Guest complaining about a "smell" and wanting a huge refund

[Jon2761]

We are brand new Airbnb hosts, although we've rented our house quite a bit through Craigslist in the past. We've  spent the last several months renovating and refurnishing our 1800s house in the Berkshires, and started hosting guests on July 1st of this year. We received 5-star reviews from our first three guests, which was gratifying and exciting, but then along came Guest #4, who booked a 3-week stay in August with her husband and two young children. She arrived on 7/31 and is scheduled to leave on 8/23, but now wants to leave on 8/15 or earlier.

When she first arrived, she texted us that the house was "amazing", but although it was clean she noticed a smell. We live in California so can't inspect it ourselves, but we have a trusted builder and cleaning person and they didn't smell anything (they tell us when they do). Our cleaner, in fact, also cleans for an Airbnb Superhost in the same town, so she's pretty well versed in what's necessary for an enjoyable stay. And we asked our builder to check for the smell when he was in the house installing a fourth air conditioner, per Guest #4's request.

To complicate matters, there were severe storms in the region, and our county along with those surrounding us lost power for over a day. This also caused the water in our house not to work, as the pump in the well runs on electricity. After putting up with this for a day, Guest #4 moved to a hotel for a night. This was completely understandable under the circumstances, and we immediately refunded her an amount that was higher than the price of one night's stay in our house.

We tried to work with her and were always completely responsive to her requests, but we can't correct a smell if it's not detected by our house managing team. And what's really galling is that when she requested the refund through the Airbnb Resolution Center, she listed "Unclean or Inaccurate Listing" as her reason.

We don't feel that we owe her the amount she's asking. We've drafted a response to the Resolution Center but are hesitating to submit it, saying we'd pay her a lower amount as long as there was no damage in the house, and we'd pay her the rest of the canceled days if we're able to book new guests for those days, but first we'd need to make the days available on the calendar again. This particular problem is completely new to us, and I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on what we should be doing before submitting our counter-offer. We really don't want conflict, but it's not right to book a prime month like August and then just walk off in the middle for what we consider unsubstantiated reasons.

Thanks for reading.

Nancy

[Jon2761]

@Debra300 Thanks, those are good suggestions. We are planning to get a generator, and one of the reasons we felt obligated to pay for their hotel was that if we'd had a generator in the first place, they would have been able to function in the house when the power went out.

[Ross648]

Hello Andrew, 

I note that the link you gave me does not address the solution I proposed, which is neither a positive nor negative review but neither, that is, a severing of the relation.  

Extortion or incentivization

Any attempt to use reviews or review responses to force a person to do something they aren’t obligated to do is a misuse of reviews, and we don’t allow it.

People who use Airbnb aren’t allowed to tie positive reviews to promises of compensation or to threaten negative reviews if a desired outcome is not met. Violations may result in the restriction, suspension or termination of your Airbnb account.

This policy prohibits:

• Guests threatening to use reviews or ratings in an attempt to force a host to provide refunds, additional compensation, or a reciprocal positive review.
• Hosts requiring a guest to leave a positive review or rating, or to revise a review in exchange for a partial or full refund, or a reciprocal review. Hosts also cannot offer a free or discounted stay in exchange for a guest revising an existing review.
• Hosts or guests asking someone to take specific actions related to a review in exchange for the resolution of a dispute.

[Anonymous]

@Ross648  "Specific actions related to a review" would obviously include not leaving one at all. I don't get which part of this you're failing to understand.

[Sarah977]

@Ross648  The 3rd bullet point exactly addresses your suggestion. The guest claims there is a smell as a basis for a refund. The host says there isn't a smell. That is a dispute. Offering to refund is a resolution. Specific actions related to a review encompasses asking the guest not to review.

That is how Airbnb would interpret it if they got an extortion complaint.

[Ross648]

Hello Sarah, 

And yet --- (I believe this situation to be more nuanced than Andrew recognizes).  

