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I tried to keep it short and failed miserably. Sorry. Guest IB for 2 days on VRBO (nov 9-11). A few days later she booked a 2nd reservation for Nov 15-24. For both stays she bought the $1500 damage protection.
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We assumed the 2nd booking was a mistake so had a quick call w/ her to clarify. Her story was she sold her house (1 town away) and was tired of living in a hotel while planning to relocate out of the area. Ok makes sense.
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She seemed nice on the call. The story made sense as property values skyrocketed. She could have done very well - potentially $250,000 tax free profit.
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Just in case, I took a video before check-in. I normally don’t but had a feeling. We had “some minor red flags” with her stay:
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She was very pleasant on check-in but it was odd that she parked up the street and we had space right in front of the house.
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She was up very late, at least 330 am on Wed. I was working all night long, so I noticed.
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She replied to my “Just checking in to see if you need anything” with “Great I really enjoyed the view this afternoon”. Hmmm … so not working days or nights?
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She expressed interest in our long-term apt for rent upstairs. But she never answered basic pre-showing questions. Kinda odd if she is looking to re-locate, eh?
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Ok so skipping on. Checkout was late - 11am not 10am. NP - we set it at 10am so it is not a problem when guests do that. Overall, the apt “looked fine at first”. And much of it seemed fine:
The bed was remade very well (we do NOT ask for that).
Garbage and recycling taken out (we do NOT ask for that).
I needed to clean a glass, mug, knife and plate. No worries at all. 5 min.
Bathroom is fine and clean
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I continue my tour. And uh-oh. Scratches on the top of the black leather sofa, along with a few white cat hairs. I knew it had been pristine as I had personally refinished it and spent a lot of time, cleaning, re-dying, conditioning and applying seal coats. The area with new scratches had been flawless and perfectly smooth.
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Ok, now I start REALLY LOOKING. Cat hairs on the comforter and dresser. Cat food in the garbage outside. SIGH. Tonight, Amy looks and sees cat scratches on the front of the dresser.
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Darnnit! If this was only a 2 night booking, I would have let it go and just left an honest review later. But now, I’m forced to worry about “what might happen for the next stay for 9 nights”.
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The dishonesty bothered us the most. If she had been up-front and honest we would have worked with her on it. But she CHOSE to lie, sneak the cat in/out, is apparently not working and asking about our LTR upstairs while not providing the basic info we ask pre-showing.
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The rest I WILL make short. VRBO requires host to attempt resolution via msg or text BEFORE simply cancelling. We did both. Her next stay, Nov 14-24 really worried us.
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With VRBO chat, it took a while but her stay was cancelled with no refund. The “host cancellation” is supposed to disappear within a day. I copied the entire chat just in case.
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Kudos to VRBO. With Air we would have been S-O-L.
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We CAN still apply for damages, but won’t as long as she does not leave a review or leaves a good one. If she leaves a bad one, we’ll fight that battle another day.
Wow, they cancelled her 9 day stay w/ no refund because of her pet sneaking. Amazing. Did she simply not respond to any of your messages? What kind of resolution did they want you to look for from her in the direct messaging?
She did buy the insurance so is there a battle to fight regarding damages? You just file the claim with the 3rd party insurance company I thought?
I know VRBO gives something crazy like a year to do a review, so no magical countdown clock to do a last minute one. Just wait and see, as you said.
Sorry that happened. It would have been interesting to see how Air handled it with the new pet damage coverage.
Yes she had a 2 night booking that ended today and thank goodness we had that first, with her upcoming 9 night stay only 4 nights away so we could dodge that bullet.
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What VRBO requires in their cancellation policy is for a host to MSG the Guest before just issuing the cancellation - they state in msg or text. We did both, just in case and as guests can easily miss vrbo messages. She did not respond quickly, so we decided to start a chat with vrbo and they did their job. It took some time, to make sure the agent was really clear on things and put in writing that we keep the money for the 2nd booking, with no penalty to us for the cancellation.
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She did buy the $1500 damage protection for both stays. So, we can still leverage that if we need. I’ll only do so if she is crazy enough to give us a bad review, and make sure it stings by hiring a company to do professional treatment. Otherwise, I’ll do it myself as I have a fair bit of experience with refinishing furniture and leather.
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Yeah wow - you are right about VRBO reviews - pretty odd. Almost as odd as “no maximum nights”. That is why we do not allow IB with VRBO.
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Something else interesting is they don’t publish the reviews immediately. They check them to ensure they adhere to the review policy so it can take several days after both are submitted or the 14-days expires. I feel like it was not always like this but that’s the deal now.
On one hand, they did handle “no pets means no pets” and they have long since had a proper damage policy in place.
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It is very annoying that they don’t allow max nights - and that is just ridiculous. There is no reason for it. So, we either have to block “a day here and there” and allow IB to prevent possible tenancy bookings, or, require booking review. Pretty stupid of them and just no reason for it. We would HAPPILY allow IB if we could set max nights. Perhaps we’ll re-enable it now that this event is over with, and do the "block a night here and there to limit longer stays. We’ll see how we feel in a few days.
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A nice possibility is the Air guest for tomorrow is interested in some of the cancelled nights already as a Direct Book. We’ll post an update once that settles into place.
VRBO review system sucks - only stars for a few categories and NO COMMENTS AT ALL.
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She got 1 Star across the board. As she does not seem to get vrbo notifications, we think she’ll miss the “host has submitted a review” and get her well earned slam in 14 days.
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The damage was worse than we thought in the bright daylight. I took good photos of everything, and might still put in a claim.
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Thank GOODNESS her first stay was only 2 nights. Fking cat clawed our leather sofa in several spots and front of a nice dresser. It would have been horrific if she had been there longer.
Cats claim territory by marking things. New territory means they have to claim it. I bring home new furniture and my cat tries the same thing. New outdoor furniture will be peed on!
I’ve had several cats even though I’m not particularly fond of them, and none of them have ever peed on anything, except for the one psycho cat we had. And that wasn’t to mark territory, but because he freaked out if you got too close to him trying to open the door to let him out. And it was always my clothes basket he peed in.
Maybe there’s a difference between cats who spend most of their time outdoors and those who are primarily inside cats?
We accidentally locked one of our cats, who normally did her business outside, in the house when we went camping for 3 days. She did her business very neatly right on the bathtub drain.
