House totally vandalized by guests, a claim of a big amount has been placed but AirCover is ignoring our claim.

[Lila5]

We are hosts for over 11 years now. We had our house vandalized by some guests that stayed for 2 months in Los Angeles, Hollywood Hills. The house is worth $3,500,000, so it's not a small house and everything inside of it is expensive. The intercom was broken the AC/Heater was broken, the beds were burned and a ton of things we stolen, broken and permanently damaged.

The police came to the house and sealed it for a week not allowing us any access because they sent a fingerprinting expert to lift all the fingerprints. Once that was done, we began cleaning and fixing the house.

Unfortuntaly we don't have enough cash to fix everything and we had to cancel 2 bookings from guests that were going to come to the house and we were in the midst or repairing the heater.

Please let us know if we have to go to court to handle this? We thought AirCover could cover all the damages because you advertise worldwide $1,000,000 insurance.

Please advice,

Lila

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[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Lila5 I hope, with a property that valuable, you have your own insurance in place. There are many many caveats to Aircover which is NOT an insurance policy hence is unregulated. It also only pays a depreciated amount for damaged articles if it chooses to pay at all.

I doubt if you would defeat the Aircover Ts and Cs in court but you might if you went after them for false advertising.

You are lucky the police care as in the UK it would be a civil matter.

[Lila5]

Sadly, our properties, below the Hollywood Sign and in the thick of the hills are in Fire Hazard Zone #1 and are uninsurable, unless one pays an extravagent amount of money yearly. In addition to that, insurances usually do not cover vandalization by AirBnB guests. My friend had a similar case 5 years ago, and she wasn't approved for a refund for what an AirBnB guest caused her as damages.

AirCover promises to protect our properties as hosts and we have generated AirBnB in 11 years important sums of money and have never had a claim.

I don't know if going to court will become our only way of doing this but we are losing clients every day.... and we cannot host anymore because of important items that are essential to a guest say that were totally broken.

Thank you for your help

[Lorna170]

@Lila5   Go to an independent insurance agent and find a company that will insure your property.  You are taking too large a risk with a multi-million dollar property and it is ridiculous to think that AirBnB is going to cover you.  Did AirBnB give you a policy in writing with your name and address on it?  No, they did not.  

AirBnB hosts NEED TO INSURE their properties with a REAL policy from a REAL insurance company.  Otherwise, do not host.  

I am sorry that you have had this experience.

[Bhumika]

Hey @Lila5 ,

We are so sorry to hear that you had to face such issues with a guest. I have also ensured to raise this to related teams if they can look into this and reach out to you. We hope you hear from them soon.

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[Fred13]

@Lila5  Is the property in question the one for $361 (for first 6 people) and has 18 reviews?

[Dawn86]

Fill out the Resolution Form or they wont even talk to you.  I didn/t know about this stupid form and nobody at customer service told me about it as they escalated my case 900 times!  Then Roscoe finally emailed me.   He ended up deleting my case.  So now I am back doing it all again!  THEY ARE A HORRIBLE COMPANY WHEN IT COMES TO THE HOST!!  They also took my Super Host status away because my rental wasnt renting and evidentally it has to rent a certain amount of times to keep that status!  Bull crap!   I get repeat customers and I usually get a 5 star rating!  Good luck!

[Bhumika]

Hi @Dawn86 ,

Is there any specific guest situation that you are facing?

I also wanted to share these articles related to How the Resolution Centre helps you and Superhost criteria, in case you wanted to read more about it.