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Right. Do not communicate with her. You convinced Air to block her review, which is a huge win. At this point just hope they have your back and do not grant her a refund. Others here are right. When it comes to Air, they always give guests the benefit of the doubt, because that’s where most of their revenues come from. She sounds like a piece of work, and the suspiciousness of her three-weeks-eight-weeks-sudden-cancellation scheme should raise eyebrows there. I suspect they will ask her to send copies of her medical records (someone who just broke a shoulder wouldn’t be able to fly the same day), which will frighten her off, and that will be that.
Agree with Kona…learn from this. Do not do the extras like giving rides to the supermarket, etc. If a guest patently refuses to follow simple rules then that is a major red flag. Definitely ask Air to cancel for failure to observe house rules.
I would really happy on the day, that AirBnB routinely sets a standard, that if guests violate our house rules, that they should NOT be allowed to leave a review of our place at all! Total conflict of interest.
AirBnB removes any review that puts them in a bad light (e.g.: about their policies, procedures, or company). It should work the same way for hosts, when our rules are broken. negative reviews should be removed completely. If they violate the legal contract that they sign with us when they agree to our rules, and book our space, then there should be NO EXPECTATION of leaving a review of any kind. Fair is Fair!
AirBnB states that they are only acting as a ‘booking site’, but the truth is, that when they get involved, and pass rulings against hosts, even without contacting us at all, as they’ve done to us, that they are assuming ownership and responsibility, when a host is overridden. They cease to be ‘only a booking service’. They are ‘interfering with a legally binding contract’ (the contract between us, and the booking guest). Am I wrong on these points? ~Kim
Let’s say a guest checks in and starts breaking the rules right away. I send a warning message on platform, but they persist. Then I call Air, and Air cancels the reservation.
Yep. That is what I’m saying! They can even leave a review if they showed up at your house, but cancelled without staying. (Let’s say they misread your rules about ‘no smoking’ applying both ‘inside’ the house, and also on the property as a whole).
Or like one lady did, when she realized she had invited more guests than the house could reasonably fit, and so they just packed up and left without a word, then sent a text later to tell us that the house wasn’t big enough (and then slammed us with several ‘issues’, that upon examination, were completely fabricated. I’m still not sure why she felt the need to do that, unless she were trying to figure out how to get out of the reservation altogether. I let her know very quickly that everything she listed (one example: 'the trash under the sink was completely full when we arrived, and 'there were some expired items in the fridge, and we took it out to the outside bin anyway (huh?). I was so mad that I went out to the trashcan, and busted open the sack, and took a picture of their McDonald’s bags, soda cans, emptied car ashtray, and dirty baby diaper, and the ‘empty’ supposedly ‘expired’ yogurt container (that was dated a full week later than that day) and eaten). She dinged us because ‘they had a toddler’ and we didn’t have protective plugs in the electrical outlets. I thanked her for leaving our house completely unlocked for some unknown portion of the day, until she thought to call us to let us know they were gone, and for leaving all the lights on in the house, and the heater cranked up, and the pellet stove set to 75 degrees.
I thought to myself, "normally, we bend over backwards for guests even in situations like this, if they made an honest mistake. I would have worked something out with her, and offered to reimburse them if we were able to book to another guest. We’ve done that before. But because this lady had chosen to take THIS path, and tried to fault find to set the stage for pinning the blame on us somehow, I wasn’t about to do that.
Ironically, someone DID book the house on one of the booked days. Did I reimburse her?
Would you?
I had an EC cancellation recently and was invited to review. She canceled ten days ahead. I elected not to. Even though felt like stating how her cancellation impacted me.
I guess the point being that, while we as hosts are going to need a lot of 5 stars to make up for DiaperWoman, your review of HER can effectively trash her future on Airbnb.
You will be asked to provide documentation. At least one host here who also uses Airbnb as a guest had to cancel last year due to extenuating circumstances and she said it was taken seriously by Airbnb. However, if you are host getting burned by the policy you might find yourself not wanting to believe it.
Update! I spoke to the case manager today, and the woman who claimed she broke her shoulder or arm has not yet provided any documents. 9 days passed, she would have sent the documents in she had them. Getting more suspicious now.
My friend just had a similar experience. She had a 30 day third party booking–a company booked for two employees. These two arrived three days after another 30+ day booking where some teenage soccer players from Cameroon had been brought over for some kind of training by the the LA Galaxy–my friend’s two bedroom house is near Stub Hub Stadium. Long story short, the guys trashed her place and sneaked in extra players which my friend caught on her security cameras which are OUTSIDE the house. My friend lives in the guest house, not the main house, but she is on the premises nonetheless. She called Air to cancel their booking, but the case manager told her that because she hadn’t disclosed the outdoor security cameras, she could be sued, so she would need to keep the booking (there was a large sum of money involved obviously). My friend was so upset that she left and stayed in her Las Vegas house so she wouldn’t have to watch these jerks breaking her house rules although she did get the person who booked to pay for one of the extra kids (there were two who stayed that were not part of the booking). When the 30 days was up, the Galaxy wanted to extend the booking, but my friend said no way, that she had another company coming in. The guys left the place in shambles, curtain rods pulled down, ditto the shower curtain rod, water all over the bathroom floor, the carpet nasty, the kitchen a mess, including stove burners that couldn’t be cleaned and had to be replaced, and they didn’t return the key, so she needed to change the locks. She and her housekeeper worked frantically to get the place ready for the two corporate guests who would be checking in in a few days. She contacted the person who made their booking and explained the situation and told her she could cancel, but the person demurred. When the two employees arrived, the handyman was changing the locks. Long story short, they used that, plus “mold” as an excuse to cancel the booking. (My friend thinks her neighborhood didn’t suit them). As soon as they did so, my friend took photos, time stamped, of the new locks and of the now clean house and sent them to Air–there was no mold btw. Her case was escalated and she WON!!! She got to keep the money for the booking in accordance with her strict policy. So now she’s rollin’ in dough from the two bookings and has plenty of time and $$$$$ to work on upgrades for her poor, abused house. My friend used to be a specialized antique dealer, and had put a lot of effort into furnishing and decorating her house, so you can imagine how hard it was for her to watch her house being torn up by the soccer teenagers, although she makes it clear that she blames the adults, not the kids. Fyi, my friend is not only a super host, but is also an activist who has been featured in Air commercials, TV interviews and in fact is pictured in the montage at the end of Brian Chesky’s recent “state of the company” speech.
