Hopefully s/he has ranted enough to have become bored by now.
2 Likes
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that their Airbnb paycheck arrived a day early? 
2 Likes
Yes, but mine came in the form of a security deposit.
2 Likes
No paycheck for me. I’m one of the 1900 that were let go 
So you started hosting and never read your Terms of Service or any of AirBnB’s policies and rules? No, they don’t tell you because you supposedly read the Terms of Service which tell you that you need to check for changes periodically. And I would NEVER rent to a 19 year old for a weekend. Apparently you don’t live there, and you don’t have remote cameras? If you had, you would have been able to cut off the problem before it started.
1 Like
- Sorry this happened to you. There I said it. Happy?
- If you came here for sympathy and warm hugs, this is not that type of forum.
- Constructive criticism. All this would have been avoided if you drove the 10 min to greet and do an in-person check-in for your “red flag guest”. Then cancelled with no penalty. Red flag guest are your words. Yeah it sucks that it happened but it is what it is. Lesson learned. You are hardly the first host to learn anything the hard way. It happens.
- Air is 99% Guest Centric. You are going to have a “fun time” getting money from them.
- Do you have dedicated STR insurance? If not … ouch.
- No outside cameras for a remote stay? Really? Seriously?
- TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS NEXT TIME. Either cancel the stay or MEET THE GUEST at check-in.
- Invest some time and read the forum.
In case you are wondering, I am a host also - like everyone else on your thread.
4 Likes
I may be roughing a few feathers, but I wanted to say that I do feel that some of you should be a little more welcoming to a new poster. I guess I was lucky when I posted the first time on here as I did get some sympathy.
Secondly, I just want to confirm that you CANNOT cancel a booking that’s really close to the start of the reservation. I tried once. It’s not possible. There’s nothing you can do. Period. I had a last minute booking and I knew it was going to be bad. I talked to the guest, told him to cancel. He wouldn’t cancel. I tried to cancel, the website told me to call. I called, Air BnB said they would “escalate”. Hours later, still heard nothing from Air BnB. By then, the guest had broken into my house. (I did not give them check-in information, they did not have a key or a door code. They broke in.) I called Air BnB again, and told them the situation, they told me they would “escalate” again. After a week of phone calls and escalations, they finally called me back and told me they are giving the guest a full refund.
I guess some of you will find something that I’ve done wrong and somehow I brought those bad guests onto myself. Fortunately I’ve been here long enough and now have a much thicker skin so it’s fine. Just thought I’d share the part I know - which is, no cancellation possible last minute.
3 Likes
If a guest broke into my house, I’d either be calling the police or some scary-looking characters I know. I wouldn’t be spending my time on the phone trying to get Airbnb to escalate the case at that point.
Airbnb will never be your enforcer. If something is going on at your home that warrants evicting the guest, or denying them entry, it’s up to us to deal with it. It’s your home. Argue with Airbnb later.
4 Likes
First - sorry that you had that incident. Truly.
No way I would allow Air to run ram shod over me. I would tell Air “I am not comfortable with this guest”. They will re-house them somewhere else. It is your property. It does not belong to air. They don’t pay the mortgage or property taxes.
They do not have the final say - you do. They are a booking engine. If some boneheaded air cs agent wasn’t going to do his/her job properly, I would get their supervisor on. Repeat “we are not comfortable with this guest” until they cancel the reservation.
In your shoes, I would have been at the property and refused them entry, and called the police if necessary. Cops will never tell you, “well gosh sir you need to let them into your home”. Little sticky thing called 4th amendment and all that. If someone broke in, that is breaking & entering, criminal trespass and a few other things. Again cops.
2 Likes
I did call the cops. Of course I called the cops. But that wasn’t the part of the story I was trying to tell. As the cops and my employee did what they were supposed to. The issue here is Airbnb didn’t do what they were supposed to do. I called air bnb BEFORE they broke in and tried everything I could to get them to cancel the reservation. In my experience, they wouldn’t do it. Their reasoning was that it was too close to the start of the reservation so the only thing they could do was “escalate” but they would “note” on it that it was urgent. What a joke. Once again, if you haven’t experienced it you wouldn’t know how impossible it was.
Days later, I took to Twitter. That did get their attention - they reached out to me. Of course by then, not much could be done. But they let me know they issued the guest a full refund.
You don’t think air has the final say so? I’m not sure what you mean. Over and over again air seems to have the final say so over me. They issue guests full refunds from my checking account when I tell them not to. They keep my reservation when I ask them to cancel it. They deny my claims of damage all the time. So I’m not sure what you mean. Once again, no matter how I escalated, air wouldn’t cancel my reservation. I did talk to a supervisor. She told me they would call me RIGHT BACK. (They didn’t.)
In my case, the guest booked TWO of my properties. I was physically at one of them, the one I assumed they would have tried to get into (it was the nicer one of the two). I couldn’t physically be at two properties at once. They broke into my other property. I didn’t even know air would let you book two properties for the same dates. I know now.
1 Like
Again - to start - I am truly sorry about these D-Bag “guests”. Given the latest, a small security system with loud alarm may be worth considering.
From what you just wrote, it seems that you have any number of issues with Air. I would think that you need to take matters in hand and take a much firmer stance with them. For example, if I escalate to a supervisor and talk with them they do not get to "go off and call me back at some later point. They need to resolve whatever while I am on the phone. Period.
