Last week I had a fairly last minute booking for three guests for three nights - December 16-19th. The guest was brand new but verified. The profile picture was of the photo part of his drivers license. Although I have IB on for this listing, the guest sent an inquiry and let me know that he’d read the entire listing (providing me with the secret phrase). I accepted the booking, and all was well.
The day of his arrival he had a few last minute questions, and everything was done on the Airbnb platform. He was staying in the top apartment of my two family, and we had other guests arriving the same day in the main floor apartment as well as the basement apartment. Because we had three arrivals that day, I wanted to make sure that my Ring video doorbell was charged and ready in case anyone had any problems getting in. The doorbell was a bit of a clusterpuck as it needed more time than I had, and needed to be restarted. I didn’t end up getting the video doorbell set up for the 16th, but finally got it sorted out the next day.
So as I’m looking at the playback and trying to adjust the motion sensors, I see footage of four guests coming home at 4:50am. I know the girls on the main floor are Chinese, and the people in the basement use a different door, so I know it has to be the guests upstairs, that booked for three. It’s now around 10am, so I figure that I’ll go over and say hi to everyone as I didn’t have a chance to see them on their arrival. I see the young girls on the main floor, everything is great. I see the couple in the basement, they are all cozy and planning their trip. I go upstairs, and no answer. It’s early, and I know they’ve gotten home a few hours ago, but I still bang away at the door. I can feel that they are home even though I don’t really hear anything. We all know our houses, right? You can tell, it’s almost like you can sense someone NOT coming to the door. Fine - the dude doesn’t want to answer, so I go away.
When I get home, I send him a note to say - hey, I didn’t have a chance to see you on your arrival, and I missed you this morning. Let me know when I can stop by to say hello. No answer, when every other correspondence has had a pretty quick reply.
Now I’m getting a bit pissy about the situation, because he’d carefully read the entire description and agreed to the house rules, and no extra guests without approval, etc. is in my description two separate times, and of course in the house rules. And also he’d been super quick at replying before, but now, nothing. So I start to watch the video obsessively to make sure that indeed, there are four people. They don’t always come and go at the same time, but there are clearly four separate people.
The second day, after no reply to my “can I stop by” note, I send him another note to say - hey, it looks like you had another friend join you, I’m sending you an alteration request to update the booking, as per the house rules. No reply. I try calling him on his phone, no answer. They are never home at a time that works for me to go back, so the day of checkout comes and another note - hey, alteration request still pending, please accept it so that everything is correct. Again, no reply.
They check out, and clearly four guests leave together, each with a small bag. Now he’s checked out, and no response from him so I submit a resolution request for the fee associated with the fourth guest. I indicate that upon review of my exterior security camera I have seen a fourth guest coming and going. Two days after (this morning actually) he finally replies to say “yeah, a bud stayed over one night so you’re not getting $60 out of me”. What an ass. The problem is that the stupid Ring doorbell is now holding the video in the cloud somewhere and not letting me access the footage. I have a request for support to reply to me, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the resolution times out.
So I’m not going to worry about the money, if I get it, fine. But I am going to write a review to indicate that while the apartment was left quite tidy and initial correspondence was good, I cannot recommend this guest as he broke a house rule that he had agreed to. I will also give him the old thumbs down so hopefully it will stunt him if he ever does want to use IB.
This is really not that interesting, it’s happened to most hosts. I just felt like ranting a bit 
