Is It Appropriate to Create 'Agreements' on the Fly Before Booking in a Pet Situation like This?

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We have a no-animal listing due to severe allergies in a listing where the co-Host lives at the property (no shared spaces) in the U.S., Massachusetts.

We received an inquiry (‘enquiry’ shown – not sure if this means that this would-be guest is not in the U.S.) from a guest wishing to bring their pet puppy. My spider sense prompted me to ask many more questions for this stay (6/30-7/4) than I typically do, concerned about parties and young guests.

The household member with the allergies was going to be away during this stay so I thought maybe we should permit this stay but our rules don’t anticipate this situation since normally pets are not permitted. [We considered putting in rules relating to pets during a stay just in case we somehow permitted a pet in a special situation but chose not to do so thinking it might be confusing to a reader who either might miss that pets were not permitted or become confused reading that pets are not permitted but then reading about rules pertaining to pets.

My questions to this group are:

  1. As you read the messaging, do you have suggestions for me?
  2. Was it appropriate/legal for me to ask if the guest was age 25? [You’ll see that the first person who made the inquiry [Z] apparently is not age 25. @JJD
  3. Was it appropriate and enforceable that because I did not have pet rules in place that I asked the guest to ‘agree’ to certain requirements, hoping that if a dispute arose that Airbnb would treat these agreements as enforceable as if in the listing? BTW, as the messaging was occurring I was quickly editing the rules to include ‘no fireworks or the like, consumer fireworks illegal in MA’ though that should be covered by the rule prohibiting illegal activity as consumer fireworks are illegal here.

To protect the identities, the first inquiring would-be guest is Z; the Host is Y; the second inquiring would-be guest (part of the same group as Z) is X.

Because sometimes important information is lost when a communication is described by the OP here, I am including the whole back and forth below.

Z 10:45 pm
Hi, how are you?? I’m interested to rent this house, but I’m checking the rules and you do not accept animals. I do have a puppy, can you let me take her?? She’s already trained and it’s a really nice puppy!! I will be so happy if you let me take her!! Sorry to bother you.

Y (Host)10:45 PM

Hi Z,

Thanks a lot for your interest in my home for your trip in Worcester!

It would be a pleasure to host you from Friday, June 30 to Tuesday, July 4 (6 people for 4 nights).

P.S. This is an automated message, but I do read every message. I’ll address any questions shortly.

Glenn (Co‑Host)10:51 PM

Hi Z,

I’m well, Thank you. And you?

Thank you for your interest in the property.

You say it’s a puppy – how old? Potty trained?

Would you ever be leaving the puppy in the house alone?

Would the puppy be crated? [Not requiring that, just asking]

Are you 25 or older?

Did you see that there are no parties or events?

Just making sure that you understand that the maximum occupancy is six. Does that work for you?

– Co-Host Glenn

P.S. What’s the puppy’s name?

Y (Host)11:14 PM

Also, can you please tell me your location – it’s not in your profile.

X: 11:25 pm

Hey, my friend was talking with you about the puppy. But we are checking the rules and he its not 25 older to rent the house and I I’m… can we continue the conversation over here!!! If you allowed the puppy. She is 5 months old. She is trained e we are nos going to leave her alone at the house. And we agree with no parties and the maximum occupancy its 6.

Y (Host)11:25 PM
Hi, X-

Thanks a lot for your interest in my home for your trip in Worcester!

It would be a pleasure to host you from Friday, June 30 to Tuesday, July 4 (6 people for 4 nights).

P.S. This is an automated message, but I do read every message. I’ll address any questions shortly.

Glenn (Co‑Host)11:35 PM

Hello X,

I’m not sure what you’re saying on age. Are you saying that Z is not age 25 but you are?

Or are you saying that you did not see the rule about age 25. Here it is:
“○ If any guest is under age 25 at least one other guest at or over age 25 agrees to: 1) occupy the property full time day and night while the under-age-25 guest(s) is occupying the property and 2) take legal and financial responsibility for actions of omission or commission of the under-age 25 guest(s)”

On maximum occupancy, you realize that six is the maximum occupancy, whether overnight or not, right?

Can you tell me where you or Z are located?

Is your group here for an event, concert etc? Please describe.

We do not have grass. Instead most of our property is covered with a succulent kind of sedum, so the puppy could damage it. We’d require that the puppy always be on a leash when outside. You’d also pick up the puppy’s poop outside and dispose properly in a plastic bag. Is all that OK with you?

