My guest spent his first time in Airbnb at my place and I paid someone to clean and give him the keys. He claimed that he didn’t like the place and had to pay $500 for a hotel. He clearly expected a hotel and he didn’t cancel the reservation on the biggest holiday weekend of the summer, which was also the busiest. All I know is that he didn’t cancel, kept the keys the entire weekend, and now claims that he will post a bad review if I don’t give him a refund even though he made it impossible for anyone else to book the property. On top of that, my wine glasses were broken! It is a classic lose-lose situation for the host. Beware: do not rent to first time Airbnb guests and stay away from creeps like this guy who try everything they can to scam you!
I would not advocate AirBnB for the small scale host just trying to make a spare room pay for itself. The whole process is run by robotic software and designed simply to suck in cash and channel it back to the virtually anonymous operators. It is too easy for a vindictive guest – and who hasn’t encountered one of these – to set back your reputation by leaving a poor review. In one example along a steep learning curve, we fitted our lives around one guest who initiated a 2 night stay, which became a 1-night, who having changed dates twice, then arrived a night earlier than he had booked (still stayed just the one night, though). And yes, we did put off other potential guests for at least two of those nights. He arrived at 10pm and left at 7am, so we barely saw him but he seemed nice enough to our faces. In his review he gave 3/5 for communication!!. And there we were thinking that we had handled his lack of decisiveness superbly. He also complained that he hadn’t expected to pay a cleaning charge on one night, even though it costs the same to clean after one night as it does a week, which is surely a criticism on his part of AirBnB policies rather than ours as a host, but nevertheless his ire over this resulted in a totally unsubstantiable 3/5 for cleanliness. Now, 3/5 is average. We’ve all done this in surveys. Gone for the middle grade because we don’t feel strongly either way. However, this triggers all sorts of unnecessary threats of sanctions from the AirBnB software. They just don’t care. They make millions from an endless supply of small operators who decide not to continue opening their homes to random strangers after a poor episode.
DaniBow says: “I am right now having a problem with my first guest, and I will never use airbnb.com period.”
What problem are you having?
BNB don’t care. Their platform is that the contract is between the guest and the host. Hosts don’t get help or protection from BNB because of that. You have to go to court on your own and by that time, the guest is long gone and you cannot do anything about it. I will be very surprise to see any host getting reimbursed for damages. I cannot take that chance, I am going somewhere else.
I am right now having a problem with my first guest, and I will never use airbnb.com period. They simply don’t have customer service that serves. They are usually rude and do not solve problems. There are so many platforms a host can use, including craigslist. Go somewhere else.
Contact BnB straight away and tell them what happened and show proof (text/BnB message/What’s app) that the guest is threatening a bad review if you don’t refund him.
They won’t let him post the review and you will keep your money