Help With Retaliatory Guests

[Phil-and-Lacy0]

We have been on Airbnb for over 10 years. We have some understanding of how this works. 

Recently, we had a local family who was having their home tented for bugs bring 2 cats and a dog to our 1 dog under 40lbs friendly home. We didn’t find out until they got there.

Unfortunately, they didn’t read the full description of the home, our rules, or the house manual. 

When we involved Airbnb to collect the pet fee these guests accused us of lying on our listing, but agreed to pay by check out. 

Upon check out we found they also clogged our toilet, broke our lamp, and left a bad review due to our pet policy. 

We maintain a maintenance schedule because we own an old home. We regularly follow up to ensure our home functions orderly.

In order to maintain the integrity of this home when guests visit we leave instructions and have signs to help avoid a problem, especially with the pipes. 

We have been successful at having the negative review taken down, however we are now finding ourselves in a back in forth with these  guests who are making up stories of conversations that never took place as they are asking for a refund because they left early.

They did call me to tell me they were leaving early because their tented house was ready early, but they are saying we caused “pain and distress” and the condition of our home was poor. 

We never received a complaint from these guests. They never implied there was a problem until we reminded them to pay the pet fee on the day they called to say they were leaving. 

We feel like everything they are doing is in retaliation. The resolution request. The broken lamp. The clogged toilet. 

we have opened a case to get the lamp and toilet issue resolved. We hope it works out. 

Any advice from experienced hosts? 

[Helen3 · Accepted solution]

Yes keep all communications on the platform as Airbnb suggest. In this way a guest can't claim conversations have taken place off platform @Phil-and-Lacy0 

When the guest chose to leave early did you follow up the conversation on Airbnb so there was a record?

I do hope you get reimbursed for the damages.

If you find a guest has brought animals not on the booking on check in always get them to pay on check in or offer them an opportunity to cancel penalty free if they don't want to pay the pet fees. 

[Phil-and-Lacy0]

Hi @Helen3 

Thanks for your response. The only response/follow up we sent was the normal checkout instructions, thank you for staying with us, etc etc. I see now I made a mistake by not documenting the conversation on Airbnb. You are right. I will dedinetly do that moving forward. 

thank you.