Hi all, Ive been hosting for about 2 months so Im fairly new. Ive just been through the worst experience and I felt like airbnb didn’t have my back as a host. A customer with her husband and kids stayed at my place for 8 days. 2 days after she left we got into the house to start cleaning. When we got inside we were shocked as the house was left extremely messy. There were damages. Her kids painted my walls and expensive bed covers. There was trash left everywhere and all the furniture had been moved across different parts of the house. She also left dirty pampers of her kids on the sofas. The guard also told us that she had been inviting lot’s of guests into our home without telling us. When she left she didn’t leave any review at this point until I took pictures of the damages and confronted her to which she said “its not a damage just clean it, i paid for cleaning”. Cleaning charges as far as I know don’t included washing paint off the walls and bed covers. Which by the way wouldn’t wash off and stained leaving them unusable for future guests. The walls also were damaged and they will need repainting. I was extremely upset because she decided to leave is a bad review, defaming us and lying about her experience at the property. She mentioned to me during her stay how lovely everything was but when we asked her to pay for the damages she threatened to complain about us to Airbnb and also left a bad review. She sent many threatening and rude voice messages to us because she knew if she wrote it on text that I could use it against her. I immediately called Airbnb Support to which the support team said that because she hasn’t literally said “I left you a bad review because you asked me to pay for damages” that the review can’t be removed. Even though I sent them screenshots of our chats where she is clearly showing deceptive attitude. All our chats on Airbnb were there where I asked her why she left a bad review after I asked payment for damages and she said “because of you” “ you asked me to pay” etc. She then whatsapped me and said she will edit her review only if I gave her written apology and if my co host also sent a separate apology and also go on airbnb and write in the chat that there are no damages and I apologise. I was literally crying because Ive never experienced something like this. Fearing the negative impact of the review she wrote I reluctantly apologised to her (not on airbnb) and she then changed the review. She declined my request to pay for the damages too. I contacted airbnb support multiple times to which there was no response in the chats and on the phone they said they can’t do anything about it. I am now really scared of dealing with customers especially those with kids at my property. Im still in shock and I have to pay for all these damages alone. I also have to block days on my calendar to fix the walls and also replace my bedsheets. Bare in mind its almost impossible to find good bedsheets in Jordan under 100 Jordanian dinars because its not very common here to find them as they are considered ‘luxury’ and bed covers, pillow cases and fitted sheets are also sold separately at 50-80 dinars per item. Im really upset with the lack of support and I have no choice but to just move forward while the customer thinks she’s defeated me and had no consequences of her actions therefore she may repeat this with another host in the future. She was laughing at us and also said that Airbnb would take serious action against me if I tried to say that she damaged my properties. She also threatened that her husband would confront me and that as a customer airbnb will side with her. Which to some aspect I felt was true as airbnb didn’t help me. I don’t know if its worth trying again to ask for support but Im scared to be ignored again.
