Shifting medical lies, a denied refund, and a platform threat. Cancel or host?

1

Hi fellow hosts,

I need some advice on a nightmare guest situation. I have a Super Strict 60 Days cancellation policy for my villa.

The Timeline:

  1. The Off-Platform Lie: The guest messaged me on WhatsApp claiming her infant child needed critical medical treatment and they couldn’t travel, demanding a full refund. I redirected her to support.
  2. The On-Platform Lie: She opened a ticket with Airbnb but completely changed her story, claiming her husbandwas hospitalized.
  3. The Ruling: Airbnb caught the “conflicting accounts,” upheld my strict policy, and denied her refund.
  4. The Retaliation: Angry about the payout denial, she dropped the medical excuses entirely. She previously texted me on WhatsApp saying “the stay better not disappoint in any way whatsoever.” Today, she messaged directly on the Airbnb app:

“I am confirming our stay at the property. Ensure the property is in flawless condition and well equipped with everything mentioned in the Airbnb page. The property must be available and vacant for all days of booking from the 9-18 th July regardless of the day we check in. Goodluck…”

I’ve uploaded the screenshots and flagged her “Goodluck…” text to Trust & Safety as clear intimidation and review extortion prep. I’m pushing for a forced cancellation on her behalf to protect my local on-site staff.

My Questions:

  • If Airbnb forces me to host her, how do I handle a guest actively setting a trap to look for “flawless” defects to force a refund later?
  • She claims the villa must be vacant “regardless of the day we check in.” Am I obligated to keep my staff on their toes for 8 days, or can I enforce strict check-in window boundaries?
  • Has anyone successfully gotten Trust & Safety to cancel a stay based on a passive-aggressive platform warning like this?

Thanks for your insights!

2

Could you upload what you wanted to ask about before you ran it through AI?

3

Doesn’t sound like AI to me.

@balivilla Definitely insist politely but firmly on a penalty-free cancellation, based on the fact that she told documented contradicting lies, which Airbnb backed you up on, upholding your cancellation policy, and is now threatening you by dictating that everything must be “flawless” and that her closing “Good luck” is a clear indication that she plans to stay and then demand a refund and leave a terrible review full of lies.

Technically, yes, if a booking has not been cancelled, guests can check in at any point during an active booking and hosts are expected to be ready to accommodate them.

Honestly if this were my “guest”, if Airbnb refuses to do a host-penalty-free cancellation, I would go ahead and cancel this booking, taking the financial and blocked-dates penalty hit. No way would I host this woman- the nightmare will only get worse.

5 Likes
4

Why is this a threat?

1 Like
5

According to what she said, ’ The property must be available and vacant for all days of booking from the 9-18 th July, regardless of the day we check in,’ it seems there is a good chance she will only come for part of the dates.
If you cancel, there will be a penalty, and the dates will be blocked. It’s a big loss to you.
If you don’t cancel, she might come and will probably give you a headache. How much are we talking here? Just want to measure if that money is worth the trouble.
I actually had the same experience 2 years ago. The woman tried to get a full refund for a nonrefundable reservation. I asked for medical proof. She sent a screenshot from 11 months ago, which doesn’t set her story straight. So I denied her full refund request. And then she told me she’d still come, but only stay 2 days instead of the booked 4 days. I was prepared for a troublemaker, but surprisingly, she loved my apartment and left it very neat and clean. Right after she checked out, I offered her 50% refund and thanked her for taking great care of our place. She left a 5-star review and was very happy with the 50% refund. I gave her a great review as well, but checked ‘Won’t host again’. Too much stress to bear.

6

The one big difference is that your guest didn’t send you threatening messages. That’s on a whole other level from trying to dodge the cancellation policy by making up some untrue story.

I wouldn’t let this nasty woman the OP is dealing with step foot on my property. If she comes, she’s going to make entitled demands and make up lies about the place to claim a refund and leave a scathing 1* review, IMHO.

1 Like
7

Your anecdotal experience with one of these kinds of guests makes me think that the medical issue that was brought up was simply because they wanted to change their booking. For us, we have had guests who wanted to shorten their stay for example, and when we denied their cancellation simply showed up for a short amount of the time.

Of course, this particular guest being discussed is extremely reactive and possibly wrote her conditional message based on their fear of retribution - that the host will make their stay miserable. Remember, guests read the same endless anti-guest diatribes that are on this site as other hosts do. Rather than take these issues to heart and make them better guests often it makes a guest wary and touchy.