If something happened – just in case – that your puppy were left alone and I heard the dog barking or the like, we’d need to make an agreement now that we’d have permission to ring and if no answer enter the unit and keep the puppy downstairs with us and there’d then be an additional fee of $10/hour (or any part of any hour). Do you agree?

No fireworks or anything like that. Agree?

One more FYI for you. We have a guest leaving on 6/30 and another checking in on 7/4. So we’re unable to offer you an early check-in or late checkout.

Puppy cannot enter pool. Agree?

Glenn (Co‑Host)11:57 PM

I’m going to bed soon.

So I’ll respond tomorrow if you’re still interested and after I receive your responses and agreement.’

I’m sorry that I’m asking so many questions but I hope you understand that a puppy (maybe not yours because it is, Z says, well trained) can create a lot of damage inside or outside. So we need to be careful, especially as we had not anticipated a puppy being at the property when we put together the listing.

My thinking on the $10/hour charge was that if these guys did leave the puppy alone in the house I didn’t want to rely on Airbnb backing me if there were damages; I wanted to prevent damages. But I also wanted to avoid a situation where the guests figured out that I could just be their dog sitter [though I love dogs] and that’s why I put the $10/hour charge. The truth is that I wouldn’t mind being the dog sitter, but I didn’t want to offer that upfront.

I also added a rule during the messaging (which I would delete after these guests left) that says: “If a guest overstays the 10 am checkout time, the guest agrees that we can eject them from the premises and to pay $200 per hour (or any part of an hour) by which they have not left the property by 10 am.” My concern is that their checkout date would be 7/4 and we have another guest checking in that day.

The would-be guest Z’s profile showed one stay and a 5-star review BUT the Host’s review named the guest and it was not Z. So Z was apparently in the group but not the booking guest (unless Z changed name – Ha ha). The booking guest did not review the stay per AirReview.

I was concerned that these would-be guests were local or planning a party. In the moment I thought it better to risk losing this reservation by asking questions and even imposing a draconian rule (the overstay provision) to protect the next stay and to implicitly inform these would- be guests (six guys (?) in their 20’s - Yikes!) that they need to hew to the house rules.

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I personally would not accept this booking because I don’t allow pets. In this booking, it’s a puppy which, to me, it’s a potential for damage. He might be teething and will most likely chew on your furniture. As for potty training, at only 5 months of age, would probably still have accidents.

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You seem to be turning yourself inside out to accept a guest who doesn’t met your own policy guidelines.

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  1. I don’t like automated messaging and I really don’t like your software spitting out the same irrelevant message repeatedly.
  2. Airbnb has conflicting information on age discrimination vs their own party policy which uses the under 25 measure. https://www.airbnb.com/resources/hosting-homes/a/tips-to-help-prevent-parties-at-your-property-223
  3. I doubt Airbnb would be on your side. I don’t know what you mean by enforceable.

I couldn’t have said this better.

I literally LOL’d, Glenn.

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If they have not booked, you may change things on them as long as it’s within what’s allowed on AirBnB. It’s not best practice and might annoy the potential guest, but it’s not forbidden.

Since you are a no-pets listing, you can create any conditions you want for someone to bring a puppy. Will AirBnB enforce your new rules? Probably as well as they enforce any rule a host has (i.e., hit-or-miss on whether they enforce it).

Your extra cost for staying late is covered by the AirBnB TOS: " 2.3 Accommodation Reservations . An Accommodation Reservation is a limited license to enter, occupy, and use the Accommodation. … If you stay past checkout, the Host has the right to make you leave in a manner consistent with applicable law, including by imposing reasonable overstay penalties."

I suggest you turn down the request for the puppy at a minimum (“After checking with the host, we are unwilling to accept your puppy due to their severe allergies”).

Frankly, my Spidey senses are going off for another reason - that they are still communicating with you after your messages.

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  • My favorite type of guests and tenants is people with dogs. My second favorite type of guests and tenants is people that are under-25. I would not allow a 5-month-old puppy (particularly not with an under-25 that I do not personally know).

    You don’t allow dogs or guests that are under 25, so I’m not sure why you’re entertaining this.

  • We’ve covered this before and nothing has changed: Airbnb’s policy for age discrimination says that you can discriminate based on age unless it is prohibited by law where you list. Age discrimination against 18+ is prohibited by law in Massachusetts, explicitly for STRs. But because you list an owner-occupied home of 2 units or less, e.g. your duplex, you are exempt from the MA law and can legally discriminate based on age.

