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Guest left a horrible review stating I am on drugs and saying me and my partner need to go to rehab.
Yes my ex showed up and caused a fight. It was loud and but my neighbour arrived pretty quickly to stop and make sure I was ok. Cops showed up, my neighbour called for me, the police made sure victim services would be called for me. I was scared for my life…my ex husband just showed up and has mental health issues and physically assaulted me.
This guest is saying all this fabricated nonsense when I am just a victim. He is saying I put his safety at risk.
Side note. Guest arrived and snuck in animal covered in carrier and extra guest.
Had a bad feeling about this.
He was not physically present to witness what happened.
Police arrive make sure I am ok…nothing even mentioned about substances like guest left in review.
Safety team at Airbnb contacts me after I got the fake review removed already but get this,
Sends me the email that she was supposed to send the guest.
I was appalled at the line of questioning as if I am the criminal. Then says sorry for sending in error. I am livid at this point.
Lots of emails back and forth, she tells me today due to investigation she is closing my calendar and may have to cancel current guest.
But will let me know if she decides to move ahead with current guest cancellation. Today it shows he is cancelled but still here at my Airbnb. So I texted him and asked if his reservation was cancelled and he said no?
Called customer service and they said he is cancelled but he is not from what he tells me.
This whole thing is so wrong on so many levels.
Can I be penalized for domestic assault? He doesn’t even live here and my rental is separate basement apartment not shared in my house.
This is crazy. Thoughts @PuppyLover
The situation has dealt you a very unfair hand, and – just on a personal level – it is terrifying when a mentally-unstable person is part of one’s life.
If justice prevailed the guest should be permanently banned from Airbnb for the drug libel. I don’t know your financial situation, but – if you can afford to – you might want to talk to a lawyer. At the very least a lawyers letter to Airbnb pointing out that the guest offered no specific evidence of drug use by a host who has never had any arrests or hospitalizations for drug use – and do they (Airbnb) not agree that it is unfair to cut of a host when the accusations are vague and do not offer one bit of eye-witness evidence of drug-taking… (BUT NO HEAVY-HANDED THREATS TO AIRBNB) and maybe Airbnb goes “We are over-reacting and this might come back to bite us in the ass – either in court or in the court of public opinion”
Although the guest’s decision to spin a tale of imagined drug use is inexcusable, I expect that what triggered it was fear for their own safety when they found out a physical assault took place in the vicinity involving the host. For most people, that is scary shit… even if the guest experienced it second hand. If I was the guest I would be thinking “What if I’d been home (at the Airbnb)?” “What if it had spilled out to my doorstep, or to the sidewalk as I was leaving the house?”
I would feel very uneasy about ever returning because, I would be thinking “…There are violent, crazy people here, and next time it might affect my safety.” I would have no idea who was the victim and who was psychotic and hearing voices or whatever was going on… but I would probably have figured out it was connected to this particular place and its people.
Then I would be faced with a dilemma – if I honestly felt uneasy for my own safety, what obligation did I have o warn other guests? (This is all quite separate from the inexcusable libel about drugs - which may have tipped the scales at Airbnb.)
This is a sad example of how mental illness not only destroys the lives of the afflicted person, but also has a profound, unfair tragic effect on the trajectory of family and close friends.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. I think that your safety comes first and you should be thinking how can you get this ex out of your life. Maybe sell the house and move elsewhere and don’t tell anyone except for immediate family and best friend. Start over. At the new house you can get a fresh start. Once settled into your new place, you can start hosting again. It’s not safe for you or your guests at your present location. You were lucky this time but might not be so lucky next time. Please consider selling and moving to get away from your crazy abusive ex.
I feel sorry for you to be at the receiving end of so much aggravation and turmoil but I reckon you’ve done well to engage with the other hosts on this forum, there’s a broad and contrasting range of views here and something helpful might drop out from your post (and not just for you).
Putting aside the extra guest, the smuggled pet and the distressing confrontation for the moment, it sounds like air senses they are getting drawn into a domestic spat and their response fits the pattern that I’m gradually seeing emerge, which is that, from a corporate point of view you are an asset that can be fed saccharine and meaningless responses that gradually exhaust you into silence but if you persist, you turn into a liability that is readily disposable.
I haven’t got a solution but in an earlier post here I remember that press involvement can sometimes be helpful to hosts but personally, I would be reticent to subject myself to public exposure.
Terrible situation and I’m so sorry this happened to you. Of course it is not okay for the guest to have accused you of being some sort of drug addict. And I hope you can get a restraining order against your ex- sounds like you need one.
But I am not surprised by Airbnb’s response and don’t think it’s outrageous for them to take the stance that perhaps your bookings need to be cancelled.
Airbnb has no knowledge of the exact circumstances of this assault and their concern is that guests are not subjected to dangerous or uncomfortable situations.
You seem to think that because the guest didn’t personally witness your ex barging in and assaulting you, and because your listing is a separate basement suite, that it is none of their business and nothing for them to be concerned about, which is simply wrong.
If I heard screaming and fighting from the host’s unit above me, what sounded like an assault taking place, I would certainly be afraid that I might also be in danger and wanting to get out of there ASAP. The guest doesn’t know that this is a one-off domestic assault rather than something that takes place on a regular basis, nor do they know if the perpetrator is some crazed maniac (and in fact you say your ex has mental health issues) with a gun who is going to try to enter the basement unit and harm them, too.
You don’t mention whether you made any attempt to talk to the guest who was in residence at the time to apologize (for the disturbance, not taking on any blame yourself) and explain what happened. Which could possibly have warded off the bad review, made it clear you weren’t on drugs and had no control over the situation, gaining the guest’s empathy rather than animosity.
As for your current guest- if your hosting pages show this booking as cancelled, it is cancelled, regardless of what the guest says.