It is rather concerning that you wrote “deny my claims of damage all the time”. If you have so many shitty guests and so many regular problems, then there may be other issues to be addressed and resolved. I am not pointing fingers but when there are so many issues, it is likely that you could be doing some things differently / better. Part of it may be “air kinda sucks” - but part of it is that you need to manage them better, and you are somehow attracting & getting far too many problem guests.
All of us have the opportunity to learn from most of the stays that we host. I would humbly suggest that you evaluate what and how you are doing things.
Thank you for the new info - so you knew and had proof that the same guest booked two properties. Wow. Yikes. That is very F’d up. If some Air agent / supervisor did not cancel based on this - combined with “we are not comfortable with this booking” then I would not let them go until they did - and keep escalating - and no call-backs - until it got done. Nice - but FIRM.
If they kept insisting that they can’t do that. I would go into “New York Mode” and hit them with, “Oh so you will now start paying our mortgage and taxes”? And when they said no - I would say Exactly! It is our property, not yours. We are not comfortable with this guest and we are very concerned for our safety and well being. They are trained to look for certain key phrases - when a hosts uses them and repeats them - they are painted into a corner.
All the best! Hopefully, you figure this out.
@happilytorn I would also wonder about the “deny my claims of damage all the time”. While my listing is a private room in my home, as opposed to a whole house rental, therefore guests are not able to carry on unobserved, they could still damage things in their space, yet in over 3 years of hosting, no guest has ever damaged anything.
Seems like you need to develop better vetting skills, better oversight, and maybe raise your prices, or change your minimum nightly stays so you don’t attract these bad guests.
And what do you mean “they issue guest refunds from my checking account?” As far as I’m aware, Airbnb has no ability to withdraw money from your bank account. They can deposit, just as you could deposit money into anyone else’s bank account, but they have no authority to withdraw money. What they do when they issue a refund if they’ve already paid you out is deduct it from your future payouts.
The person I called couldn’t possibly cancel a reservation when it’s so close to the reservation’s start time. At least that’s what I was told. And that was the point I was trying to make with my post. They told me they didn’t have the power and had to escalate me to a different department and told me they’d put a note on it to make sure they call me back “right away”. Keep in mind this happened during pandemic time so they were definitely short staffed.
I have several properties and host all year long. So while I’ve experienced several bad guests, they probably only amount to 2 to 5%. So I wouldn’t say my issues come from me “not vetting better” or “attracting bad guests”.
As far as prices - yes, we keep our prices high. Very high. We are able to because my reviews and records are good and we have some properties that are highly sought after. I wish all hosts would keep prices high.
Yes we did tell Air that we were very concerned that the guest booked TWO properties of ours, and that the local government had already SHUT DOWN rentals (due to COVID-19) so we CAN NOT host them, and that we had explained to the guest on the phone and they WOULD NOT cancel the reservation. I could not have emphasized more. You can question me on that all you want, but obviously if Air was doing their job, they should have canceled the reservation.
I do believe whole house rentals would incur more damages than private room. I have several whole house rentals. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve had probably about 2-5% bad guests. So I don’t think I’ve encountered more than the norm. Most of the bad guests we’ve had were very wealthy individuals (lawyers and business owners).
As far as refunds, I just meant they issue guests refunds when I have a strict policy. Sometimes for completely dubious reasons. I host large houses. I’ll stop here since I’d rather not go into details of how they can get full refunds since this is a public forum.
You keep introducing new facts … it would be more helpful if everything was known earlier. I can’t imagine why you did not bring this up sooner.
So now, he not only booked 2 places but did so after the Govt literally said, “thou shalt not host anymore”?!
With all this in hand, you should have been able to get air to cancel the guest, without any “hey we’ll call you back later bs”. Talk about a triple threat:
- It isn’t legal
- You are not comfortable
- You are concerned for your health and safety.
Please pm me - I am most curious and do not doubt that some few are aware of some loophole or policy and exactly how to exploit it. Clearly, some of your guests are rather sophisticated.
The reason I did not give more information was because I really wasn’t looking for advise. I just wanted to share something I know is fact now that I didn’t know before, which is, you can not cancel a booking last minute no matter what you say. I said everything you said I should have said. Air knows everything you know now, because I shared all of that with air on my first phone call. There was NOTHING I could have said that would have resulted in air giving me the cancellation. But apparently after giving you all this extra information, you still believe I could have, somehow, had air cancel the reservation so I guess my point was lost somewhere along the way. That’s ok. I can’t convince everyone and don’t care to. I just know from my personal experience what I know. And hopefully that helps someone.
I don’t think it’s a “fact” that you can’t cancel a booking last minute if there is legitimate reason to do so. You may have said all the right things, followed proper protocol, but you happened to get Airbnb reps who weren’t helpful or refused to acknowledge the urgency. This is quite common with Airbnb CS. Hosts’ experiences with CS are widely differing- you can talk to 3 different reps who are frustrating to deal with and promise a quick call-back (they almost never call back, most hosts know this) or be lucky enough to get an experienced, helpful and efficient rep who takes care of the issue without a lot of back and forth. It’s luck of the draw. Which is unfortunate and they should most certainly have more consistently trained staff.
I had a guest that looked like they were going to be difficult and demanding. Called CS and told them I had a major sewage issue that made the home unsanitary. Same day no fault cancellation.
2 Likes