Guest complaint

[Kristin1111]

Hello, looking for a bit of advice. I had a guest stay for 4 nights and on the first night she messaged me and sent pictures of her sons body saying her and her young son got a rash after staying in our hot tub for over 2 hours. It was hard to determine whether there was a rash present or not but we immediately had our maintenance crew go over to check out the tub. Even though the chemical test was fine he completely emptied and refilled it. So naturally this was a timely process and the guest continued to message my cell asking when the tub would be ready, stating that the whole reason they rented our place was for the tub. My question is should I be reaching out to Airbnb to report this transaction with the guest? She hasn't said that she was going to complain or open a case or anything but the wording she used in her texts to my cell make me wonder. Is there something I should be doing to protect myself?

Thank you

Kristin

[Linda108]

@Kristin1111   First of all, your home is beautiful!  Your reviews reflect how guests appreciate what you are offering.  Two thoughts:  Did you remove the hot tub from the amenities and from the pictures?  I didn't see it on the listing.  If a guest has a complaint about an amenity and you respond to that complaint in a timely matter, resolving any issue, there is nothing more you can do.  Second thought:  you refer to communication you appear to have with the guest outside the Air BNB system. If so, that creates a problem for Air BNB in being able to understand the situation and in those cases, the squeeky wheel, ie the guest, will get the benefit of any doubt.  So, what you can do is summarize the outside communication on the Air BNB system, including summarizing how you addressed the issue.  Doing this in a neutral way and inviting the guest to confirm your summary is the best way to "protect" yourself.

[Kristin1111]

@Linda108  Thank you for your reply. The guest checked out yesterday and when the maintenance crew went in to clean they said the hot tub wasn't running and they couldn't get it started. We haven't been able to get an electrician in a timely manner to look at it. So to avoid further issues I temporarily removed it from the listing in case I got a booking before it was fixed.

How would I summarize the outside communication on the airbnb system? Snap shoot the conversation and add it to the inbox of the guest?

[Linda108]

I just create a message to the guest in the Air BNB system which begins, "to summarize our communication outside the Air BNB message system..."  Then just list the pertinent information.  Lack of disagreement with the summary usually is seen as agreement.  Of course it is always best to discourage messaging outside the system by responding to texts with, "I have responded to your text in the Air BNB message system per the Air BNB terms."  I use the summary also for phone calls about an issue.  Hope this helps.

[Kristin1111]

And as far as the hot tub working. I had reached out to the guest and she said she doesn't know what happened. It was running fine, they went out for a bit, when they returned it was no longer running.