I have a sneaking suspicion that Michelle and Danni (as well as “Melody H.” in my case) are robots.
Badly badly badly programmed robots, designed to box in hosts and make them crazy. Read about “learned helplessness.”
AirBNB seemingly has raised the surrender flag on dealing with any and all calamities pre-IPO,
thus hosts who raise a complaint get some templated robot nonsense that notes “I’m off for 72 hours,” “your case is closed and will not be further reviewed,” “you can’t prove smoking,” etc. The 'bots will pay $75 for certain things and nothing more.
Now as to the practicalities of your case @Militaryhorsegal, you seek $1,050 correct? You can indeed sue the guest in Small Claims for that amount + your court fees + postjudgement interest. Let’s say the court filing fee to you is $40 and the service on the guest is $60-90 (more if out of state).
Step 1 is to ascertain if the guest has assets, i.e. a decent job and/or property that you can put a lien on. If yes, and you are willing to work REALLY hard to get your money, you might see it in 1 to 2 years. Winning a judgment is always close to a coin toss, ALTHOUGH if the guest lives far away and is not willing to travel to contest $1K, you will win by default and can then collect. Collection is definitely 75% of the work and effort, and that’s with the fact that the court process is tricky. However, patience wins.
To sue AirBNB for nonenforcement of your fees would be a more intriguing and opaque matter as to resolution. My educated guess would be, comb thru the ToS and your state laws on contract enforcement and then hit Air with a parallel small claim and cite laws (legislation in your state)/ToS/precedents (“case law”). Then you might well have Air lollygag around until 2 weeks before the trial date and offer you a settlement of around 60% (my experience). Plus probably want you to sign a non-disclosure agreement (which I told them, I would not).
If the Air lawsuit goes to court, due to an unsatisfactory settlement discussion, Air will have to shell out for a $500/hour local attorney to defend. You would think that would be a bucket of cold water on their poor pretrial settlement offers, but, apparently not.
If you go to appeal like I have ( … interesting, to me, footnote follows …) you will get a 128-page response to a motion such as mine to increase damages and move the trial from de novo (do-over) to on the record (incorporating the first judge’s shock at AirBNB’s cr@p ToS). I have enough scrap paper now for a decade from the inch-thick mailed version of the Air response. An attorney friend looked at it and just went “HOLY COW!” He thinks AirBNB is a tad bit nervous that little old me the pro se litigant is locked and loaded …