@adrienne12 I had raised the deposit from $100 to $500 last year to try to thwart the issues as well. But since Airbnb doesn’t actually collect it has not helped.
And you may not have received the notice yet but many of us have that they are instituting their own deposit that they WILL collect but only for the listings without one that meet their secret criteria for whatever amount they choose (which may also be secret to us because it may be different for each guest depending on guest factors).
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Raise your prices! Bargain hunters tend to violate rules more.
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You are an astonishingly angry person. You should not be a host - you are in the wrong business. Try reading your attitude in your posts above. You have no concept of customer service or the guest experience. An angry, punitive person with many chips on your shoulder.
I have raised my prices and I continue to get disrespectful, house rule violating guests.
I am astonishingly angry at the disrespectful guests, yes. That does not mean I am in the wrong business (or that it’s the only business I am in, for that matter). I provide great customer service and a great, clean, safe, comfortable, budget friendly guest experience, (especially for those with pets who don’t have nearly as many options with appropriate accommodations). I am only punitive to those who break the rules that they know are punitive and that they know the punitive cost beforehand. No chips, just frustration with disrespectful guests and trying to do what I can to limit them (I’d prefer to eliminate them booking altogether but that hasn’t happened yet, obviously).
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I have fines listed in my agreement. The best legal way to enforce infractions is to detail the punishment. It is totally correct to mention the fines.
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You are being judgemental towards somebody who does things differently than you do. There are many ways to rent property, and being specific about parameters upfront is a great way to establish rules and bounderies. Kudos to the OP for being clear with guests about expectations. This should scare off lousy guests ( for the most part). I see no anger and I do see a host who expects the agreement to be honored.
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Although @Klatchers response was a bit harsh I can see where she/he is coming from. @Militaryhorsegal 's policies are punitive and if I saw those fines listed in the listing I would not book with her. It comes off as controlling to me, not what I want to experience while traveling. Reading her posts, over $1000 in fines on a $300 stay I am very surprised that Air continues to allow her to host.
That being said, as someone else stated above I think she should raise her prices to avoid these types of guests to begin with.
Unless… perhaps the fines make it all worth it? She said she gets paid on average 75% of the fines she imposes. Maybe Kelly is not controlling, rather hoping the poor idiot does not clean up the dog logs?
Brilliant!
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I have all those fines too…and they are not meant as “punitive”, they are meant to be very clear about the fact that I expect my house “rules” to be followed - however I have never imposed a fine and never had to in 9 years. Spelling out fines are necessary should I ever need enforcement outside of ABB. Since I have 2 houses that are both booked year round, then I guess my fines dont scare off good renters, and probably do scare off bad renters. Maybe it only works because of my in demand properties and location. I do sometimes get questioned and I am happy to explain to anyone our standards. For example, I have a $2500 fee if an event is held ( absolutely necessary due to my location in a wedding destination). I have a $500 fee for a dog that is not pre approved, but $200 for advance fee. This ensure nobody ever sneaks in a dog. And nobody ever has. I have fees for extra guests not listed. 85% of bookings contact me after placing the booking and “correct” and increase the number of guests…what a surprise! I never have had any problems, nor too many people, nor too many cars etc. It works for me, and it may not work for you, but it is not wrong, just a necessary way of keeping my properties legal in a wedding destination. I dont want my town to close me down, so heavy enforcement is necessary.
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I have fee’s, not fines… for extra people and dogs. I like the $2500 party fee @georgygirlofairbnb I may add something like that. I have never had to enforce a fee though, I think it has to do with my pricepoint and the type of guests I attract.
RR
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I haven’t collected on this guest yet. I am struggling with the first $50 actually arriving actually. It has been told to me by three different CSR that I will get it but it remains closed with no payment in the Resolution Center and no future payment listed in the Progress section.
I doubt I will get much of anything on this one, despite all the evidence and the threatening voicemail. That’s what makes it even MORE frustrating. It’s like ABB saying…don’t break the rules, but if you do, break so many of them that we let you off Scott free AND screw the host because we won’t lose that much money.
That’s part of the problem with smoking…if they do it once they are likely to do it at least 8 times in a 2 day stay
As I have said before I know I will lose some good guest who don’t like to see the fines (assuming you will be a good guest) but I’ll be damned if I am going to let people who disrespect not know what the consequences could be. I am quite certain that there are some bad guests I have not gotten that the fines properly scared off.
I do continue to raise my prices, and as I’ve said before, I seem to now get more “entitle rich cheapskates” that just do NOT CARE. They could easily pay 10x their rates and fines and think nothing of it. It’s kind of laughable to see the expensive luxury cars parked outside the humble abode.
