Guest requesting money back what is my best option?

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We had a guest stay with us for two nights. Short story after she left she requests half of the money because as they stated there were noises one morning (they claim 4.20), lights were left on and they couldnt sleep and they had to do our laundary.

Whether the lights were on, I do not know because we are living upstairs and nobody else would have turned on these lights other than the guests. When they texted me i went downstairs and checked (no lights were on). We do get up very early but certainly not at 4.20. THe olnly noises i could think of would be using restroom maybe an hour or so later. Finally, the guests asked if they could do laundary and I said yes. There was some laundary in the dryer and they took it out, they are now claiming that we made them do our laundary.

I was afaraid to address anything becaus on Airbnb money does not count but reviews do. We have had over 300 bookings with one 3 star a hand ful of four stars the rest 5 stars. These were the worst guests we have ever had.

Now what is my best course of action?

Long story:
They arrived (literally) with all of their belongings for a 2 night stay. They said they just sold their house. The brought everything in with them and i did feel somewhat violated but again reviews are everything. They used their own Vitamix blender fairly early (before 7) which you could hear trough the hole house. They even invited their son over for a hair cut which they did in the living room?! When they left, they left the room in the worst condition any guests ever did. They left boxes and other random stuff. OUr cleaning person was “disgusted” by having to clean up and disinfect everything.

It looks like they already wrote their review now, and also requesting half of their stay. Should i refuse? What will airbnb do? If i leave them a negative review will that decrease my chances of airbnb taking down their review (assuming its bad)?

Thank you for your help

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I wouldn’t refund them a dime.

If a light is bothering you, turn it off.
If you find pulling some clothes out of the dryer a burden, use your words and tell me.

People have to use their goddamned communication skills. Neither of these things are big enough to mention in review much less discounting HALF their stay over. They’re just trying to defray the cost of their move by pulling money out of your pocket. Nope.

I’d write my review, which will lock in whatever they wrote before knowing you wouldn’t refund them. Then decline their request for money.

They can take it to Airbnb, but they’d need to show that either of these things caused an impact to their stay. I hope any CS person worth their salt would decline their obviously spurious accusations.

It’s very unlikely they will remove the guests’ review, so your best option is to review the guest honestly without regard to what their review might contain. You’ll feel better having left a review vs. allowing them to give just their side of the story.

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Thank you!

Could you give me any feedback on this:

Aldina is one of the very few guests we have reviewed. We feel obligated to forewarn other hosts about them so that others won’t be suffering from them. In over 300 bookings over the last three years we never had any guests like Aldina.

One of the biggest challenges you will face with them will be honesty, integrity, and authenticity. In several circumstances throughout their stay and afterward they have shown that they lack these qualities. For example, when they asked to use our washer/dryer, they found some laundry in them and took them out. After that, they asked us to pay them for doing laundry.

They also refused following the house rules. For example, we asked guest not to use washer/dryer after 9 pm. It is written in the guest book, on a sign in front of the dryer, and when the guest asked me about using them, I said they are very welcome except after hours. However, they disregarded this and I had to go and turn off the dryer so everyone could sleep. The same problem happened as they brought their Vitamix blender which they also used odd hours and was being able to hear throughout the house.

They have left the house in the worst condition any guest has ever left them. Not only did we need to work extra hours for cleaning and disinfecting (they decided to do some hair cutting in the living room), but they also left boxes and other garbage. One table was broken down but could be repaired. Our cleaner felt disgusted cleaning up after themselves and felt it was very hard. Not one other guest in all these years had left the space in such a bad condition.

As they only stayed for two nights, we thought to leave it at that, but then they even requested half of their money back for false accusations (Lights on in the hallway, noises in the morning and needing to get paid for doing our laundry). All three of which are not the truth.

What was most shocking was that she was the most unloving and unspiritual guest we have had. Their unlovingness, was surprising because her initial messages used language that made it appear otherwise. Their initial words appeared to be kind and used many hearts. This was in absolute contradiction to their behaviors.

If you ever come across them, I would run for my life. They have been the only guests earning the title “guests from hell”.

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cutting their son’s hair in the living room??? Jeez! I wouldn’t give them any refund. They broke the rules of the house. You suffered too. I’d give them a review stating the facts. To me, it’s the best because future guests can see you are honest and it won;t impact your bookings (too much). depends on how many stars they give you. The Customer service won’t remove any review. I once had a 1 star hate review with no words other than “.” and 4 or 5 star at the individual chapters (cleanliness, communications etc), so my only crime that angered the guest was that he leaved at exactly the check out time because I had other guests coming). he wanted to stay. so even if in my case the CS could see it was a hate rating they didn’t remove it.

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Please tell me that there is a typo in there somewhere.

JF

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Id edit and shorten this. Maybe just say that they broke house rules including quiet times, false accusations, and left the place a mess that required extensive cleaning and sanitizing. 1 ☆ and do not recommend. I dont believe that you can mention money requests at all under the Air rules.

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That would be important to know. I probably would not have people stay that request their money back falsely from other hosts, so i think it would be an important thing to put in the review?

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OK, i shoretened it and took out the part of requesting money:

Aldina is one of the few guests we have reviewed. We feel obligated to forewarn other hosts about them so that others won’t be suffering from them. In over 300 bookings over the last three years we never had any guests like Aldina.

One of the biggest challenges you will face with them will be honesty, integrity, and authenticity. In several circumstances throughout their stay and afterward they have shown that they lack these qualities. For example, when they asked to use our washer/dryer, they found some laundry in them and took them out. After that, they asked us to pay them for doing laundry.

They also refused following the house rules including quiet hours in several occasions. I know they knew because I texted them but that did not make a difference.

