I’ve been hosting on Airbnb for about a year now, and on the forum reading for about 6 months, but this is my first post.
Recently, I’ve had a couple less than ideal guests. From assuming a late check out was ok, to peeing in a vase because I was showering, to overall intrusive guests.
Right now I’m dealing with the latter. Two older (60s) women from Italy arrived on saturday, after ringing every bell in my building. Come to find out, one of them doesn’t speak any English, the other barely speaks English. I live in Chicago, and have had more international guests than Americans, so this didn’t strike me as a problem. I lead the way to my apartment (one flight of stairs up), and am standing in the doorway holding the door open for them as they struggled to catch their breath, and they both keep walking up to the next floor! Now, I get that I say my apartment is on the second floor, and that in Europe, 2nd floor means 3rd floor by American terms, but I was standing in my apartment with the door open. Definitely not a deal breaker, but weird nonetheless.
They finally understand where my apartment is, and I show them to their room. “TOO SMALL!” Is the first thing she says. Now, don’t get me wrong, the room isn’t huge, but I have 4 photos of the room that accurately depict it. The next, and last thing she says, “You living here too?” At this point I’m wondering if she even looked at my listing before booking, or for that matter, read any of the house rules.
I had to leave for a while after they checked in, but when I returned, all but two chairs from my dining room table had been moved into the living room to put their suitcases on. The kitchen counter was covered with food they just bought, (I specify in my listing the places where they can put their food) and wet clothes they washed in the tub were hanging up on top of my bath towel.
I have a rule about leaving the bathroom door open when unoccupied stated both in my rules, as well as on the door itself, have asked several times for them to keep it open, yet for some reason they keep closing it. (I get that this sounds anal retentive, but there is no air vent or fan in there, so with the door closed, no fresh air gets in there, and the poop smell never leaves, so trust me, it’s for a good reason)
Fast forward to this morning. I wake up and my phone charging block is missing, and the bathroom sink drain is broken. I move the stopper up and down all the time without a problem, so I’m not sure how this happened. The thing being broken isn’t as big of a deal as the fact that they didn’t tell me they broke it. This has happened in the past with other things, but from guests that were otherwise pleasant.
My question is, would you give these people a bad review? I don’t think they would be terrible guests for someone hosting an apartment occupied only by the guests, but my place is a shared apartment, and they didn’t treat it as such. I was really hoping I could chalk all this up to a language barrier, (though, I’ve honestly had people stay with me who didn’t speak any English before, and it wasn’t a problem since Airbnb translates for people) but the longer this stay continues, the more I’m beginning to believe they just didn’t read the listing properly at all.
I wouldn’t want these people here again, but am I just being overly irritable?
Thanks all!
