Combative guest request

[Heather2199]

Hi all! 

I’m still pretty new to hosting and I’m still learning as I go. I recently received a booking request from someone who is verified, but the profile has not been completed, no photo, no history and no reviews. After reading many forums about red flags and listening to my intuition, I decided to decline this person. I told him I had someone else who had been inquiring about the same dates (which is true). He immediately got a bad attitude about how the money had already been taken out of his account, to which I politely explained the pre auth hold that would fall off or be refunded within 24 hours and guided him to Airbnb support for further assistance. He messaged me again threatening me to report me and how he and his whole family would leave bad reviews everywhere, etc. I told him the conversation ends here. His reaction tells me I made the right call in declining him, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on the matter and what advice you have on how to handle a situation like this?

I’d like to add that my first guests didn’t have reviews and they did a number on my house, broke decor, broke fishing poles and got hot sauce all over my nice couch, which is why I don’t allow automatic bookings. Vetting people seems to be the toughest part. 

[Elaine701]

@Heather2199 

You definitely made the right call. If it smells funny, it's probably "off". Better safe than sorry. 

[Heather2199]

Thank you. I can’t help but second guess myself sometimes, but then I think about how I would’ve handled the same situation in his shoes, and it was very opposite. I definitely feel like I made the right call. That was the first time I had to decline someone.

[Joelle43]

Hello @Heather2199 

Your gut instinct kicked in and with time it's gets smarter and smarter but unfortunately when we are new, we are susceptible to these types of bad guests.  I think you handled it very well by directing them to Airbnb.  This was definitely a request to book rather than an information enquiry?  Was there a pre-approval option or just the option of approving or declining in which case it was definitely a request to book.  

Make sure you have toggled in your settings that you require guests to provide a real photo of themselves.  If they provide a picture of an ape, cat, dog etc you can contact CS to have the booking cancelled penalty free.

Good idea to be with "request to book" rather than Instant Book at the beginning.  If this guest was menacing in his messages to you, you can flag this behaviour in the message stream by using the flag symbol or if you don't see that, click on the three dots to flag them.

It's all part of our learning curve and many of us have been through it and survived!

All the best
Joëlle

[Heather2199]

Hi Joelle. Thank you for your response! Yes, it was a request to book, so I only had “approve or decline”.