Criminals who steal in South Africa

[Colé1]

[Guest] stayed at my Airbnb. He trashed the place and the TV 'went missing'. He also stayed longer and promised to pay but disappeared with the keys. I left him a good review the previous time he stayed but am now unable to remove it. I urgently need to remove the comment, but Airbnb is not answering my emails and requests. This is to prevent other hosts from having to experience the same loss and damages, by not allowing this person on their property. He is a disrespectful criminal who have done malicious damage, fraud and stole a lot from my Airbnb. His profile link is:

** 

Police are looking for him for theft and fraud

**Personal information hidden due to safety reasons - Community Center Guidelines]

[Heidi588]

Can you not leave a review for the second stay and comment on all caps that you no longer recommend him?

[Anonymous]

@Colé1  We aren't permitted to post personal information about other users here, even if they have committed a crime. 

It sounds like the portion of the guest's stay in which he damaged and stole your property happened after his Airbnb was over -  am I correct that you had an informal agreement to extend his stay, rather that you changed the booking within the system?   If this is right, then Airbnb has no liability here. Their insurance only covers the period of a booking registered within Airbnb - I'm afraid you made a mistake by agreeing to an offsite extension. And another mistake by reviewing the guest before he had left the property. How could you possibly review a stay accurately when you can't yet know how it ended?

I hope the police are able to help you here, but unfortunately this forum is not the appropriate venue to report a crime.

[Colé1]

I will have to remove this post as I cannot edit it. I hope enough hosts have seen it to know this person has stolen from me and that they must lookout. I feel that even though i have been done in here, I just wanted airBnB's assistance in preventing this from happening to other hosts. I feel sad that AirBnB has not cared to assist. I'm not asking them for any money or claiming, but just to assist in preventing any further damage to other hosts. If there can be no communication with them, how can one resolve anything really.

[Sarah977]

@Colé1  Are you saying this guest made 2 separate bookings with you and behaved well enough the first time that you left him a good review? If so, and then he made a second Airbnb booking during which he stole from you, you will have the opportunity to leave another review of his second stay, where you can state that you would never host this guest again and he is strongly not recommended.

There is no way Airbnb will agree to remove a posted review for a previous stay just because the guest behaved badly on a subsequent stay. 

[Colé1]

Yes that's what happened. But the second time he called me 1am in the morning and needed urgent accommodation as his car broke down in the area (he said) and he would pay when he arrived. He said he would pay as usual via AirBnB, but made excuses that his work would only pay him the Monday. I gave him extent as he had previously stayed a few days and had then paid on time. He then said that there is something wrong with the AirBnb system due to Covid and that he had to pay into my bank, which he did, but then stayed another day in which he promised to pay too. With AirBnb not answering emails, I wasn't able to establish if it's true as I also did'nt have other bookings and didn't know about the forum yet then. I thought this to be true and accepted his solution to pay into my account. 

These criminals seem to know just how to operate and convince one of believing them so I'm just warning everyone to be careful. 

I could not leave a post because he never completed the second booking via AirBnB. So there is no other way I can warn other hosts than here.

[Helen3]

Sadly as you chose to let the guest stay outside of Airbnb there is nothing you can do. @Colé1 

Covid clearly doesn’t stop a guest being able to book on Airbnb . If he couldn’t book you shouldn’t have let him stay.

I’m sorry this person scammed you, I do hope you have made a claim on your home insurance for STR fir the stolen items.