Superhost but Banned for life on Airbnb

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Hi everyone,
We have been with Airbnb for 4 years now, hosting a guesthouse in Bruges, and have been Superhosts since the beginning, with more than 250 excellent reviews. We never had major problems, and if there were, Airbnb was always very happy to help, we always got the help we needed.

Mid december, we had a group of tourists staying in our house. The guesthouse is connected to our private quarters with a hatch in our ceiling (their bedroom floor). The hatch lead towards our hallway and our house, but is always locked, to give our guests their privacy.

The guests arrived in the middle of the night after a visit to the Christmas market in Bruges, drunk, and a few hours after their arrival, they (or one of them) urinated on the hatch, which is in the corner of the room (I suppose still drunk). This caused a massive leak of urine in our private quarters, the sound of the water pouring down woke us up: it was leaking down the floor through our oak ceiling, along the walls, damaging lights, art, and everything on its path.
We got up, called Airbnb asking what to do, because these guests were invading our privacy, they said to go in and collect evidence (with our smartphones, filming the damage and taking pictures). Thus we did. We knocked on the hatch, while getting urinated on (7 months pregnant at the time), they mumbled we could come in, we opened the hatch and asked what happened. They denied what happened, although it was obvious…

I even wrote a post in the Community online, asking other hosts what to do. They told me to file a damage claim, which we did. We won the case quite rapidly, and got transferred around 2000 euros to cover for the damage, which was severe.
After that, our account was put on ‘inactive’ because the guests filed a complaint. We had no idea what it was, it must have something to do with us entering the room, but this was clearly a case of them invading our privacy instead of vice versa, and besides that, it was a massive leak, so clearly a case of force majeure, and Airbnb told us to go in and take pictures, which we did. We had no other option than to knock on the hatch and the guests themselves gave us permission to come in.

Yet, somehow, the revenge of a guest against a host who filed a damage complaint, is taken more seriously than a Superhost who has been with airbnb for 4 years. They say we breached their privacy while they were invading ours and Airbnb told us to go in. We even had the courtesy to knock and wait for their approval…
We are very sad about this, as shortly after, Airbnb decided to cancel all of our reservations, and even decided to ban us for life on Airbnb, with no possibility to create a new account.
When we called Airbnb, our cell phones did not get through, when we called with a different phone number (not connected to our account), the calls got through, but they told us our account manager was unavailable or out of the office. Yet, 2 minutes later, he was able to call our guests who were just checking in, to tell them they had to leave immediately as their booking was cancelled. ?!

I am curious to hear if anyone else has experienced this, if you google it you get different similar stories of superhosts getting banned for stupid or no reasons without even a clarification from Airbnb.

Is there any way to create a new account (I’m thinking about new IP address, new phone number, name, …?) or getting unbanned again?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Best regards,
Lynn

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My heart goes out to you here. Perhaps @PuppyLover can help but I recommend a lawyer for sure! Airbnb supported you with the damage claim right away so I imagine that it should be a relatively easy case to win if you can get it to one. If not then at least force arbitration.

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I mean no disrespect. But I am a little confused.

Most people tiddle in the 3-500 ml range, and drunk people aren’t inclined to hold it that long. It seems like a lot of expensive damage for what’s at stake.

Disgusting as it is, those of us who are parents pet owners, and victims of a leaky ceiling usually have a few hacks to minimize the damage.

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Hosts do have bans lifted @lienvelghe

Why not have a relative or your partner set up an account and add you as a co-host?

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You climbed through a hatch dripping with urine? :face_vomiting: Why wouldn’t you use the same door the guest’s use?

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My two cents are to take your business elsewhere. There are so many vacation rental websites. If you try to create another account and they realize it, they will again deactivate it and cancel your reservations. Best to use another platform. So sorry you had to go through this. Hope it all works out.

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Some hosts have found success by first fighting this on social media like their Facebook and Twitter accounts to make it a public embarrassment for them

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Are there any that do the private rooms in a house rentals similar to Airbnb?

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I was under the impression she rented out a guest house not a room in her home. For single rooms in a home, I don’t know of any other platform. I do have a friend that rents out a room in her house to college students. I think she ran an ad in the local newspaper.

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AirBnB’s Terms of Service provide for mediation (which may only apply in the US, and like many mediation provisions in contracts, it requires that you use Air’s choice of mediators). In the EU, provisions may be quite different. Like others have said, you might need to hire an attorney.

I hope that what Air Customer Disservice folks told you was on their messaging platform, not just on the phone. If I had something like this happening, I would record every phone call with Air CS, but such recording in my state only needs the consent of one party to the call and laws may be different where you live.

I would try embarassing Air on Twitter and Facebook to see if you get a response. If not, it may be time to call lawyers. FYI you can’t sue for damages in the US but you can in the EU.

One US based host won a case against both Air and a guest for closing her listing because she had a pet toy that looked like a pistol.
See

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In the EU, you can sue Airbnb for both reinstatement and damages. I expect that you can file suit and when the papers are served to Airbnb, it will dawdle around and then as the court date approaches, an attorney will call you and say you are “reinstated.”

That was my case at least. However, I was not truly “reinstated,” my dashboard became active but my listings were not active or visible, until I kept contacting their attorney to get me truly “active.”

I also got a damages offer to settle the case that was ridiculously low, that I refused and we went to court.

My saga is here:

http://charmcityhomestay.com/airbnb-legal-saga/

If the EU has the concept of “joint tortfeasors,” you can sue both the guests and Airbnb, for your losses and to force reinstatement.

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Yes there are @JohnnyAir, depending on where you are based. If you google for homeshare’s in your area, you will see listing companies that advertise these come up.

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hi Mandi,
It was on the advice of other hosts at the Airbnb Community that we had estimates made of the damage; this includes intensive cleaning (ammoniac), sandbeaming the ceiling where the stains where, and new varnish and paint with extra coating to prevent the ammoniac from getting through… I know it’s a lot, but I asked only the damage deposit, although the estimates were around 2000 euros. The damage deposit was 500 euros. Airbnb payed it straight away the full amount, more than we hoped for, I suppose it was from some sort of fund they have for these kind of things, and guest having to pay only the damage deposit that you choose…

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Hi Brian,

Because it was the shortest way, and at that time, we did not know what it was, it was just a lot of water so it might have been a leak… Unfortunately, we knew soon enough that it wasn’t just water… LOL

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thanks, I might try that!

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Wow, I can’t believe that one individual actually can win a case against this huge holding. It might be worth taking it to an attorney, but I’m just not up to all the costs (I don’t know about the US, but here in Belgium, you pay 100 euros for one hour of your lawyer’s time)…

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Yeah, it’s a guesthouse but i’s connected to our house (we bought the house next door, and connected it to our house, so our attic is part of the guestrooms, running through our house. So it’s kind of a guestroom rental partly seperated from ours…

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I’ve heared stories that it doesn’t work, because to become a co-host, you must make a new profile, and that’s simply impossible because every data you gave them, will light up like a red flag if you re-use it…

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That’s why I represented myself. You are free to use the legal papers (see my link, above) that I filed as a template for your own.

Digital commerce is such a brave new world that IMO you can certainly represent yourself w/o paying an attorney a fortune.

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Surely it depends on the data, I am sure your partner has their own email, phone, photo ID, payment channel etc S/he can take their own photos and write their own description.

The only thing the same would be the listing address, but then people move in and out of places all the time.

Surely worth a try and a cheap and easy solution @lienvelghe