The thought has crossed my mind but no. I would much rather have happy, respectful guests who I can leave rave reviews for and that will do the same and then come back. Instead I get scathing reviews from disgruntled disrespectful people about how I charged them for things in the house rules (and then they go in to create lies and trash the rest of the stay and give very low stars). Not to mention I would prefer positive experiences, even if they are learning ones, so those guests are respectful when they book YOUR place.
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I, too, get more people now that am me their booking close to check-in, likely because if the rules. But also I am noticing a trend that someone can hold the reservation by paying out for the minimum amount of money and then either increase it to the correct amount last minute or lose much less when/if they cancel.
I also note that there has been an increase in people showing up with more and being willing to pay the extra then. Usually Airbnb will tell me to just do a change request in the website (can’t do it on the app) and then the guest doesn’t have to pay the extra service fees and taxes on the extra people. This current guest it was for a month long stay though so they were happy to collect the fees on $100s vs. $20s.
Well, I tried to leave a review but it only let me get as far as the communication stars before it gave me an error and said I did not have permission to access the resource. I called and they said that although my email was sent at 1605 my review window expired at 1500, although they normally expire at 1200 and no one can know when it will actually expire until it actually does expire. So they got off scott free on the review!
I kept calling back about the $50 resolution for the dog poop and finally got someone who contacted the original case manager to call me back and minutes before he did that (at 02:08 am) he released the payment for me.
So, now on to the $200 claim for the unsecured dogs and the $800 claim for the smoking. We shall see how it goes…
Oh, and the guests did not leave me a review either.
Latest update: I received the $50 direct from Airbnb and sent the $1k fine resolution request yesterday.
Here was what George texted me instead of leaving as a voicemail:
So, thoughts on reporting it to Airbnb now or wait until I am able to involve Airbnb through the Resolution Center after the 72 hours pass (because Christy is not likely to actively decline)?
Are there cameras inside?
I would not wait, Air could decide you DO have cameras in the house and just shut you down without recourse. You need to get in front of this.
RR
I am really curious to see how this plays out, no way will the guest pay the 1K
I cannot imagine Air will pay that much.
RR
No, no cameras or recording devices inside. Only outside, as indicated. But the doorbell one was quite telling. It is also the one that showed the gun he brought in as well as you can hear her asking him about bringing it in first.
Great point about the cameras and delisting with no recourse or investigation as they have done in the past for other false accusations. Will contact them now.
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I agree with you on all fronts here.
Since George signed the text with his suffix I googled him that way and it looks like he was admitted to law school in 1988 in SC but may or may not have actually graduated and may or may not have actually become a lawyer. In any case he is not a practicing lawyer at the moment and in 2014 when he appealed a case about lifetime sports tickets from his alma Mayer to the SC Supreme Court he had a hired lawyer. Kind of interesting given his horrible writing and the fact that he gave himself up about the smoking and then claims an inside camera thinking that the outdoor camera wouldn’t catch the dogs coming out while they never went in…kind of an idiot. Not to mention he lied about contacting Airbnb. He said that in his threatening voicemail too but they claimed he never did.
So the CSR responded that she would contact the guest to get her side of the story so I asked if she wanted me to send the text messages. I was surprised she hadn’t asked for them. On her message she sent it to my guest inbox and made no mention of the texts but indicated she was thanking me for requesting Airbnb get involved in the Resolution avenger claim.
I replied explicitly that I had contacted them about the threatening texts and would be back in touch with video evidence for the claim when on a computer since it wasn’t yet 73 hours after submission and she had not declined.
So the CSR replied that having reviewed the information provided by all parties involved they were not able to determine a valid claim.
To which I replied that I had not contacted her about my claim but about the threatening texts and asked what her response was to them and what the guest had said when she contacted her. I also checked the Resolution Center to be sure it was still open since the 72 hours for her response had not passed and I wanted to be sure to be able to escalate it to Airbnb when the time came. I was safe there.
So I got a response last night:
“this is Michelle again from Airbnb. I hope this message finds you well.
If you are being bothered by the private messages that you are getting from the guest, you can just disregard or block the number of that guest since that conversation was made or done outside your Airbnb messages.”
Incredible. That was the totality of the message.
So now the time has passed for the guest to respond and I have been able to escalate to Airbnb. I have informed them that I have plenty of video from the outside cameras depicting all the rule violations as well as George’s own admission in his texts that he smoked in his car (which I explained will be seen in the videos sitting in my driveway on the property where smoking is prohibited).
