What do you do when damages are had to quantify? Smoking, unapproved events/#of guests, stolen items

[Mary1211]

Someone wanted to rent my place Saturday night for him and 2 friends to hang out for a night, I told them cool but the place had to be accepted as is it was kind of last minute, they said that was fine.

I come back, and it's clear there was a party and a lot more than 3 guests (they brought up 4 stools from the basement and left them up). Bottles of my wine had been drunk, my bottle of whiskey had been left broken on the floor, and the other bottles clearly drunk from.

The place reeked of smoke and there was a used up bottle of febreeze (I'm allergic to artificial fragrances). 

There were boot & shoe prints everywhere on my floor.

All of my sharp knives were missing.  A sailor's hat of mine from Greece was on the sidewalk outside my house.  My chicken shears were separated and half of them are gone.. Not to mention a lot of low level property damage (scuffed/dented walls, damaged shower, etc.).

Lots of gross little things like gum on a windowsill.

How do you quanitify this to AirBnB?  How do you prove they smoked?

Like I know well enough what knives I had (brand/model) but I don't have proof of purchase for most of them as they are "Lifetime knives" (Shun, Wusthof,  etc) but like "some broken bottles of whiskey, some drunk from bottles," etc.  Other things are harder to value, like a custom leather jacket that is missing that I had made for me in Vietnam (A. I don't have the receipt, B. It would cost much more than the purchase price to replace it as well.. I'm not in Vietnam at the moment). 

What would you do/have you done in these situations? I've documented the observable damages but it's hard to track everything stolen, or the value/cost of things like more guests than approved, unapproved use of space, smoke damage, etc.

Thanks!

-Mary

[Donna240]

Mary, I believe you need to show receipts for what had to be replaced, so you need to prove the replacement cost, not original cost. Since you can't replace the jacket, perhaps a price tag shown on a similar item would work, but in all honesty, I don't believe you can get anything for scuffing, dented walls or dirty floors. If you ask for a cleaning fee in your listing, most web sites will tell you that you already received a cleaning fee. Was your security deposit sufficient to cover most of the damage? Probably not. My advice is to call Airbnb ( the number can be Googled) and talk to an agent for this information. Unfortunately, much of the damage will be considered normal wear and tear (like scuffed walls). Good luck.