Wild, it's almost as if being a landlord comes with obligations.
I talked to someone who was renting out their basement apartment on AirBnB for a few months before a remodel was scheduled. They had one tenant try to file complaints about everything, down to the color of the bedding not matching the photos posted online. “Property not as described in listing”.
They ultimately won, but it was a lot of hassle.
Any marketplace has these issues. Getting the balance right is hard. I’ve had to fight a similar battle on eBay where someone waited until 4 hours before the claim deadline to file a claim that my “item was not as described”. They then requested a return and gave me a fake tracking number that never arrived. It took months and months to sort it out, but eBay was actually decent about looking at the facts. Still an annoying time sink I could have done without.
This doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Maybe the listing should match what they were actually offering to rent?
OP's scenario sounds like a shithead (which exist everywhere on every platform) was abusing the system to save some cash.
Yes I insisted on and got a full refund -- they were advertising a boutique, romantic getaway, not a cheap motel near the beach.
It’s insane to demand that the sheet color at an Airbnb match the color on the photo. It’s not materially relevant.
Now if the photo showed a queen bed and you got a twin, that would be a material difference. Perhaps even if the sheets were shown as cotton and you got something else.
But for me if I escape an Airbnb alive, I count it a win.
You see the same thing in fast food advertisements. A glorious hamburger on TV, and a greasy smushed mess when you purchase one.
The question is why we tolerate the latter, not why we should accept the former.
Otherwise you’re dealing with random public in your house with all the issues associated with that. At least with renting to a business you have some sort of middleman.
She also used to run an Airbnb on the floor below me until this summer, so go figure.
You have to research “tenants from hell” on YouTube to get a bit of an understanding of it, but even then the successful landlords often don’t even correctly account for all the finances and times and work out what they really made.
One bad tenant (or one bad uninsured disaster and there are thousands of possibilities here) can destroy years of leveraged appreciation.
We have multiple full-time, short term rentals and will not list them on Airbnb because they do not let hosts set their own cancellation policies and even worse they will override the few options they do give you.
A real world example of this is happening right now for us with our units in Hawaii. We have a 60 day no refund policy. 100% refund before this. We highly encourage trip insurance and you must check a box to opt of getting it. In our refund policy we state do not refund for weather or natural disasters. In these situations Airbnb will give the guest a full refund regardless of your policy, where Vrbo will let the host decide if they want to break their policy because of the unique situation. FWIW we gave full refunds.
Sounds like the marker is working as designed. Buyer and seller have to find agreeable terms, otherwise no deal and move on
Also, if they do cancel in the 60 day window we relist the dates and if they get rebooked then we give that money to the person who canceled.
If I had booked and found that you could no longer provide the service you promised but refused a refund I would feel as though I were scammed.
Personally, of course if the unit is inaccessible or damaged we provide refund. If travel restrictions change we always reach out to future guests and allow them cancel at that point. We've refunded guests that don't check-in for two months even though the city in Maui we are in had no fire damage and the roads.
People really want short-term rental owners to always be trying to scam, but many of us are just small business owners and try to do the right thing.