8

If you don’t get Airbnb to cancel and end up hosting this guest I hope you make sure to take time stamped photos of the place so that you do have evidence of exactly how it is at the point of check in. Just in case they decide to complain about cleanliness etc

As they will have paid up front, I am not sure you can cancel them as a ‘no show’ in the way hotels can just relet rooms when guests fail to check in promptly enough.

9

You are right, muddy. Even though the woman told a lie when she demanded the refund, she was still a much better person than the guest OP has right now.

10

@Rolf — It must be nice hosting in a fantasy world where guests fake terminal illnesses on Monday and then just want a ‘flawless clean’ on Friday.

Back in the real world, when a guest gets caught lying to Airbnb about a hospitalized baby to scam a refund, dropping a passive-aggressive ‘Goodluck…’ isn’t a request for fresh towels—it’s an obvious retaliatory trap. If you want to invite that kind of liability into your business and risk your staff’s safety, be my guest. The rest of us prefer to run a professional operation.

11

I think my question was misinterpreted - if the space is being used from date X to date y, then of course it will be vacant, right? Why would it not be and why would a host in any way think otherwise?

Perhaps in your communication with this guest, you inferred that the space would be occupied with guests other than them? I’m honestly not understanding why that would ever be a condition from a guest in a message -

1 Like
12

@Rolf — You are looking at the dictionary definition of the word ‘vacant’ instead of reading basic human psychology.

Let’s look at the actual chess board: The guest fabricates a sick baby on WhatsApp. She gets caught fabricating a sick husband to Airbnb. She loses her refund. She has clearly already changed her travel plans, but out of pure financial spite, she drops a passive-aggressive threat telling me she might show up on any random day and demands ‘flawless’ conditions.

She isn’t actually coming. This is a classic psychological mind game designed to stress the host out, force my local team to stand at attention for 8 days, and threaten a retaliatory review from afar. If you genuinely think a guest who just tried to scam a platform two times over is just ‘confirming a normal stay’ out of the goodness of her heart, you are being incredibly naive. The rest of us can see the trap from a mile away.

1 Like
13

I guess I misunderstand how your Airbnb works. Mine is vacant from the beginning to the end of their booking. I don’t have a staff situation, but if I did, I would assume that the staff would be needed as per the Airbnb listing.

15

This is not a normal guest. This “guest” is furious that she was caught out in lies and refused a refund. She is trying to come up with things to intimidate and threaten the host with, having nothing to do with any intentions the host conveyed. She likely assumed the space would be rerented, even though you can’t do that when there is an active, uncancelled booking.

You are making an assumption that the host never indicated, based on what this vindictive guest wrote.
This has nothing to do with how the host’s Airbnb works.

It is quite common for hosts in some countries to have staff, even when the host lives on site or close by. Not only does it provide needed work for locals, but the cleaning and property maintenance is intense. Think insects, dead insects, snakes, plants that grow half a foot a day, gecko poop, spider webs that appear within an hour of cleaning, etc. It isn’t like living in a temperate climate, where you can clean a space, close the door, and it stays like that until the guest arrives. Ask me how I know.

I have no staff, and I don’t clean the guest space until 4-16 hrs before a guest is due to arrive. And I might clean the shower stall and toilet 16 hours before, but leave the rest until a few hours before check-in. Other than removing the garbage and the used towels, I never clean as soon as a guest checks out, unless another check-in is imminent. I even leave the used bedding on the bed. And if a guest’s arrival time is delayed by even 4 hours, I will go in to make sure it doesn’t need a quick last minute vacuum or dusting or insect removal.

It is normal and respectful for guests to give their ETA, not tell the host the space needs to be pristinely clean regardless of when they check-in without notice. Of course a guest may be hours late, or even a day or two late due to unforeseen circumstances, but decent, respectful guests will convey that to the host, unless they are in a situation where they can’t, like being on a flight that gets delayed, or not having a cell or Wifi connection. Expecting the host to ensure the space is pristine, regardless of at what point in a booking the guest shows up, without notice, is absurd, given the cleaning situation in tropical climes I explained. So this host’s cleaners should have to go in and clean daily, for 8 days, even if the guest never shows up?

2 Likes
16

I would probably dodge the bullet and cancel her reservation and take the hit if you have to. If you do decide to host her I would take a slow video as well as stills of your place with timestamp to prove any damage. She sounds like a nutter. I think that the room should be already spotless on whatever day she shows up is a given, in my neck of the woods…but so glad you all explained about tropical places that can have all sorts of creatures showing up after you have cleaned. At the end of the day I don’t think I would host this women…i would cut my losses and sleep well without hosting that kind of crazy.

2 Likes
17

Cancel cancel cancel the booking!

2 Likes