Undeclared pet

[Heidi1060]

Hello! How should I go about requesting a pet fee to be paid after a booking was already completed? I have picture proof of masses of pets' fur sheddings, but that is all. The cleaning took me extra time, but Airbnb does not let me submit a request if I don't have documentation on paper of the extra cleaning costs. I have gone ahead and disclosed pet fees and undeclared pet fee rules in my description and house rules.

[Greystone0]

Hi @Heidi1060  - how do you know it was a pet and not a service/support animal?  These animals are always allowed and the guest doesn't have to disclose. 

There really is no nice way to handle this that doesn't come across as some sort of invasion of privacy or yield bad feelings on both sides.  Since the guest is long gone, I would not pursue this further generally speaking (unless there is real damage, something is missing, etc).

And hopefully you experience the general idea that some guests are easy to clean up after and others take more time and so hopefully you experience a balance here.

Respectfully, in my opinion, I wouldn't bring it up or pursue further as the pet hair was easily remedied.

[Heidi1060]

Hey @Greystone0 ! I was certainly planning ask about a service animal before anything else! I am not planning to pursue this any further but I was also looking for what I can do from now on. I had an incident a few weeks ago about pet feces on my bedding, and that was something I was unable to charge for because of the same issue. I have updated my check-in automated message to ask for a confirmation in number of guests so hopefully that will help a bit. And yes, I have had my very fair share of easy and not so easy guests! This was my first time finding out about the Airbnb community! Thank you for your insight. 

[Greystone0]

Hi @Heidi1060  - totally feel for you on these experiences. While we haven't had the same exact ones, here I am sanding and refinishing a door for the 2nd time this year from dog scratches. It's an effort.

To help keep guests from showing up with unannounced animals (service or otherwise) and unannounced people too, we simply regurgitate the reservation back to them:

you reserved for : 4 adults, no children, no dog (or whatever). This almost ALWAYS results in some sort of update. Like, "oops, forgot the children. There are three kids" or "we are bringing our dog". Not a fool proof plan but it helps.

We add "if this is in error, please let us know asap as we have permit, insurance and other limitations and this is important information for us".

This reservation info is part of every message (which we only have a few) so if something changes from reservation to check in, which can be 12 months for us, we are hopefully catching or prompting for any updates.

Guests seem to really not understand that just because a listing allows 'pets' that they ALSO need to 'check' that in the occupancy. They don't know that they were supposed to 'check' the pets box.

And AIRBNB doesn't do a good job of keeping guest accountable here, it all rests on a hosts shoulders. So I wouldn't be too surprised about any of this happening. Even if you have info in your house rules, it's often unread/missed etc.  It just takes a lot of follow up.

Good luck and hopefully no dog surprises in your hosting future!