I have been doing that but now i wonder if it is just her way of ensuring that the charge doesn’t go through AND an attempt to scam…
I would estimate about twice a week. 
what kind of ridiculous special offer? can you raise your prices in a special offer???
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i’ve got a theft in my unit, and hae been trying to communicate with airbnb help. when i call in, i’m told they’re kicking it upstairs and a supervisor will contact me. then i never get an email response except to say this issue is closed. it’s been well over a week and i still have no reply and no resolution.
that’s such a scam. it’s happened to me on my art page when i’ve got something up for sale. it’s a very popular scam - paying for more than the services and expecting a refund for the difference, and it turns out to be a fraudulent check
Get a police report, copy the receipts for the stolen items and send them to your insurance company at once.
It’s a long time since I had to do this and in those days I faxed them (
) but today I’d text photographs.
Airbnb is completely insane. “You might not get paid for this booking, but since we know you’re such a great host, we encourage you to let her stay for free.”
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Usually around a billion dollars. It just tells them that I know it is a scam and they won’t get anywhere with me, yet the algorithm sees a live host responding and I keep my 100% response rate!
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I had a request to rent for a year in advance from Luxembourg. Everything checked out, including LinkedIn profile, passport, phone calls Airbnb quarantine booking and flight. But the wire transcript info was all screwed up.
it’s a family playstation and i don’t have receipts, and the only photo was taken by an airbnb photographer years ago. but it costs $300 to get a new one. good thing smart tvs make that workaround redundant.
actually, my main concern is to make sure they kick the guy off the platform. i don’t want to leave a bad review, for fear of his sketchy friends retaliating.
UPDATE. the guest never responded again. i finally on the last day left a 1 star review (thanks whoever recommended that tactic) and said that the guest stayed four days, and that was all i said. airbnb, after repeatedly closing the case (possibly because i kept writing to them asking wtf was going on), after two or three weeks of this, said they’d pay me half the replacement cost of the playstation, because it was old (so what?), and that was it. no mention of what they did to the guest’s account (because you can be sure i demanded they boot the guest off the platform). but at least the issue is resolved enough, and he got a bad review out of it.
next update: i no longer can see that horrible guest in my inbox. he shows up on the calendar, and i can access his messages by clicking on his profile, but the string of back-and-forth is gone. does anybody have any idea what this means?
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They come up second hand on marketplace all the time where I am and not at all expensive. If you are replacing like with like then this is the direction I would go.
Having been in hospitality since I was born… I don’t leave anything that I would be upset to lose as far as small things in my STRs. Everything bar the linens is second hand and from thrift shops. Looks great, no real loss if it is broken or stolen.
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Leave a review that just says “Guest stayed XX days.” Other hosts reading that will get it that you had nothing good to say, but the guest or his sketchy friends won’t be aware of that. And 1* across the board- guests can’t see their own star ratings. If you leave no review, he’s going to get accepted to someone else’s place and do the same thing. You can’t be assured at all that Airbnb will remove him from the platform.
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Purely for my own amusement, keeping my KPI’s up and keeping the Algorithm happy… the host responded
I am going to try this tactic, I like it.A while ago I had an inquiry with several good reviews but 2 of the 4 reviews did not match the name of the guest. At the time I thought that maybe the guest was with a group of people during those stays and they were mentioning 1 of the group. The guy that made the inquiry was travelling alone, though, and I booked someone else before he committed to my special offer. Now I think I may have dodgeda bullet. Is there any scams with people using reviews that are not theirs and how can a host deal with it if there is?
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If the review is for a trip booked by someone else, it will say that above the review, “This trip was booked by Marisol” and the guest may have the review on his profile because he was part of the reservation. This is legit and no worry.
However, if the reviews all seem to belong to the guest personally and there are different names used, that means the guest has changed their profile name (guests are free to do this). It may be legit or it may not. I once had a Tony book that was Emily in the other reviews. I asked about it and she had recently changed her name to be more gender-neutral. I have no worries about that of course and so booked her. There are good reasons to change names. I also had a guest who was changing to their middle name - they thought it was better for the professional career they were entering. It seems more common in the younger crowd as they are more focused on finding their identity. Also, there are generations now that haven’t known life without social media and there is a lot of creating your own identity on social media. Their airbnb profile is an extension of that. Just ask about the name disparities. If they don’t want to answer, then there may be an issue. It’s a case by case.
I think it’s @KKC who had a great guest named Death and Disparity Innards - something like that, lol.
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It was a guy booking and the names on two were female and could have been innocent. There were some other disquieting things like him wanting to get a lower price, and not being able to confirm until the day of the reservation . It was a month long reservation for 1 person for a 2 bedroom and he was coming from California. Was he going to book with a fake credit card and that was why he did not want to confirm? I had told him I would not hold the reservation but would honor it if he got back to me and no one else booked, and 1 hour before his time was up I get an instant booking for 28 days at my full price. The other guy “reached out” and I sent him back a message offerring different dates but never heard from him again. Maybe I am paranoid…
I meant a photograph of your receipts and police reports. It’s the quickest way to get them to your insurance company.
Please leave a review!
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Invisible Vengeance Visits. Here’s my post about it.
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Yes, you absolutely can. It will get rid of them but keep your “response rate” in tact.
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A used playstation is not worth submitting a claim to insurance, deductibles generally start about $500, mine is $2500 . Insurance is for the big stuff, everything else is a cost of doing business
IMO
RR
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Similar but different
My name is Anne however when posting my now 2 STRs to LTRs on Zillow & Craigslist, my contact info was to call Andy. Only one person questioned it. After my explanation of, “ there’s a lot of strange people out there” no more questions.
Not politically correct and I firmly believe women are as capable as men but the reality is there are people who will think twice before they try to play games with a big ole southern farm boy.
A good friend now asks her 6’4” 260lb football player-ish son to meet guests touring her condo that she is moving to LTR(6month max). He’s s big teddy bear but can look like someone who could easily stomp a troublemaker.
Ok and before folks get wrapped up in “I don’t let guests preview the rental”. Mine are now 12 month leases. In my area, the standard is to allow a potential tenant to see the neighborhood and condo before they sign a lease.
These days masks are required. I will meet them outdoors and let them in and separate viewings by 24 hours.
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