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I offer a private room. Last night my guest finally checks in around 10pm. I was not home. I waited around until 9:30 but I’m dog sitting a few blocks away so I couldn’t wait for him any longer (he told me his international flight arrived at 7pm.) Anyway, I get back to the place I’m staying at with my dog and through WhatsApp he asks to speak to me over the phone. Nothing urgent, he checked in just fine just wanted some advice. So I call him.
He says he just came from another Airbnb in Montreal that had bed bugs and wanted to know how much I think he should get back from that host!!! I’m like, WTF?! That is your question?! I flat out told him, I don’t know maybe you should have contacted Airbnb about this before coming to my house!!! He says that host got an exterminator and he has put his clothes through the dryer etc but honestly, I really don’t care. I don’t think he should have checked into my place at all. Apparently that host offered him 50% back or something but at this point my mind is just racing about my own place. Anyway, I told him I’d help him call Airbnb in the morning when I got back to my place (I told him 9am).
Overnight I called Airbnb. Their system recognized I was a SuperHost! That was a nice surprise (this was the first time I’ve ever had to call Airbnb.) Anyway, it got escalated pretty quickly. I think I waited 3 minutes to speak to someone and within 8 minutes I was speaking to a US based case manager. She emailed my guest asking for proof (he had photos) and by 6am I had a email waiting for me saying that in the morning Airbnb will get him a hotel room and I should hire an exterminator to make sure I did not get infested. They will reimburse for the exterminator etc. (I have that in an email in writing!) And apparently they snoozed the Montreal host’s listing for 7 days. I have to wait until 5pm tonight to speak to my case manager again about whether I have to give up my full payout for this guest.
So now it’s 11am and this guy is still asleep, taking his sweet time to get out of my house. I’m furious. He was a problematic guest to start with. When I asked if he was ok with me hosting an extra dog (also hypoallergenic) he made a fuss saying 2 dogs would be too much for him to handle but maybe he can take more allergy meds but what kind of discount can I offer him? He’s only staying 3 days so I said you know, don’t worry. I worked something else out (I was going to stay at the friend’s house instead of the dog staying at my house.) Then he proceeded to ask me a zillion questions about how to get to my house from the airport and whether Lyft was cheaper than a yellow cab. ALL EASILY SEARCHABLE INFO. I flatly answered these questions and accepted my fate that this guy was a terrible guest and I just had to grit my teeth and get through it.
He was finally up at 11:30! We’re in airbnb calling limbo since he has to use my phone with his case manager. Ugh. They are only allowing him $150 a night for a new hotel and he’s trying to fight that now.
No phone. He has WhatsApp so he was able to call me when he got to my house and got on my Wi-Fi. But no Airbnb can’t call anyone using WhatsApp, I asked LOL.
Bed bugs only come out at night so that’s why they are so hard to catch. And they can live 3 months without feeding, in any climate!
Omg we finally have movement! He is getting his luggage together and we should be out of here in 10 min. I need to go feed that puppy I’m dog sitting dammit!
Can’t wait to have to wash everything! But I’m getting a visit from a bed bug sniffing dog today. I’ve always wanted to meet one of those!
Not a professional at all! This is the first time, and first time I’ve ever not slept in the house with my airbnb guest! Look what happens when I do something out of the norm!
This is one of the many reasons I do not buy anything with fabric on craigslist, or any other online used-furniture portal. Nor do I accept free or donated furniture from friends or family. There are large areas of this city that have or have had bed bugs, and I have no interest in giving them a new place to live.
If you get bed bugs in your house, you get nothing from the Airbnb host insurance. I tried that.
Bed bugs are extremely difficult to discover, and only one pregnant bug is enough to get infected really badly. I had the problem a few weeks ago and had to pay nearly 2000 $ for professional exterminator to get rid of them - and of course no help from Airbnb:
lhsu has in writing that airbnb will pay for an exterminator but in your case they did nothing. Do you suppose it’s because in this case there is proof that the Air guest brought the bugs, if in fact lhsu now has them?
Sorry for the late update. Of course everything got super annoying!
The exterminator came and I got the all clear. I forgot to mention it but Airbnb was ready to snooze my listing until I got the ok from an exterminator. I paid $327 total including taxes just to have the dog come sniff around to make sure I didn’t get infested but Airbnb was ready to cancel my future listings until I had this done! I immediately sent over the receipt to my case manager and that Friday night on the phone Airbnb said my reimbursement was on the way and thanks for being so cool about this bed bug scare. But when I asked about if I had to refund him anything, she was very coy and managed to never answer my question! She just kept saying I didn’t have to do anything further and what I got paid for his stay is mine…
So I spent Saturday and Sunday washing everything and putting things back in order.
This guest left Friday at 2pm. By Saturday noon he was calling me again on Whatsapp! Now he’s complaining about how Airbnb isn’t giving him a refund for the 2 nights he didn’t stay with me and that he must put in a resolution but for some reason he can only ask for 1 night refund (of course he felt he deserved 2 nights back.) I just wanted this over with and said fine just put in the request I’ll ok the one night refund (of course he balked at the $3 fee that Airbnb kept).
Basically Airbnb left the nasty work of offering or not offering a refund on me. They also unblocked my calendar that Friday afternoon without telling me and of course I have instant booked turned on and even before the exterminator came I had a new booking for Saturday night and I had to call Airbnb to cancel!!! I wrote a nasty email to my case manager about how they need to talk to their guests to explain the refund cause I don’t appreciate how all the stress is left on me and how I’m the final victim in all of this and of course I never heard anything back from them again.
So no surprise, Airbnb customer service still needs lots of improvement!!
I had a guest infest our home with bed bugs. No proof of which, but had to be one of two. No complaints prior to them. Well let me tell you it gets much worse. I called a trusted exterminator I used before that only uses natural products normally. They inspected my home, and told me one room was infested bad, and it appears they carried a blanket up the stairs to the living room and infested the hallway, stairs and couches also. There are two solutions, heat treatment, or fumigation. I was told heat treatment is not 100%, fumigation is, again from an alternative pest control company who normally would not recommend fumigation. The fumigation is $3,300, the heat treatment he said was even more and potentially less effective.
I gave guests a full refund. Later found out they 2 went to hotel and the others stayed in the other two rooms for free. Then they tried to hit me up for their hotel bill too. Airbnb got involved and took care of their hotel and cancelled my upcoming reservations.
I have been going back and forth with them and just got this:
Thank you for the reply.
After talking it over with colleagues and reviewing the host Guarantee. We as Airbnb do not cover bedbugs you are more than welcome to start a resolution center case against the last guest if you believe they brought the bedbugs.
As for documentation, we will need a document emailed in stating your listing is bedbug free from the inspectors.
As for the feedback, for rules about bedbugs, I can pass that along to our feedback department.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me anytime and I will be more than happy to assist you.
Kindest regards,
