I’ll start off by saying that these were my first guests with Airbnb. We rent out a guest room in our house, with access to our sun room, kitchen and pool area. The guests were a father and son. The father did not speak English, but assured us that the son was fluent. They arrived and promptly began breaking all of our (very simple) house rules. They hung out constantly in areas that were not included in the listing, took our groceries, ruined a set of sheets and mattress pad with blood, talked loudly on FaceTime while wandering through the house, and were unsafe in the pool.
After a week of this activity, we sent a reminder email with the house rules, asking that they please follow them, and also slipped a copy under the door with a translation. The men apologized and said they would stop breaking the rules. They did not stop breaking the rules. The final straw came when the father returned to our home after visiting with friends, completely intoxicated. He was giggling and running around the house, trying to get me to swim with him in a pretty inappropriate way (my husband was at work, and I was working from home). I refused the swim.
My husband came home and we went out to dinner, only to return to find the man, still intoxicated, running around the house in his underwear. The next day I contacted Airbnb, and the representative escalated me to a higher up team member. The higher team member said, “Oh, no, we can’t have that,” and proceeded to terminate their stay with us and said they would contact the guests and have them placed elsewhere. She explained that we would lose out on the rest of the money from the listing, which I agreed to (just get these people out of my house).
When I returned home, the men were still there, not making any move to leave. When we spoke to them, they said their information on Airbnb was out of date and they had not heard from them. We explained the situation, and they became agitated and started arguing with us, saying that the underwear situation had “only happened once.” I had to threaten police intervention to get them to finally pack up and go.
Now, in an obviously retaliatory fashion, they have put up a one-star review with one sentence in their native language, but the listing is, obviously, ruined. When I contacted Airbnb to express my frustration, they said it was the guests’ chance to tell their side of the story. Except… they’re not telling their side of the story. They’re downrating our home so we will have trouble booking (as I mentioned, this was our first experience). I have been back and forth with Airbnb about the false nature of this “review” and the fact that it is defamatory. Supposedly my grievance has been forwarded to the legal team. I’m considering deleting our listing altogether and starting over. Shame on me, I suppose, for thinking they wouldn’t recommend eviction if they were going to allow these guests to ruin our listing.
You should get airbnb to remove the review, they did it for us after a guy tried to sexually assault us and leave a fake review.
Great advice above. Also I know underwear man was traumatic for you, but …. this story is hilarious. After canceling / reposting, I recommend having a friend stay, at least for Review 1 — and leave a fair review of what sounds like a gorgeous home. But just between you and me, closing off parts of a shared home, unless it’s your master bedroom, is slightly odd.
Hi, a fellow host here. Dont worry, I have been hosting via nearly a number of properties with airbnb for 5 years this is a very unusual . I operate empty properties though not shared spaces so a bit different. Airbnb has been excellent to work with in almost every case for me and all of he guests in which it comes up in conversation so the horror stories I know do happen from time to time but percentage wise, are rare, this one sounds horrid so soo sorry it was your first. I personally wouldn’t rent out in my own home as my personality is introversive leaning so I wouldn’t deal well with the constantly changing landscape of people , personalities, relationships, attitudes, mannerisms, etc. that is involved with renting within a personal space. Many love it and are amazing at it. Some dont know until they have tried, but this is not a common situation I am sure. Airbnb is a large company and has to follow proceedures to keep themselve out of hot water and also not change policies for a few but not for others. Also considering the magnitude and odd nature of this encounter I doubt they have tons of historical policy to quickly deal with this either, so it may very well take some time. If I were you, especially as this is a new listing., is to close it. Take some new photos that are a bit different from the first set, maybe alter the property name and start fresh. Relatively easy to do. low cos, and you can move forward.If you were established this would be much more complicated as you would have built a clientele base, a review background, etc. that you would lose by closing this account.You do not , so to cut ties and start again would be the easiest thing for you I think.There is no policy against it and I do not believe airbnb would have any issue with it either Hopefully this will set a precedent for airbnb as well as what to do in this type of situation. I hope this helps and reassures you a bit. Keep us posted as to how it goes. If you can see my email, dont hesitate to send me a message if you have any questions on it. Am happy to help. I remember the beginning as well!