They have left the house in the worst condition any guest has ever left them. Not only did we need to work extra hours for cleaning and disinfecting (they decided to do some hair cutting in the living room), but they also left boxes and other garbage. One table was broken down but could be repaired. Our cleaner felt disgusted cleaning up after themselves and felt it was very hard. Not one other guest in all these years had left the space in such a bad condition.

They only stayed for two nights, but will be never forgotten. Their uncleanliness, disregard for house rules and even false accusations and lies were in stark contrast to their original appearance. My wife believes they are scammers trying to stay at Airbnb’s for free.

What was most shocking was that she was the most unloving and unspiritual guest we have had. Their unlovingness, was surprising because her initial messages used language that made it appear otherwise. Their initial words appeared to be kind and used many hearts. This was in absolute contradiction to their behaviors.

If you ever come across them, I would run for my life. They have been the only guests earning the title “guests from hell”.

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This is too long and detailed, but you’re on the right track. Try to describe the actions without characterizing their moral failings. (I know, they’re lying assholes…)
I wouldn’t mention anything about them being unloving/unspiritual.

I’d rewrite it as:

Unfortunately I can’t recommend Aldina and her husband; they were the worst guests we’ve hosted in over 300 stays. They repeatedly broke house rules around quiet hours and left the house in terrible condition which required deep cleaning and disinfecting.
After checkout they requested a substantial refund because a hall light was left on overnight (it wasn’t) and because they “had to do our laundry” (they removed our clothes from the dryer so they could use it). Each interaction reinforced that Aldina and her husband don’t belong in the home sharing community. We would strongly recommend against hosting this couple.

You might look into the terms of service details around reviews. I think you aren’t allowed to mention a current Airbnb investigation, so mentioning the refund request might possibly violate terms. I’d still mention it; you’re not commenting on Air’s involvement and it’s a big thing to make other hosts aware of.

Off topic, but do you really not review your guests regularly? I do hope you reconsider doing so in the future. The review system is only useful when all of us contribute by leaving honest ratings. :slight_smile:

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Thank you thats very helpful! I will adjust a few things.

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Also i will work on reviewing everyone.

Sometime we have guests tought that are hard to review. Just an easy stay everything went well and nothing is standing out one way or the other.

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I totally understand your frustration but too long. Cut 85% and be concise and to the main points.

Sorry for these bad guests. We all run into them.

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I get you! Sometimes I cringe at how generic my reviews are. But 95% of my guests are super easy and get a generic, happy review. It’s nice to leave it for them - they earned it!

This is my standard “good guest” review:
“It was a pleasure to host so & so. Communication was good, they followed house rules and left the place in excellent shape. I’d be happy to welcome them back any time” (If there’s anything they didn’t do well on I either drop it in private comments or change the second sentence around so it’s like “They followed house rules & left the place in excellent shape. With a little more attention to communication, especially in providing an arrival time, they’d be perfect guests”).

Leaving reviews also tends to nudge the guest into leaving one for you. Since you need >50% of your guests to leave you reviews to qualify for SH status it helps you out, too!

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Think about how you rely on reviews yourself. And then think it as you doing your part for your fellow hosts.
If we aren’t honest and review our guests we can’t help each other out.
So I hope you’ll review your guests in the future.

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Before I read on, can someone explain this to me?

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It sounds like you really went through a hard time with these guests. They didn’t respect your rules or your place. They were messy, loud and now they’re just being ungrateful and asking for a refund after all that. I’m sorry you had to go through that in what sounds like your own home or part of it.

That vitamix thing just sounds so obnoxious. I have problems with noise in my Airbnb as well. This is a 2x4 wood construction building with sheetrock walls and the sound can go right through. I’ve added some white noise makers and it helps but not as much for loud, deep noises. I’ve done some extra insulating in walls where I can but the real problem is just guests being inconsiderate. Adding more rules hasn’t helped there so I’ve actually taken away all the rules. I don’t get any more inconsiderate guests but I probably won’t get less either.

If I was a host reading this review, I would begin to wonder how much weight I should give this review. This would make me question whether your review or opinion is at least partially based on your religion, spirituality or your guests lack thereof, however you want to call it.
Now this is just my opinion but as a host, I’m not allowed to have opinions on things like religion and politics. I don’t talk about these things with guests because eventually you will find something you don’t agree about and that can make everybody uncomfortable.

If I read a review like that, I would probably still take warning with the guests but its hard because my acceptance rate is already low at 88% and I can’t keep denying guests if I want to stay high on the search. Airbnb makes it hard because they kind of want you to take the bad ones with the good ones.

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NO REFUND!!!

Your proposed Review is 10x too long. If I weren’t getting ready to leave for some meetings, I would edit it for you. Keep it short, factual and unemotional

You need to stop fearing an occasional bad review! You got something against money???

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In my opinion airbnb is review driven. I have refunded guests before without any problems because their happiness and review is more valuable to me than the money. One bad review can go along way. I read somewhere that one 1 star review decreases revenue by 10%

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I had decided to mention this because they put it upfront in their communications ("I am only love uniting the world etc.). For someone who says in every single communication how loving and spiritual they are, using hearts in every text they sent and then behave like this is very incongruent.

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Not at all. It depends on how many reviews you’ve got. The percentage works the other way around. The more reviews you have, the less likely one is to affect you. Unfortunately hosts who refund and who don’t care about the money ‘teach’ guests that they can get away with things. It’s your way of doing things, and we’re all entitled to our own ways, but refunding guests and not caring about the money can be damaging for those who do this for the money.

But I’m getting mixed messages - you are concerned that a bad revue would decrease your revenue but you don’t do it for the money.

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