Sooooo… 3 whole months of peace.
Loving it. Stellar reviews going on, life is good.
Had a great couple hosts, it’s all smooth sailing baby.
But you guys know, I’m all about the terrifying.
So, book a house for the end of the year.
The host seems friendly, if a bit depressed, which she admits to being because caring for her Aunt is tough. She also has a full time role in an industry I’m very familiar with.
We seem to get along well.
Unfortunately, we have to land a day late. It’s totally on us, and I don’t even approach the idea of a refund, or change. I want to start on a good note. I message her on arrival.
We seem all good, even if she seems a bit irritated that we weren’t there on the day we were supposed to be.
We’re fine for the first two weeks.
Then she messages me that she wants to stop by. Ok, no problem I think.
I clean the place to within an inch of it’s life. Except the host puts me off for 3 days.
Finally, she tells me she’s left her place, and will arrive in an hour.
She texts me 2 hours later and says she’s half an hour away. And she’s dropping off some things. Some books. And a sideboard!
WTF.
I’ve made lunch, so I head into the kitchen and go to get the tea on. My DH heads to the front door on the doorbell ringing, and I get the kettle on and the soup heating. A couple minutes later, I hear a raised woman’s voice, and I head quickly out.
The host is LOSING her mind.
She’s screaming about how it’s her house and we have to let her in, and that don’t we know it’s the law?
Turns out, by a sideboard she actually meant, we’re gonna spend the afternoon moving furniture, adding two massive portrait paintings, adding china, a desk, and a sideboard.
GUYS, her entire SUV was filled with stuff. Her fullsize, enormous SUV. That she obviously intended we assist her with emptying, but decides instead to let her 80 year old Aunt carry this stuff in with her.
We explain, we are staying here, and we would really prefer it if we could just put the stuff in the front room- of course she can come in. I have tea and I’ve made lunch. She refuses, and just keeps loading stuff in and out, getting clearly angrier and angrier as she does, to the point she smashes things in the carpark.
She continues ranting angrily about how her father died, and they’re selling a house, and this is a really tough time for her, and she reaches the point of tears. I ask her to please come in and have lunch, we didn’t mean to offend we just don’t want to start moving everything around.
She refuses, and continues loading up the front room.
(Side note: this host was a bit hoardy anyway, and there’s not a square foot of the place that doesn’t have furniture and a knick knack in it. Her pillow collection alone was bigger than Aladdins would be. So I honestly have no idea where she intended to put all this stuff, and it was quite contrary to the countryish style but reasonably minimalist pictures on the site).
Eventually she says she’s leaving, and I say that I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend her.
She parrots the same back at me, and stomps out.
I call air and let them know there are some issues, and ask them to keep it on record.
I message her that night, apologizing and explaining some of the horrors we had in the past, and that if you don’t try and establish some boundaries you can end up with people coming in and out all the time, renovating while you live in the house etc.
I told her about the fire pit we had bought her, as she mentioned how much she loves using her outside space, and offer to remove it if I’ve offended her.
I get a pretty reasonable message in response from her, and we move on. I offer to take her and her aunt out for a pedicure and lunch on me, but as she doesn’t take me up on it, I send her a makeup store gift card, and wish her a happy new year. She asks me if she can use one of the parking spaces, and I agree that she can use it for free without recompense. Even though she offers.
We’re all good. I message her several days before checkout, as I’m hoping she can attend so there will be no misunderstandings. She can’t, but she assigns a neighbour to come deal with it.
I have a professional cleaner in (despite a $150 cleaning fee) and spend $180 myself to bring everything up to spec. I leave drinks replacing the ones provided that we drank.
I leave a basket of bath stuff on the table for her. It isn’t clear whether the linen should be done, so I do it and let her handover rep know that there’s a final load in the dryer.
DISASTER STRIKES.
My cleaner scrapes a scratch in her leather couch with the vacuum end. It’s a half inch scrape, and not a rip. I take pics, along with my checkout ones, and inform the handover agent.
Let us know if it’s an issue, etc. Handover agent says it’s nothing, but she’ll let the owner know.
We checkout, I let her know by message that we’ll be back, that lunch offer still stands, etc.
An entire week later, BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM.
$6000 dollar claim in my inbox.
For a new couch. A 3000 dollar couch. A massive behemoth in almost rococo style. Marie Antoinette would love this shit guys.
And apparently her laminate has peeled, and the photo is so bad you can barely even see any damage.
3k to repolish the entire room.
The picture is probably 10 square inches, and I can’t actually see what the issue is beyond some light peeling. I don’t even know where in the house this is, as there is no photo reference for it.
Well, folks, here is where it gets fun.
I find her same couch, online for less than $500 dollars.
LINK.
I have a repair quote for the couch scratch for a couple hundred bucks.
This includes the repair service coming to her. I since got one for even less.
There is also rambling complaint about how the bin was full (yes, we left on friday and the service doesn’t come till Monday).
The fire pit needs to be removed. (well, I did offer lady, and I have it on air message record)
And the sheets in the dryer got mouldy… in a dryer which never left anything wet in one cycle. YEAH.
Her HOA complained.
Well, we are friends with the neighbour that did checkout, and we know the head of her HOA. Who is quite nice.
Turns out the board hates that she owns it just to air profit from it, and tried to stop it through the bylaws. Cept they couldn’t. So they’re after her for every offensive thing they can get her on.
So we decline. Explain how such claims in light of an hours research, are opportunistic and extortionate.
I can provide a cleaning reciept, pictures, and a repair quote for the couch scratch.
No response for 4 more days.
So we call air and ask them when they’ll get involved.
They say only she can escalate, and she has 30 whole days to do it.
They mediate, trying to espouse their friendliness policy.
we explain that we’re well beyond friendly at this point.
They get a rep who has spoken to her.
Apparently this claim was made with no idea what it should cost, beyond a stick your finger in the air and guess.
But she REALLY, REALLY WANTS THAT COUCH. No other one. Just the rococo monstrosity she’s linked to.
Fuck me guys. I mean, it really is the damned twilight zone.
And now we wait.
While she can still review me, mind.
And air just says… it depends.
I rented 11 properties in 12 months from them last year. Is there a point at which being a good customer counts?
How royally I’m screwed here remains to be seen.
She has two and a bit more weeks to obsess about how to make this hit as bad as she can.
So far, she hasn’t said anything in response to the issue at all.
Oh, and I left out the part where the place cost more than most people’s mortgages, but turned out to be in a community in the center of crack town, and someone tried to break in in the middle of the night.
But that’s a story for another day!
So to the important question: I just got an update saying that she’s reviewed me. What do I do?
If I leave her an honest and pretty terrible review, I can’t mention we’re in dispute or I violate airbnb’s TOS. But it could also affect how she deals with the dispute if she perceives me as mean/an asshole for what I said. If I say nothing, and she negs me really hard, future guests aren’t warned and I’ve got a “she’s a house ruiner” at the top of my profile.
What do I do here?