Wheres the line where ignorance becomes forgiveable and dishonesty is overlooked for civility?
A guest made a request for the morning of to stay with me for a week and rent my full home. I had already gone into work so i messaged the gentleman some basic bullet points seeking clarification on his message. he mentioned coming to town for a reunion and listed a bunch of relatives. i said that as my isting states i only allow 6 people max and am also pet friendly as i didnt want the fallout from a maor allergy episode to ruin a good sized booking. everything was fine, he went ahead with the booking.
i hired alast minute maid and my assistant to go over there. my assistant needed to disassemble all my photography stuf (i didnt anticipate a booking that day so i didnt take anything down from the day prior) and hadnt bothered to clean up after my girlfriends photoshoot as there wasnt a rush as i wouldnt have approved a small booking starting that day until i had time to go over myself. but for the price of $100 i got everything moved out, cleaned up and ready to go.
30 minutes prior to check in (over 4 hours after he booked) he cancels the booking with some spiel about how his relatives rented an alternative spot that he didnt know about so he didnt need this one anymore and wanted a full refund. i have a strict refund policy so i can make exceptions as needed for awesome folks who treat me respectfully. hell even the ones that dont i have issued full refunds just to not hav the crazy people in my place any longer and get them out (the allergy incident was a man whom was deathly allergic, and my ad is super clearly pet positive and his daughter basically threatened to burn my place down lol)
i said if he showed me a screen cap of the alternative booking his relatives made around the time he booked mine, i would refund him the reservation cost minus the cleaning fees and and any nights i couldnt rebook from the offer i had to turn down 2 hours after i accepted his (for 4 of those 7 days) so basically i was guaranteeing him 3 days refund that i had no offers on, and any days that i could rebook as well potentially totally around 80% of his purchase price. I feel like that was reasonable considering he agreed to a no refund policy at the time of booking 4 hours prior.
then his story starts to shift in that it wasnt an alternative vacation rental, but his brother signed a permanent lease. So i said, thats quick.. from having no awareness that he was going to sign a lease to getting locked into one in 4 hours but to show me a copy of the lease signed around the same time and that would be good enough for my refund scale offer.
He then said he couldnt cause there was o lease as it wasnt a permanent place.. i said fine, then the signed month to month rental agreement. to which he said he wouldnt ask his brother for because he was embarrassed of his eviction. then he re-demanded a full refund. i repeated my terms, and hes threatening to make a fake fraudulent charge report with his credit card company and harass air bnb cause in 4 hours he went from not haggling my asking price nor taking any one of the cheaper local options, to not having htat money at all and needing to help his brother out financially.
so i am now left with several questions.... how long can he continue harassing me in messages? how do i get a copy o his id if he starts threatening me since he cancelled the reservation and i can no longer click on his verification methods? how bad should i feel when he blatantly didnt read the listing and feels he deserves to financially inconvenience me because of that?
how would anyone else handle this? thank you