    However, there is no exemption to the MA law that prohibits advertising a discriminatory preference. It is always 100% illegal for you to advertise your discriminatory age preference in MA, yet you still have the paragraph about under-25s in your house rules on your listing (e.g. in your advertisement).

    So, once more, because we’ve had this discussion several times, it is totally fine and 100% legal for you to discuss age with potential guests in communication and even decline them for it; however, you are 100% breaking your MA state laws with your listing/house rules - they are 100% illegal. It seems insincere, at best, for you to ask about it again.

  • Your post would’ve benefitted tremendously from a TL;DR.

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So, when this was originally discussed by me here we had a rule that stated that you needed to be age 25 or over to book a stay. I removed that rule based on our exchange.

However, I left in the rule below:

I thought that the above rule might be OK with the prohibition on advertisements because you don’t have to be age 25 to book. Instead, some one of the guests in the group must be age 25 or over.

As I write this, I realize that if a guest makes a reservation for one, then effectively that requires a person age 25 or over to book, so it *would be a discriminatory advertisement. But for the moment if we ignore that possibility of the reservation for one person, is my rule still discriminatory? A grey area?

IF your answer is ‘no’ or ‘grey’ then I’m still not out of the woods since we could get an inquiry for a reservation for one person and that person would have to be age 25 or over to comport with the rule.

Do you have any suggestions for a way around this?

BTW, what did you think of this?

I was uncomfortable writing this, still am. Yet what to do if you had a rule or agreement that the dog could not be left alone, but was left alone? Do you have a suggestion here?

Was this appropriate? I just wanted to know if they were local as I was suspecting ‘party’ but I could understand someone being offended by this on the basis of privacy. Do you think I should not have asked this or a different question?

:cry:

I think it’s inconsistent with either the goal of a civil discussion or a goal of advancing the discussion to judge the sincerity of a person posting. There are many reasons that have nothing to do with sincerity why someone might make or appear to raise something you feel has been previously discussed. First, people forget. Second, someone could feel that there is something different about it in the repeated instance. Regardless, an allegation of insincerity doesn’t advance the discussion.

Exactly!

I wanted to make my post a ‘teachable moment’ for the forum and was hoping someone would say that. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Thank you.

LOL

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Yes, I was.

Why? Because the person with the severe allergies – which, of itself, precluded pets – was for this timeframe traveling. So, all of a sudden I was confronted with a situation where I could accept a reservation without worrying about the allergy issue. We hadn’t anticipated this when writing our rules/policy.

So that’s why I was all of a sudden thinking on the fly how to handle this situation.

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Just to clarify, a guest will see this message just once.

Here Z saw it, but then another would-be guest in that same group of six, X, sent me a message which triggered that same automated reply, But each received the reply just once. The automated message is there just as a fail safe to make sure that we respond timely per Airbnb metrics.

Yet another service I provide members here, a laugh, and one out loud.

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So what? The guest didn’t know that. Your rules say no pets. The first thing this guest did was ask to bring their puppy. You only needed one message to this guest- “This is a no pets listing” and then stopped communicating.

The automatic messages saying “it will be a pleasure to host you”, for an inquiry, are bizarre. That’s not a message to be sent to guests you haven’t decided whether to accept or not. It isn’t at all appropriate for inquiries, or even a request you haven’t yet accepted, that’s a message you send to a confirmed booking. You have 24 hrs to answer. If you really feel you need to let an inquirer or requester know you can’t answer in the moment, your automated message should say, “Thanks for your inquiry. Busy at the moment, will get back to you soon.”

And surely the odds of getting another booking for a month from now are pretty good. Why wouid you be so desperate for this booking that you’d entertain it in the first place and then waste so much time on it?

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I agree.

I need to change this.

Well, again, the reason why we have a no pets policy was removed because the person with the allergies was traveling.

My sense was that the Host might want the revenues and I was unable to reach her.

THAT is the question.

  1. In the past our reservations have been made 60-90 days in advance and we have lots of ‘holes’ this year. based on that lead time. I have read somewhere that guests this year are booking later, but I didn’t want to rely on that generalization.

  2. The specific time that these guests wanted to reserve was in a four day gap with turnovers on both the check-in and check-out dates, including July 4th. So I thought that this gap might be hard to fill.

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There is no way I’d let someone stay at my place with an 5 month old puppy. You will have absolutely no control over the puppy being crated or the guest taking the puppy with.
I would say do this once and you’ll never do it again.

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The gap between when these guests check out and when the next guests check in is going to be hard to get cleaned in time. Six 20-something guys and a puppy? :roll_eyes:

(FYI, human children get “potty-trained”- dogs get “housebroken”. Dogs don’t use potties.)

