Cleanliness complaint from guest - asking for refund+extra money

[Emma4159]

Hi everybody,

A family booked our vacation house（3 floors) for two days. When they arrived the first day, they started to complain about the cleanliness. Like the little water stain on the sink in the kitchen, mop and bucket should not be left somewhere people can see.

After one night, they kept sending me pictures, such as the corner of the upper cupboard in the kitchen has a small spider web (this spot can’t be seen without a ladder) , corner in the basement has a dead mosquito (this spot needs a flash light to see clearly). They took many pictures about corners with some dust. But they didn’t ask me to do extra cleaning, they just said that they have left. And sent the request for full refund plus cleaning fee which we never charged. Then they sent me a message via Airbnb that they have more pictures like this, and if I don’t give them refund, they will leave negative review.

I feel that they are like professional guests who are always ready for doing this. They go to a place, if they don’t like it or they have other plans, they take pictures to try to get money back. We have this kind of guests a few times this year.

I just want to share it with other hosts and really want to know if it violates the review policy because they use money to trade reviews.

[Joelle43]

Hello @Emma4159 

If you read the link below, you'll see that guests are not allowed to threaten hosts with a bad review in exchange for a refund.  These guests seem to know how the system works so I fear that whether you are given the benefit of the doubt will very much depend on who you get at customer service.  The guest should have contacted you first to allow you to remedy the situation.

Contact them and ask them to check your message thread with this guest.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2673

Good luck and let us know how this turns out for other hosts who may face this same situation too

Joëlle

[Emma4159]

Hello, 

since they are not asking for any solution, their purpose is pretty much clear—money. 
People are spoiled by online shopping, if i don’t like it, i return it, and I want free return. If not, I write you negative review. 
I will keep posted if I have updates. 

[Joelle43]

Hi @Emma4159 

I meant - contact Customer Service to show them that guests are asking for a refund to avoid a bad review.  I didn't mean to contact guest - it's quite clear what they're asking.

🤞

[Emma4159]

Update: After they reported that our house’s cleaning issues to Airbnb with a lot of pictures of many spots which normally nobody will notice. I did the following: 

1. Tried many times to contact Airbnb, it’s true that different agent gave you different attitude and solutions. I have to admit that some agents really don’t care. So far still no one stands by my side because of those photos, they believe that our house is dirty. 

2. The guests left 1 star review no doubt. In her review is full of extreme words like crazy house, everywhere is with dust, Stain in the water tap. Host should feel shame, etc. I called Airbnb immediately, the agent is cold and said her review didn’t violate Airbnb review policy, so it couldn’t be removed. I was totally shocked. This guest in her message literally said that she will leave public negative review if i don’t refund the amount she demanded. Is it already simple and obvious? The funniest thing is we just have a 5 star review left by a guest who just checked out before this crazy guest. Another guest who booked last week just came back to book another 5 days for his friends. Isn’t this clear enough to mean something? But Airbnb’s agent chose not to see that. 

3. I called Airbnb again, this time is another agent who is very nice and patient. He checked my case and said that this review did violate the review policy and will be removed immediately. 

So finally the crazy review is gone with the help from the second agent. My advice is to try to contact Airbnb as many as you could, the worst result is nothing changes, but what if one nice agent would like to help you? 

[Joelle43]

Hello @Emma4159 

Great result!! Glad to hear that there are still some knowledgeable CS agents out there but a shame that you had to battle to get that comment taken down. 

From my own experience, I've had to send to CS the Airbnb link that proves my point as some agents are totally clueless/untrained.

All the best
Joëlle

[Emma4159]

A little update: Although I declined their refund request, Airbnb still decided to refund them from my payout. This is also something I don’t understand. I know that Airbnb has Aircover policy, but I don’t know that Airbnb is using host’s payout to reimburse the guest.