Is there any chance we can see a copy of your booking message - I’d love to do something similar? I have also had some dodgy short notice locals that needed stern talkings to…
Why??? So now her and her 2 kids stayed in your house and even wanted to stay 4 hours longer, you have her 1 hour longer and then after she breaks your rules by having visitors (3-4 no less) you give her all her money to host her extended stay for FREE??? If so, no wonder so many guests work us hosts over.
Hi all - well this has been an ordeal. Got her to leave after giving her all of her money back. I like the suggestion about no same day booking, that is good to know, didn’t know that is possible. Thanks for all your comments. Some person with two little girls stayed one night and took everything, snacks and drinks, extra toothbrush, but I was so glad to see her go I don’t care. Even after having to ask her to leave, refunding her money, she still left me a bad review. I am afraid to leave her one because she and her car loads of friends not only know where I live, but the layout of the house and yard. I called Airbnb to get the bad review, which was 95% all lies, removed. I told them that if you have to kick someone out of course they are not going to be truthful but they insisted she was within her rights to leave me a review. So Airbnb sent to a case manager and he was able to remove the bad review on the basis that “M” booked it but didn’t stay there, and they violated my clearly stated rules. The only reason I felt I had to do this was because they are local. We are not in a resort area. People only stay if they are traveling through because I am 2 miles off of I-70 or else they have business in the area. The local people are not a high class of people. My husband calls it a “gritty” area. I am just about positive they would come over here and do something bad to my property or animals, if I didn’t give them so much back. Even so she wrote a horrible review with terrible lies and actually tried to act like the carloads of people who came and stayed were just “food delivery”. And said that she had OK’d it with me when no such conversation had taken place. Fortunately, I did not speak to her by phone, everything was in the Airbnb messaging for them to see. Even with that the only one who looked at the messages was the Case Manager for Airbnb. The other 2 Airbnb people told me she had every right to post a review. Yikes what a mess. I raised my prices considerably to try and keep people like her out, this is not the first time I have had local guests who want to use my place for a party spot. I had one very recently that spilled Pepsi on the carpet, had tons of visitors, had her mom sleep on the sofa (clearly states in my booking against rules), smoked something and sprayed some kind of crazy smelly stuff to “mask” the smell, and checked out 1 hour and 9 min late. I simply asked her not to book again and wrote no review for her but sure enough have been notified by Airbnb that she wrote me a review. Appreciate all your comments and sorry it took me so long to post an update but I had this latest “local” to contend with.
Funny we were just having this conversation on another thread. You clearly haven’t been hosting long and we all learn here by reading, posting and doing as we go along.
However, and at the risk of being accused of being harsh and unwelcoming, you absolutely need to gain an understanding of how the review system works and start using it.
Every host must leave a review for every guest every time, with few exceptions. The guest always has a chance to review you whether you review them or not. They can’t see your review until they post theirs and there are times when waiting until the last hour of the last day is advised.
Bottom line is that you’ve now had two guests that none of us want to host and you haven’t left any review for the next host to help them avoid problems. And the host before you probably didn’t leave a review, hurting you. Reviews are an imperfect and weak tool but it’s the only one we have. Please use it.
I have refunded. In fact I even had a prospective guest who was so horrid that I payed her to stay away.
Here’s the lesson. I had been so busy that I didn’t notice local prices creeping up. And that is very much my bad. Because what I ended up with were bottom feeders.