Years ago a guest asked for a full refund after check-in, claiming that he couldn't find the place (I think he just decided not to come up).   Of course, AirBnB contacted me, repeatedly, asking me if I would give a full refund.  (This was from the time of customer service).  

I replied that I would only give a refund if the guest could not review.   CS said that the guest would have to leave a review.  I responded that in that case I would not give a refund.  CS then resolved the issue with the guest by having him promise not to leave a review, and me giving him a full refund.  If he did leave the review, AirBnB promised to take it down because that would be in violation of his agreement.  

Is this not -- to all intents and purposes -- the same situation?  I make this point because the original poster is rightly concerned about a hostile review, and this seems to be the most effective solution to the problem of the rating system.   Unless you cleave, passionately, to an algorithm that consistently favours guest over host.   cheers, Ross

[Anonymous]

@Ross648   Respectfully,  I am probably aware of far more nuances and variations on this topic than you have yet encountered in the course of your 52 reviews.

For example, up until 2018, a review was generally not considered valid if the guest did not actually check in (which would have been the case in your anecdote). After some consumer-rights policy intervention in the UK in mid 2017, Airbnb changed its policy globally to allow reviews for any stay that was not cancelled before the scheduled arrival date. See here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/airbnb-agrees-reviews-loophole-intervention-cma-r...

It's still a matter of controversy how a person who has never been to your property can submit a review and ratings for things like cleanliness and accuracy, which in practice may contradict the relevancy requirement for reviews. But this is absolutely not the "same situation," as the OP's guest has been physically in the property for several days and is more than qualified to review it. 

This particular guest's complaints do sound petty, but that's not a meaningful distinction when what you're ultimately advocating is that the host offer hush money to a disgruntled guest in exchange for not exercising their right to post an account of their experience. What you're advocating is precisely what the terms were written to prevent. A guest who complained loudly enough about such a proposal could easily have action taken against the host.

Am I "cleaving passionately" to the algorithm (which is not really the matter at play here, anyway)? Give me a break. I just don't want to see a decent person make a stupid mistake that could harm their business because they took bad advice from a stranger on the internet.

[Ross648]

Dear Andrew, 

Yes, you are bigger than me, well done! 

I don't think that our back and forth is going to be of much more help to the OP's situation, so I'll add only this and stop.    

What I am trying to suggest is that she -- through AirBnB dispute arbitration, if it is to be found -- find a solution that protects her from a potentially punitive review that would appear to be the result of the guest deciding  to leave early and therefore smell a non-existent smell to get out of her contractual obligations.  Other posters have recommended that the OP simply refund the money for the rest of the stay, but how unjust to then receive, not only a hostile review and low rating.    This situation is most decidedly not what the terms were written to protect, I think, unless the writer of the program is perverse.  

This is in fact a problem with the algorithm, which is structurally biased towards guests and therefore invites hosts to find solutions to this structural bias -- a term now endless invoked by Americans, but in a different context.    Best wishes to you  -- 

[Anonymous]

@Ross648  Yes, alas, hosts should adjust their expectations accordingly:  as a business, Airbnb is more "structurally biased" toward the customers who provide its revenue, of which there are currently too few, than toward the service providers using its platform, of which there are more than enough. Bear that in mind if you choose to do conduct your own business through them at this moment, and expect virtually no support for any problem - especially one you could have better solved without intervention.

[Sarah977]

@Ross648  The problem is, that even if that worked anecdotally in your particular case, that's no assurance that it would work if you had been dealing with a different CS rep. The way they handle cases is quite inconsistent. And just because they told you the review would be removed, doesn't mean it actually would be. Hosts have Airbnb reps tell them all sorts of things that get reneged on.

[Ross648]

That's true, Sarah, though I did only use the app so I had everything in writing.  

If it is possible to contact CS, I would suggest that the OP attempt my solution (using CS) because it would answer one of her (credible) anxieties -- a low rating after a full refund.  

[Alex460]

Tell them to you-know-what-themselves and don't review them.  Call Airbnb and explain that they guests are extorting you in a possibly fraudulent manner,  That should preempt the concern about reviews.