Pissed! Our first bad experience just a month after starting

We’ve only been doing this for a month and we had our first bad experience already. 2 brothers stayed for 5 days and checked out today. The room is wrecked. Vomit and god-knows-what in bathtub and sink, weed and paraphernalia everywhere inside and on the deck. And the thing that tops it all is that one of them slept and showered in another room that I forgot to lock last night. Already called Airbnb. Guests didn’t have any reviews and looked slightly sketchy in the picture but we have IB turned on and I didn’t want to get dinged for canceling a reservation so we decided to give benefit of the doubt. Never again. I already changed booking setting to require a host review for future guests.

Just had to vent a bit. Guess it could have been worse.

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Sorry to read this and it’s kind of surprising considering this is in your home with you present. Maybe you’ll have to say no weed allowed? People flabbergast me.

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It happens. You can try to charge them extra for the extra cleaning. We did it once and Air reimbursed us. So sorry you had to deal with that. Please give them a 1 star review!

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@Tiamat - I promise you that the situation you just had is unusual. On the Airbnb website it says that on average, every night 2 million people stay in Airbnb accommodation. And I imagine that 99.99% of those stays were trouble-free. You got unlucky. (And it sounds very bad).

There are many hosts here who have been doing this for many years and yet we complain if a guest doesn’t take the garbage out! Hopefully your story is a reminder to us all that things can always be worse :slight_smile:

Seriously though, it sounds to me as though your lack of experience means that you didn’t take control of your guests.

It’s a great idea to read up as much as you can (here ideally) and be prepared.

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@KKC Weed is legal in CA and we agreed that they could vape, but only outside and no smoking at all. There were weed bits all over the room and butt end of joints outside. We thought we were smelling slight vape odor (it’s a big house) and asked them to stop. Gave benefit of the doubt. We were not smart about this one.

@jacquo Yes, I agree. Our lack of experience led us to let this go. We learned a big lesson. Maybe someone else will read this post and not make the same mistake.

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I know it’s legal and I can imagine that there are some numbers of weed tourists. Sounds like you had a couple of frat boys who didn’t know how to handle themselves with weed or someone’s home. Eviscerating review coming I hope.

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@KKC Absolutely. My husband has a way with words so he wants to write it.

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Ooohhh. I do hope you will share with us when the time comes. And let us know what, if anything, Airbnb does to support you.

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LOL. You bet I’ll share!

For future reference, what are the rules/penalties for cancelling a reservation? We were worried when the booking came through (IB) but were also worried about penalties if we canceled them.

If you have IB you can cancel if you aren’t comfortable or if they indicate they may break rules. However, I would be judicious in using it. What were the warning signs that made you uncomfortable?

@Tiamat This sounds a bit like a perfect storm. Some bad actors purposefully target new hosts. New hosts can also be too timid in setting boundaries. Experienced hosts are also better - although not flawless - at spotting the rotten apples.

I’m very sorry this happened to you. Did you have a damage deposit? And you trying for the Host Protection? Did you document everything in photos?

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Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Just chalk it up to bad luck and persevere. Over the past 3 years we have hosted about 80 couples and 3 singles and have absolutely nothing except great experiences. Our rental is a whole house with a fully equipped kitchen. Some guests have cooked and invited us to join them for dinner. Over Chinese New Year we had a couple who invited us to watch as the girl spent 2 hours hand crafting traditional Chinese dumplings. They spoke little English but the dumplings were delicious! Last week we had guests who brought us a gift!
Just hang in there!

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@RumourHasIt Thanks for the pep talk. We have had all good experiences with this one exception.

@CatskillsGrrl We started cleaning before I thought to take pictures unfortunately. I did get photos of the mess on the deck at least, showing the weed leftovers. I called Airbnb so we’ll see what they can do. Now that several hours have passed I more calm and just relieved that they are gone.

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Wow how awesome! We have a Chinese couple staying right now who cooked food and offered us some as well. It was delicious!

Honestly it was the photo. My husband said that he looked like a gang banger - I think it was the blue headband (gang sign in CA) and long braided hair that did it. I didn’t want to let the photo determine our response. Ugh.

I understand. And if you cancelled on that basis Airbnb wouldn’t back you up. The penalty is $100, a notification in the review section that you cancelled, no chance at superhost for a year and dropped in the search rankings I think.

Here’s the review my husband left… He was pretty angry when he wrote it up. Too much??

“Run away. Evan and his brother Ezra violated our rules by smoking weed inside and out - which is specifically against the rules and which we discussed with them when they arrived. We live in a serious fire danger area and smoking of any kind is not allowed. They agreed to vape. They left MJ containers all over, paraphenalia, and the weed itself all over, ground in the carpet, in the bed, outside around the hot tub deck. They wrecked the bathroom, weird grunge dirt, vomit and feces all over everything. They complained about the toilet not flushing well and used a plunger - God knows what went down there. I found that they flushed many rolls of TP down, don’t know why… We have a septic system so that is concerning. We have several rooms we rent separately. They broke into one and slept in the bed, and F-ed up that bathroom too. Beyond the theft of service, the room was in horrible shape for the next renter - disaster for us. We were able to get it ready in time but it was a panic. They vomited many times per day, poorly cleaned, smoked weed all night. It is like Jeff Spicoli and Cheech Marin showed up and just lost it. Nightmare. Stay away.”

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It’s probably longer than ideal but I personally love it. None of that wish washy better suited for a hotel BS!

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