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I did this. Thank you.

BUT, How’s this for a twist?

The guest, Z, replies 90 minutes later:

Someone is using my account

I think it got racked or something lime that

Already looking into it

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You know, as I was writing that I was thinking that there was something wrong with my wording, but I just wanted to get the message out without Googling ‘potty-trained.’

So, you’re right of course, and on the cleaning too.

[However, I know of someone who literally did potty-train two cats. Yes, they did their business on the toilet, a regular human toilet. She tried (really) to teach them to flush, but never succeeded.]

Yes, it would likely be hard.

But here I take inspiration from the 1962 JFK Rice University speech:

“We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept.”

Hopefully, getting the cleaning done would not be a moonshot.

But dwell on how JFK might say ‘hard.’ It could be hard.

Difficult but not impossible.

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Do you frequently do same-day turnovers? If not, hard becomes very risky.

Sounds like you should just block this guest and move on. That smells like “Z” is going to come back with a different story and try to rent, claiming all the prior story was a scammer.

I recall you meet people at the property and live upstairs or next door. If you get another inquiry/request for those dates in the next 24-28 hours, you might want to remind them of that.

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Yes, we do it all the time.

We have several backups, including me.

The risk I see in our situation is if something essential were broken, that could be a problem but depending on what was broken we might not be able to replace/repair even a day later. In this situation, I was considering the possibility of a late checkout (in more than five years of hosting this has not happened (yet) but of course it could, PLUS substantial damage or mess. All on a national holiday. That’s why I quickly added (now deleted) that new house rule above on $200/hour fine for overstaying.

I’m sorry. I’m not understanding this.

Remind ‘them’ of ‘that’? Are you saying that if X [‘them’ or someone new?] tries to book in the next 24-48 hours, I remind the inquiring guest of . . what?

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Something smells fishy about the whole scenario. If X, or Z or P or D or Q tries to book the exact same dates in the next 24-48 hours, I suggest you remind them that you keep a close eye on the property (not in those words, but that’s the message you send them). Having someone on site is a huge deterrent to mischief or damage.

But I’m confused. Did you get an inquiry from Z’s account, then one from X’s account saying Z is not yet 25 and then a second communication from Z saying their account was hacked and therefore the first inquiry was not from them? Or did you get one from Z’s account, then a second from Z’s account but saying “Hi, I’m X” and then a third one from Z’s account saying they were hacked?

Either way, this whole thing is a goat rodeo and my advice is tell them to pound sand.

TLDR - some people are nuts and will do/say almost anything to save a few dollars.
I had a similar situation a few years ago. Long story shortish, some guy kept trying to book under several different names and through both Vrbo and AirBnB. He ended up booking for one person when I could tell there would be four and he was trying to sneak in the extra people without paying the extra-person fees. When I cancelled his reservation for not responding to me when I asked how many people would be there, he claimed he had been at his uncle’s funeral for the last 22 hours and never looked at his phone, then told me how sorry I’d be because he’s a self-made multi-millionaire at the age of 24.

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Yes. The details of your rule are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the rule is. You qualify for the exemption so it is legal for you to have the rule, it is legal for you to tell every guest that contacts you about the rule and it is legal for you to enforce the rule as you see fit but it is not legal for you, or anyone else in the US, to put any rule (or anything else) about any protected class in an advertisement. And because you have an STR in MA, age is a protected class.

Absolutely not.

You have two choices.

  1. Carry on as you’ve been doing and hope that no one files a complaint. It is very unlikely that someone file a complaint. It’s pretty low risk and you probably shouldn’t worry about it.
    -or-
  2. Remove the discriminatory preference (aka “rule”) from your advertisement (aka “listing”). Reveal your rule about age when guests contact you (that is the legal way). And don’t worry about it.

Those are your only two choices. It doesn’t matter to me which one you choose. I only ask that you stop repeatedly asking whether it is legal or not for you to have a house rule that states a discriminatory preference because it is not. If you want to argue away a law then I suggest you contact your local representative. That is the only way :upside_down_face:

I don’t have a rule about dogs not being left alone. I err on the side of almost no rules at all about anything because I don’t want to have to monitor and enforce. It’s just not worth it to me. And it has worked out really well for me (YMMV :wink:). However, I don’t run my places as a free-for-all either. I try to head off obvious issues before they happen, so I would not accept a reservation that included a 4-month-old puppy.

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Yes.

X actually said (which I tried to clarify):

Thank you.