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… Because they broke about $500 worth of stuff and I opened a resolution center case. In their email to ABB they said multiple people in their group felt I was unfairly charging them because of their ethnicity. Is this the new scam to get $$ from hosts, say the host is racist and discriminates? I’m not sure how they ‘felt’ this since we never met them in person or spoke except via ABB messenger? They did say about 10 times, they were Korean, i of course didnt ask and dont care. This makes me wonder if they had a plan to claim discrimination all along. I only discriminate against BAD guests, which these people were.
The entire stay was plagued from the get go when they wanted to add 2 children, and I said no problem but you have to pay my extra person fee. They balked and called ABB, who said either pay or cancel. They apologized and paid. I get messages at 2am they day after check in that a vintage lucite chair mysteriously broke and my house was unsafe. In the photos they sent you can also see two air beds (not mine, no clue where they came from). I ignored them, bc why get into a battle about this when I already knew a RC case was coming, on my end. Day of check out (they claim) they broke our back garden hose and left water gushing into our yard, from the amount of water it was like that for atleast 2 days. Plus, our housekeeper reported 2-4 extra guests at checkout, which of course they tried to stay later. So just BAD guests.
Anyone else have to deal with a totally bogus ‘discrimination’ allegation?
How do you know what is in their email to Airbnb? Did they message you and accuse you directly? I would fight Airbnb on this. It stinks of fake.
IMHO I would have not accepted the extra guests and asked them to cancel. I’ve only had one incident where a guest booked and then messaged me that she might have a friend come and stay on day two but refused to add her to the booking as she wasn’t sure. Then she tried to bring her dog messaging me hysterically that her dog sitter was sick. We have three cats who are not used to dogs. Instinctively I knew she would be a problem.
I refunded her even though it was the day before and I’m on moderate but I did charge her a small $20 inconvenience fee which she agreed to.
I’m sorry to hear about this and I know you will have documented everything with Airbnb from the additional guests to the broken furniture and hose.
Remain the professional you are. Explain clearly as you did here. That
You had no contact with multiple people in the Group - just the lead guest and then never in person. That all your correspondence is via Airbnb (or at least I hope this is the case) and that Airbnb and the guests can clearly see that at no point did you discriminate. That your previous great reviews demonstrate you welcome guests from around the world.
That despite your guests bringing in guests they haven’t paid for - evidenced by images of airbeds and your housekeeper reporting four additional guests at check out and them damaging your property, you have been nothing but polite and professional
That your claim for damage and extra guests stands.
My advice is don’t ignore the red flags - when they baulked against paying for children I would have looked at cancelling. Once I saw the airbeds in the photo and heard about the broken chair - I would have had Airbnb cancel the booking and had them out the door.
And to add to @Helsi 's comments, you don’t actually know that they are Asian since you never met them. All you know is that they SAID they were Asian. But they also SAID that fewer people would be booked than actually stayed there.
This is horrid and would make me extremely anxious.
After I submitted my resolution center case for the broken chair and hose, they submitted their own resolution center case for ‘injury damages’ from them breaking the chair. On their case, they submitted a letter to Air BNB stating all the’facts’ and how I clearly am only charging them because they are Asian.
@Maggieroni@Helsi you are both right we SHOULD HAVE canceled. We were on a boat in the Med at the time this all went down, with pretty awful service. I just couldn’t deal with calling ABB to sort out the cancellation, so I let it go. That is totally on me.
@Helsi the issue with ‘kicking guests out’ is ABB literally will only cancel the reservation, and then the Host has to actually get them out, call the cops, etc. I posted about that a year or so ago, as we had people making a party and I called ABB to cancel at 2 am. They canceled, and when I asked what next, they basically said that was on me to remove the guests.
Please,. please don’t feel the need to apologise because of a guest who is nothing to do with you and from what @azreala said isn’t even from your country.
We wouldn’t expect white hosts on here to apologise everytime we hear of guests suffering discrimination and abuse because of their skin colour.
The reason I posted this was not to get into XYZ ethnic group is bad, but because ABB has been so vocal about their discrimination policy, I believe we as hosts will see this being abused, and my story is an example of this. There are bad actors in every race, gender, country, etc.
This is clue enough that they’re obsessive/defensive about their identity and would use that passive-aggressively if something went wrong. For me, that would have been the first warning signal.
It’s enough to mention it once, you’re offering them a place to stay, not administering an advanced Korean language test or a Kimchi contest!
This would’ve led me to looking at cancelling the reservation. But I note you said you were away and in poor reception.
I completely agree with this prediction. I suspected last year when Instant Book started being pushed more that Airbnb was trying to solve discrimination with automation. The problem is that people of different backgrounds/cultures have different norms, and so what is acceptable behavior or communication style in one culture may be completely the opposite in another. By encouraging hosts to close the transaction (accept a reservation) as soon as possible, the algorithms are actually discouraging us from communicating as individuals. For some hosts this works because they can earn more money while spending less time on hosting responsibilities.
There was a several month period where I pretty much accepted anyone on their initial message, assuming they had read the listing and if they were still requesting they must be OK with everything I do and do not offer. I felt this pressure to accept anyone, just in case I was accidentally being racist. The majority of guests were great, but we had several mediocre guests and even a few bad ones. Once I started slowing down the process and carefully considering each guest to make sure their priorities in accommodation align well with the strengths of my listing, the guest quality went way way up.
I have also noticed that when I have a lot of stress in my personal life, I am not as good of a host. I forget things, am not quite as attentive, mix up details. I fear that one day I will accidentally offend a guest with my tone of voice, or something else not so tangible, because I am stressed out, and the guest will think I’m being rude because I don’t like the color of their skin. I don’t think most cases of discrimination are as clear cut as the headlines we see.
Slightly off-topic but years ago I stayed in a hostel in Amsterdam. At breakfast time the owner of the place would walk around and say hi to everyone. Then he came back a few minutes later and put something different on each group’s table: if he heard you had a Canadian accent he would put maple syrup on your table; if you sounded Australian you would get Vegemite and so on. I thought it was a lovely gesture.
I am sure @Chris (I’m from an ethnic minority so I can’t be racist) posts these silly comments to wind people up.
First s/he says ethnic minorities should find a white friend to book their Airbnb to avoid discrimination. And if they don’t and get discriminated against it’s their fault.
Now that people from BAME communities make up charges of racism ‘to get what they want’ on Airbnb.
