Hi everyone. I am a new host that listed my property on March 22 of this year. Hosting has been great so far until I hosted a guest in April. I've decided to vet all my guests before they book. So this guest has five 5 star review, she reserves for 6 people and of course I approved her. Her reason for wanting to book is because she had family from Georgia visiting. My listing is in FL and she's from FL herself. I have 2 exterior cameras. One is a ring doorbell at the door and the other is above the garage facing the driveway. She checks in but then leaves. So I'm assuming she went to pick up her family. She comes back the next day. Then after that, I start receiving a ton of alerts on my phone. I've noticed that more people are coming so of course I think, okay, that is the rest of her guests. At the moment, I've noticed that there are 6 cars park in the driveway and more on the street. All these people are carrying items in the house. I've seen a huge speaker, 2 big bottles of hard liquor and maybe 3 cases of beer.
I'm already thinking party. She has already broken my house rules: no unregistered guest and no parties. So I contact CS and tell them what's going on. They have asked for me to send photos and videos. So I do that and they ask me what would I like to do. I tell them that I'll message her regarding the violation of my house rules and that the extra guests need to leave. On the videos, you can clearly hear the loud music when they open the door. CS asks if I had call local authorities and I tell them no because I wanted to notify airbnb first. They agreed that I did the right thing to avoid retaliation. 3 hours later guest responds to me and apologizes and states that her sister lives 5 mi away and came by to visit and then they're leaving. She then tells me that she's not trying to scam or cause trouble. She was trying to reassure me by mentioning her 5 star reviews. Eventually her other guests left.
When they checked out, my cleaners sent me a picture of what looks to be from an e-cig. It was 2 holes on a bed sheet. I was also told 2 towels are stained and that there were cigarette butts in the pool area. After the second day of checkout, she messages me a snapshot of a message sent by CS. The photo shows that her account is limited and that her future bookings will be canceled. I was already thinking that she was going to give me a bad review that day but she didn't. I was always messaging CS for a follow up and nothing new. I have waited until the 14th day to leave her review as I wanted to warn other hosts!
Fast forward, I was notified all of a sudden that I didn't comply with the security device policy. I was so confused! I know I've listed both of them on my listing and on the house manual/ house rules. Going back and forth messaging was worthless to me. I got so frustrated, I called CS. But then they tell me I have to message the representative that's handling my case! So I respond back on there stating that I did list them. And I tell them maybe I didn't list it with the right description? I remember typing the location of the garage camera "at the garage". So I've mentioned that. But then they tell me that it was not included in my description during that reservation? I then tell them, that I am confused. I also try to ask for proof but they won't give me any? Can they not give me proof? Sorry everyone, thank you for reading my long vent!
