]

@S14 I am extremely familiar with it. While Airbnb does not support it directly, there are a few things in play:

1. your guest knows you have a deposit and they do not know it is worthless. Some percentage will behave better just from thinking they would pay it

2. When looking for host guarantee, they can deny you simply because you have no deposit. Do not give them yet another very easy to avoid reason to deny you quickly

As for the smoking deposit, I used the wrong term. It should be penalty, not a deposit. It is separate and additional to your regular deposit

[Ric19840]

Is that not contradictory to take a deposit for smoking when you have already clearly declared your rental as non-smoking? I'm sure a lot of our guests would baulk at an extra $500 being taken from their card when they are themselves non-smokers.

Totally appreciate you giving advice for other hosts based on your experiences, but it sounds more like a work-around for sharp practices by ABB. I've set a $350 security deposit on our listing, as we have on every other single portal we use (and have done for 14 years of renting) and expect ABB to be professional and honour the purpose of that.

[Inna22]

@Ric19840 it is not a deposit, it is a penalty. No card is being charged. Even if it were a deposit, airbnb does not charge a guest's card anyway.

As for your expectation of Airbnb honoring your deposit, you should read up about it on this forum. I many cases they do not. Hopefully you will never have to find out

[Ric19840]

@Inna22  thanks for the response, I have been reviewing a lot of posts on here and seeing the issue that the ABB security deposit is worthless. It seems they have not lost their fly-by-night roots then. Maybe I won't click Activate on our listing after all. 😕 We've already had enough grief over another listing site illegally holding >$2k of our money for over 6 months "just in case the guest claims on their CC". Not sure we can cope with yet another site who's #1 mantra is profit over host well being. It's the hosts that allow them to trade, without us they have nothing.

How do you configure your "penalty" on the listing? I had a look and can see a mention of paying $500 from the security deposit under your House Rules, presume you have set the SD to $500, as I can't see that anywhere?

[Inna22]

@Ric19840 none of the sites are perfect, some are better than others and all bring me enough profit to make the troubles worth while

My deposit is $500-$800 depending on the property. It is in the listing, house rules, welcome message and posted on the wall. If someone has not seen it, they were determined to do what they want regardless of what I say or post

[Sarah977]

@Ric19840 "and expect ABB to be professional and honour the purpose of that."

Expectations and reality, in this case, are often polar opposites. If a guest refuses to pay, hosts have to try to get Airbnb to pay up, which is a lengthy and often futile process. And re smoking violations, Airbnb's go-to response is that you can't prove that the guest smoked simply by the odor a host claims was left.

Are you aware that the Airbnb security deposit isn't actually charged to the guest or held when they book?

[Ric19840]

@Sarah977 

>Are you aware that the Airbnb security deposit isn't actually charged to the guest or held when they book?

I am now. What is that point of having that as a setting if they do not charge or hold it? <smh>

[Sarah977]

@Ric19840  That's a question you'd have to ask Airbnb.

Gives unaware hosts a false sense of security?