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The guests booked for 4 days with nightly rate of 160GBP. As February is a low season, we offered a discount to encourage more bookings. Guests can stay for one night free if they book for more than three days. Therefore, the guests pay 480GBP for a four night stay.
Everything was fine for the first three days. However, during their last night stay, the water pipe of the apartment upstairs was broken due to bad weather in UK, and hence water was coming down from other apartment to my room. We re-accommodated the guests to another place immediately and issued one night refund (160GBP), even though the last night was already free. Airbnb said they contacted the guests, and the guests accepted the refund.
However, the guests contacted me today and said they were disappointed because they were expecting a full refund (480GBP) as the water leak made them very stressful. She said my insurance would cover my loss, but actually there was no insurance to cover my loss. I am still chasing the owner of the apartment upstairs for the damage of my beds and carpet. I understand her point, but I feel a full refund would be too much. What do you guys think? How do I reply?
3 days fine… last FREE night stressful… they have a refund for 1 night? So got the stay for half price? So sorry - unable to agree to your request. Having to offer a discount on your next stay
They accepted one night and that’s it.
Tell them their travel insurance should cover it and your insurance cover is for the damage on your property and not for their " stress"
You moved them immediately and refunded a night’s stay, that is all anyone could do. I would call airbnb and ask them how to proceed.
People are crazy! One night stay is adequate, in my opinion. They may leave a bad review no matter what but you can respond factually, tactfully and be sure to state “I am sorry that the refund of a night stay for your minor inconvenience was not sufficient for you but the request for a full refund for a 4 night stay could just not be accommodated.” Others reading it will realize that the guest was being unreasonable.
DO NOT REPLY. Just ignore any further messages from this guest. They got a stay for half price and are trying to con you out of more. Ignore them. Don’t worry about a bad review.
Your guest has a real cheek, they had no stress for the first three days and you took prompt action. Don’t get into arguments about insurance.
I disagree about not responding I would say something like.
“Thanks for choosing to stay at our home/place. As you know we provided you a 25% discount for your recent stay, meaning you had one night for free”.
"Unfortunately on the last night of your stay, there was a water leak in the accommodation of the upstairs tenant, resulting in water coming into the room that you were staying in.
"We immediately provided you with alternative accommodation. Even though you had already received a night’s free accommodation, we immediately issued you a full refund for another night, meaning that although you stayed for four nights, you only paid for two.
"We were disappointed to receive your request for a complete refund for your stay, stating that an incident on the final night, made your whole stay stressful. You said our home insurance will cover the costs of your stay, but this is not the case. It covers damage to property.
Did they have to pay for the place you rehomed them to?
Did they experience any property damage?
On a different issue, you mentioned there is no insurance to cover your loss. Do you not have insurance, or are they not covering this particular damage?
In a situation like this @daniellealberta it is the insurance of the tenant upstairs which would cover the damage, not the hosts. And it would cover damage to her property, not to refund a guest for their stay.
Actually, I asked the question less because of this particular scenario and more because I wanted to make sure the host has insurance in general! The post brought up the issue, but didn’t make the answer clear.
Thanks for your reply. I replied the guests. They were still unhappy. They said Airbnb never contacted them for refund and they never accepted one night refund. Can I ignore their further messages, as I feel they are not going to be satisfied unless I gave them full refund of 4 nights
Yes, you can ignore future messages. You’re dealing with opportunists here. You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run. Don’t worry about their review. You can always respond to it with what Helsi said. I recently got a negative review from two girls that did a last minute cancellation on me (no refund, sorry), and then rebooked some weeks later, stayed with no apparent problems, and blasted me in the review, giving me 2 s in a couple of categories. As I’m a superhost with 261 reviews and 4.9 overall, it didn’t hurt me a bit. It also hasn’t hurt my bookings either. In fact the review dropped off the front page rather quickly.
I don’t quite understand your point about Airbnb not contacting them regarding their refund. Did you not return this to them via Airbnb? If so, it should be with them by now.
It’s not about whether they accept the one night additional refund (they of course had two nights free), that’s what you have offered them
If you haven’t done so already I would use the suggested message, I gave you in an earlier post of something similar. So there is a record in writing on the Airbnb system. Then Airbnb can see this if the guests complain further.
