Does the guest who sleeps on your couch have any “personal space”?!
I’m not really sure what your problem is. It’s not acceptable for anybody to enter a room in your home if you tell them they are not allowed there.
I have a hard time believing you would find it acceptable for a guest you were hosting to enter your bedroom if you had specifically told them that it was off-limits to guests as it was your own private bedroom.
I mis read “their personal space” I thought you meant the personal space of the guest, where they have no personal space.
You say the sofa is listed as a “private room” - by your description is it clearly not a private room
No problem here. I definitely get it is not acceptable to have some one enter your bedroom when you request they do not.
My apologies then. I was a bit confused as to why you seemed to be siding with the guest.
The room listed as the private room is actually the guest room as I have two listings on Airbnb. The sofa is only listed when the guest room is booked and if the guests we are hosting are fine with somebody sleeping on the couch downstairs. I am likely to stop listing it as we seldom get requests for it and we have now hosted two guests over two nights who have cancelled.
I am a bit confused as to why the first of the two guests objected to sleeping on a sofa as, when he called after booking, I asked him if he would be sleeping on the sofa or if he wanted the airbed. He told me that he wanted the sofa. He didn’t seem to have a problem until he found out that there were two bedrooms rather than one upstairs, at which point he was adamant that he would be sleeping in a bed and not on the sofa.
Does the bad reviews can accept your regular room listing?
At that point, I would have invited her to cancel or asked Airbnb to re-home them. With an attitude like that it was never going to end well.
If he was a bad guest, by all means warn other hosts.
The girl is now sending me messages telling me that if I do not refund her, she will turn up at my house and harass me until I pay up. Even though she has yet to act on those threats and it may be all talk, I will be reporting her to the police first thing tomorrow. Hopefully they will have a word with her and she will realise that she has crossed a line.
@sylvainbg
I think they will show up on my main profile page, so it may deter people from booking my main listing. I am not entirely sure though.
@cabinhost
I am still waiting to see if he is allowed to leave a review when he didn’t stay. I believe he is, but I am verifying this with Airbnb first. I suppose it will depend on what he has said in his review.
I will absolutely be leaving this girl a negative review at the very last minute. Although, if she leaves me one, I will leave her one earlier. People need to know to not host this girl.
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Which authoritarian nation do you live in?
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If I understand correctly, Dabbers has tried to make it clear that the sofa is in shared space. Reasonable to suggest additional communication, also Totally sensible to decide this is more trouble than it’s worth, but might be a godsend to someone on a very limited travel budget. I think it’s OK to contact the police if this person has threatened to trespass and harass. Then Dabbers can message them on Air platform “I have provided your ID to the police. If you trespass on the property in order to harass me, as you threatened in your communication by [text, email, whatever] on [date], I will not hesitate to call them.”
You should forward these messages to Airbnb, assuming they are direct texts. This person needs to be banned from the site. Sorry to hear of your troubles 
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Absolutely YES. I cannot believe that someone would be so rude, unbelievable.
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I’d call Airbnb at once and report her. Hope you got proof of that.
Interesting thread. I think this is further anecdotal evidence that listings that are very (too?) cheap attract problem guests. Of course this topic come up on the site before in various threads, though I’m not aware if anyone has actually tried to gather evidence to support this proposition.
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I think you mean “has come up on the site”.
Sorry…couldn’t resist 
Please don’t be cross. I adore you really faheem.
@cabinhost
I wouldn’t be surprised if she had threatened Airbnb. All I know is that they were willing to give her a refund due to this being her first booking and her not understanding how the website works. This was obviously to encourage her to continue using Airbnb. However, after they spoke to her on the phone, they have decided that they will not be giving her any money at all. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that she must have been rather aggressive towards them over the phone.
@Magwitch
All of these messages are on Airbnb. I made sure of that by telling her that we would have to communicate on the website from now on as I was out of credit on my phone.
I am replying polite and professionally every time, despite being barraged with abuse. She has been smart enough to avoid specifically stating that she will be turning up at my home, but it’s clear from the messages she has sent that she is planning on following through with the threat (which was made in person before she left) if I do not refund her.
I have managed to get her to confess that she stole contents from my fridge on the website though.
That’s so sweet. Now I don’t know whether to correct my error or not.
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It’s up to you. I know how much it pains you to make mistakes! But of course the original error will remain in my quote… but I will delete it if you ask nicely 
Aww, I don’t often get called sweet on here. In fact, I think that’s a first!
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Just a little update on this. The first guest had his review deleted after I contacted Airbnb asking them if he was allowed to leave a review when he never stayed. I will never know what, but apparently he wrote something that violated their terms and conditions, so they had to remove it. I have decided against leaving him a review.
The girl from hell was warned by the police not to come to my address. She then got back to me telling me that she didn’t care that I had involved the police and that it’s not harassment to come back to my home and refuse to leave unless she gets her money. She genuinely believes that she has not done anything wrong and that I am the guilty party for not refunding her the second she wanted to cancel.
She then left me a review, which wasn’t all that bad to be honest. It simply said something along the lines of ‘Awful experience. Booking this place was a waste of my time and money. The place is not suitable for anybody to stay in.’
I left a review back detailing everything she had done in full. I then contacted Airbnb to ask if it was possible to have her review removed as it was entirely her own fault. They said they couldn’t remove it, but decided to hide both my review and her review from the public. I expressed my concern about my review being hidden as I was worried that other hosts would have to deal with this girl. Apparently they have placed a red flag on her account and, if she books anywhere again, hosts will be notified of the problems she caused with me.
They then decided to call her as, after reading through our messages on Airbnb, they could see that she was still threatening to turn up at my home and did not seem to understand that it was her own fault. Apparently she has agreed to drop it and will not be showing up here, but it is still early days and it remains to be seen if she will be back.
I have also been thinking back about both of these guests over the last couple of days and I am pretty sure that both guests knew exactly what they were booking.
The first guy called me after booking and I asked him if he wanted the sofabed or the airbed. He told me that he wanted the sofabed. He didn’t object to sleeping on the sofabed until he found out that another guest would be sleeping in a proper bed.
After arriving at my home, I asked the girl to let me know when she wanted me to inflate the airbed for her and I would come down to do it. She told me that they would do it themselves. By this point she had met the other guests and had seen the layout of my home. She did not have a problem with the way anything was before I left.
I suspect that either:
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Something happened between her and our other guest in my absence that made her feel uncomfortable.
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It was obvious from our message history that a big part of her reason for booking my place was because we have a swimming pool. Her group of four were originally supposed to be having a party by the pool, before coming upstairs to continue the party in our living room. When she arrived there were only three members of her group and their plan was to wait for the fourth member to show up before going down to the pool. It was already 18:00 by the time they arrived, which would have given them a few hours in the pool before it was closed. As their friend was running even later than they were, this would have limited their time even more. There’s a good chance that, while I was gone, their friend sent them a text saying that she would either be so late that they would not be able to use the pool, or she would not be showing up at all.
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