My Airbnb hell!
It sounds like the perfect middle-class money making scheme – rent out your house while you’re on holiday. Yet, when one mother returned home she was met with scenes of devastation
we flew off for our New York holiday. My parents later phoned to say the guests seemed pleasant and polite and kept us updated throughout the fortnight, after short chats when they were coming and going, that all was fine.
So when we arrived home to find the house in disarray, and our children’s rooms trashed, it was devastating.
It sounds absurd to use a word like violation, but that’s how I felt.
The guests had disrespected not only our precious home, but the rooms where my children play and sleep; places where, until now, there had only been happy times.
My parents struggled to square the damage with the seemingly pleasant family they had met.
Thankfully, nothing was unsalvageable or irreplaceable, and the children weren’t a fraction as upset as we were.
But it took days to make everything ‘ours’ again, all the while being so angry at ourselves for falling for the Airbnb dream. The dream that it’s easy to make money out of your home because most people are trustworthy.
Yes, they may be. But when you get one who isn’t — or who, as in our case, lets their children run riot in a way I’d never let mine behave — it’s far more of a nightmare.
Before this happened, I was reassured by statistics such as 100 million people in 34,000 cities in 191 countries having used the site. But having seen the worst of Airbnb, I now can’t believe I welcomed strangers into my home.
Yes, I’d done my best to check up on them but there was no way for me to be certain that they didn’t have police records.
And they might be who they say they are, but that doesn’t mean they have the same values of decency and respect for others as I do.
It was hard to find out how to claim compensation from Airbnb through the ‘host guarantee’ — you really have to search for the ‘Resolution Centre’ on the site. I couldn’t find a customer service email address or phone number either.
Nor did I find much information on what, exactly, Airbnb does if your guest breaks your house rules.
But the first step was to try to resolve the situation directly with the tenants.
I had to say why we were making a claim and itemise costs — £900 for a handyman to repair the damage and repaint the floorboards, £420 for extra cleaning and £345 for replacing lost and damaged possessions. In total we asked for £1,665.
I’d taken photographs for evidence, although they barely conveyed the horror.
Rob denied everything. He said parents couldn’t be expected to monitor children all the time, and claimed they’d cleaned the house before leaving. It was ridiculous. So I went to Airbnb. Again, the process wasn’t userfriendly — you only get 100 words to explain the claim, you can’t update it or add photos once posted, and there was no email confirmation the claim was being handled.
A few days later, after chasing, I
My little girl’s doll’s cradle was smashed to bits
heard from an American advisor at Airbnb HQ.
She asked me for more evidence, so I sent, again, every photograph, my correspondence with Rob, and also our cleaner and handyman’s written quotations, testimonials, and phone numbers.
To our amazement, ten days after I first raised our dispute, I got an email confirming the full £1,665 compensation was being paid. We were very satisfied. Presumably Rob lost his £500 security deposit, but I assume Airbnb paid the rest.
They say such claims make up a tiny percentage of Airbnb stays. Spokesperson Alison Holberton told me that, in 2015: ‘Significant property damage (claims that were reimbursed under our Host Guarantee program for over $1,000) was reported to us 0.002 per cent of the time or approximately one in every 41,000 guest arrivals.’
She added: ‘One hundred million guests have stayed on Airbnb and problems for hosts and guests are incredibly rare. When we are made aware of issues, we work fast to help take care of our community and help make things right.’
But a month later, Rob’s profile is still on Airbnb. Thankfully, anyone who checks him out will see my one- star review in which I listed the wreckage (his review of me was: ‘Great’).
And I’m not the only one I know to have had problems. An acquaintance was recently awarded £6,000 compensation by the site after drug dealers partied in her London flat and she had to redecorate.
Despite having called in the police, she hasn’t been put off using Airbnb, though she says she will listen to her instinct more carefully in future if someone seems ‘off’. How I wish I’d listened to my instinct when I read Rob’s abrupt messages.
My husband and I recently discussed braving Airbnb again but Phil thinks it’s not worth it.
And every time I remember the look on my daughter’s face when she saw her broken doll’s cradle, I think he’s right.