I’ll try and keep this as short as I can. We have been 5-star Superhosts (and guests) for years. We hosted in Truckee, CA and in Grants Pass, OR on the Rogue River. We took a chance, by allowing someone who had no reviews to book our place.
When we arrived home (after they checked themselves out), they left the door wide open, and all of the lights on in the apartment. There was trash and crumbs and dirty dishes everywhere. One of our screens was taken off, so they could burn incense on the window ledge (right over our roof) and they broke our washing machine; it was full of dark brown water, that would not drain. The repair man said it was due to them overfilling the washing machine.
We only charged a $250 deposit on Airbnb, which didn’t cover the cost of the damage they had done. Airbnb makes you resolve the issue yourself, with the guest — “Yes, talk to the guest about it. They will agree that they trashed the place and agree to give you compensation for it, no problem!”
Then the guests denied it (when we had photographic proof of everything, including text messages). The guests did not pay the deposit, and got away with everything. What’s the point of having a deposit, if the guests don’t have to pay it?
I surely did not think that Airbnb would let a person you were in a dispute with write a review about you. VRBO does not allow persons you are in a dispute with, write a review on your profile, because they know that it will be false and biased. But Airbnb allowed them to post a review on our account that was false and disgusting when we have a five-year history on Airbnb of being Superhosts and super guests (with 40 reviews).
We are shutting down our Airbnb account as of today, because of Airbnb’s awful and negligent handling of this entire situation. We have been amazing hosts (and guests) of Airbnb for years and the fact that Airbnb allows and practically invites this type of behavior from guests is outrageous. A guest can come into someone’s home, trash the place, break things, deny it and never pay the deposit (that they should) and leave the host a false and horrible review. We will only use other companies for hosting and traveling from this day forward. We will highly recommend all of our friends, families and guests to use anything but Airbnb. We will never recommend Airbnb to anyone.
I have a similar story and am glad to see that there are others posting about the horrors of being an Airbnb host. I’m also sorry that you had this experience! I hope you found supportive places for your listings. I’ve closed my account and am searching for better options. Anything is better than Airbnb, so I should say I’m searching for good options.
Good for you. I did same. It’s really not worth dealing with airbnb.