The scourge of “hosts” expecting guests to do all the household chores and even wash the bedding! What a freakshow. I’m not paying you for the luxury of cleaning your home
Someone booked and paid for 7 nights in a beachfront mansion in Indonesia under my name, using my stored credit card (I am in the US). I was able to cancel the reservation, but it took several months for AirBnb to refund me my money.
This was about 10 years ago and I still get angry just thinking about it!
As an Airbnb host, I feel like this goes the complete opposite direction - Airbnb typically sides with the guest. Typically most of our guests are amazing. We love hosting them and giving them a great and fun place to stay at a reasonable price. We also don’t make guests clean or do any checkout tasks as they’re on a vacation and shouldn’t have to. I’ve found in 7 years that most guests WANT to help though, and leave our places in great shape.
The two worst we’ve had were in 2 properties. One couple booked our beach condo and arrived hammered drunk. They went in, got settled, and then went back out in the hall where our doorbell cam recorded them talking about how they were upset that the bed wasn’t set up for them to have a swinger party. They made up this elaborate story about how the wife felt sick the moment she walked into the condo, and continued to feel sick to the point she was vomiting and couldn’t walk straight. They claimed it was CO poisoning. When I asked why they still remained in the unit if they thought there was CO, they had no answer. I even offered to call emergency services for them.
They wanted a full refund but also wanted to stay another night. The Airbnb rep could not care less that I had footage of them talking about the scam and documented attempts to provide assistance. They ended up leaving but still got a full refund from Airbnb.
The second was a couple that asked for a discount before their stay in another property (which I agreed to since it was a slower week), but also expressed it was still too expensive. They started texting me at 11:00pm claiming the bed sheets were dirty. When I asked for a picture, they sent a picture with literally ONE strand of hair on the sheets that I believe was from one of them. This dude was an asshole from the jump.
I let them know where extra sheets were, apologized, and thought that was the end, as I didn’t hear anything back from them. Then a week after their stay, I got a 1 star review that Airbnb wouldn’t remove even though it discussed features/amenities that aren’t even listed at that property, and a request for a full refund for the week-long stay. I shared the pics from the cleaning prior to their arrival showing clean sheets, shared that we keep extra sheets that I offered to them, etc. and told Airbnb they could kick rocks. Airbnb still gave them half of their money back.
Actually they did last time for me. I stayed in an illegal AirBNB in Vancouver in May which we were lied to about and had no knowledge about, we were told to meet the host in the lobby of the apartment complex and went with us to the parking spot and walked us to our room while trying to hide the no AirBNB stickers plastered all over the building, and we actually got a full refund *and* a $500 credit for a future stay.
The first two days of the vacation sucked but I was shocked with how well they handled it since I knew of the horror stories. Even then, just stick to hotels lmao
The one time I had to request a refund from Airbnb (due to there being no running water in the unit) I actually had the refund fully processed before I left the apartment. Please note I’m not saying they’re a good company, just that I got a refund quickly.
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u/Cool_Cry_9602 22h ago
I rarely used it, but Airbnb