It’s been a long time since I visit the site and I hope everyone’s hosting business is doing as well as possible, despite the circumstances.
I need advice:
After seeing my home go unrented for 1.5 years, I ignored my spidey senses and accepted a 2-night booking the day after the UK lockdown slightly eased. It is a luxury high-end 2,400sqft, 5-bed house in a high-end area.
At 9am after the first night, a neighbour called me to tell me a very loud party had taken place. According to them (my WiFi and therefor Ring camera was down), there was an MC and about 50 attendees.
When I got there, I found alcohol bottles/cups outside the house validating my neighbours claim. So I demanded Airbnb kick the guest out. Although the guest rejected my claim at first, I insisted and then camped in my car to see how many people would exit. As no one came out for several hours, I finally went in.
Although it was a 2-night booking, no one had slept there. They simply booked the place and turned the first 2 floors into a night club. The stench of alcohol all over the floors, walls and upholstery was revolting and I would eventually fill up 12 black rubbish bags with empty bottles of alcohol.
Airbnb told me their guarantee protected me and I sprung into action by doing what I’d previously learned from this forum: I submitted an ultra detailed, fully itemised dispute resolution backed by actual receipts showing £750 of damage and £2,100 to clean the walls, curtains, furniture and parquet floors of all the alcohol that had been sprayed and poured everywhere.
Airbnb did not give the guest a chance to dispute it (presumably because they had signed up using fraudulent identification and/or had closed their account).
After a week or 2, Airbnb told me a payment was on its way for the damages, but that the claim for extra cleaning had been passed on to another department.
After a couple of weeks of silence, I followed up. I then some calls from a service centre in the Philippines to tell me they were following up with that department and then near-daily emails telling me the same.
After a month, I demanded them to provide me with a resolution, at which point they asked me to re-explain what was going on. Shocked that they did not know, I demanded them to get their act together. The next message I received was a short sentence telling me that they would not pay anything towards the extra cleaning as it exceeded the $200 they allocate for cleaning.
Needless to say that I’m furious as this has put me out of pocket by £2,100 (as well as a £1,200 booking I lost because I could not clean the house in time.)
Can any hosts with experience in dealing with a situation like this advise me on what I can do to get reimbursed for that £2,100?