Airbnb doesn't support hosts who are blackmailed by guests

[Viveca6]

 Airbnb offers no support to hosts when they are blackmailed by guests who invent any excuse to try to recover a large portion of the rent they paid, something that is happening to us with increasing frequency. During a French group's stay, bed bugs suddenly appeared in one of the 8 bedrooms of one of the houses where we have never had bed bugs in 10 years of renting the house (nor in any of the other houses we manage). The guest immediately began demanding money, claiming a fictitious amount without presenting any justification for it. Airbnb assured us that their Aircover guest insurance would cover any partial refund and that we had no obligation to reimburse them. To show goodwill, we offered a reasonable refund despite not being obliged to do so and referred our guest to Airbnb to claim the remainder of the amount. However, it seems that Airbnb only paid them a small part of what they requested and the guest then began harassing us with messages, including a very clear threat to leave a bad review if we didn't help them collect the full refund. Since Airbnb offered no further assistance, the guest left a bad review, which Airbnb initially removed, but then republished at the guest's request without notifying us. We only found out about it after the deadline for publicly responding to the review had passed. We then sent a 2nd request to have the review eliminated on the grounds that it goes against the Airbnb impartiality rule for reviews (which includes cases where guests threaten with a bad review if they don't receive a certain refund). We only received an automatic reply that our second request had been turned down, without an explanation. Airbnb did implicitly admit that they did not notify us of the re-publication of the review but did not offer a solution for the fact that due to their omittance, we cannot excercise our right to publicly respond to the review. So after going out of our way to accomodate our guests' needs during their stay and paying them a refund that we were not obliged to pay and without any justification on their side of the expenses they claim they had due to the bed bugs, we now have a terrible review in our ad that we can't even respond to. We have been Superhosts for 12 years and are shocked to see ourselves completely abondoned by Airbnb in this clear case of blackmail by a guest

[Helen3]

Did you get a report from the pest control company to show if there were bed bugs before agreeing a partial refund . @Viveca6 

1. my approach would have been to say this isn't something reported by previous guests so you wonder if it might have been bugs brought in by their party

2. you take all such complaints seriously and have arranged for a pest control company to visit (can they share photos/video of evidence they found?

3. if the listing is found not to have bed bugs then you will charge them for the cost of the inspection. 

4 presumably you left an honest review to help warn your fellow hosts? 

5. you should be able to respond to their review and ask Airbnb once again to remove it.

[Viveca6]

Thanks Helen3, we've done all that and now at least managed to write a public response to the guest's review, still trying to have Airbnb reconsider their decision about not removing the review but they're incredibly bureaucratic and just keep on hammering on the fact that the process is closed and they can't reconsider any decision taken. Very frustrating and also scary to see ourselves so unprotected against blackmail!

[Vlada38]

Reopen the case as many times as you need. Airbnb support for hosts has honestly been horrible. I had huge issues with them  and am taking legal actions due to there “support team”. If they tell you the case is closed, reopen a new one until they genuinely try to help you remove this one star review. Sadly, Airbnb became more of a consumer platform and doesn’t care much about there hosts now. 

[Viveca6]

Thanks Vlada38, that's exactly what I'm doing. Let's hope someone there reacts. Airbnb has been losing lots of properties in Spain because of new legal requirements for short term rentals so they should take good care of the hosts that are doing everything according to the book!

[Viveca6]

Airbnb USA finally intervened, recognized that we had been blackmailed by our guest and eliminated the review permanently. We're grateful that they did support us in the end, but it would have been great if we hadn't had to go through many incompetent client service agents first who did not bother to read our case carefully before hitting on someone who did take it seriously. Lots of needless stress and time and energy lost on the way for all parties involved!

[Selome0]

Hi @Viveca6,

I’m really sorry you’ve had to deal with such a stressful situation  especially after so many years as a Superhost. No host should be threatened or pressured by guests for refunds, and you handled things far more generously than required.

When a guest explicitly links a refund request to a review threat, that does fall under Airbnb’s Review Policy regarding extortion. You did the right thing by reporting it. Since you weren’t notified when the review was reinstated, it’s understandable that you missed the response window.

At this point, your best option is to contact Support again and clearly reference:

the extortion policy,

the lack of notification when the review was republished, and

the fact that this prevented you from exercising your right to publicly respond.

You can ask them to escalate the case to a senior specialist. Sometimes higher-level teams are able to review the situation more fairly.

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