Hi,
Are there any Airbnb hosts (or regular guests) who could give me their opinions here?
It's a few days after leaving a room I was renting on Airbnb with my partner, and the host has now messaged demanding 500 euros extra... According to her, the state of the place was "catastrophic" (it really wasn't 
).
I will admit that we forgot to take a bag of fabric recycling with us, as well as an important parcel that we forgot to take with us to post so we were going to ask whether she'd mind passing that on for us (should be free as we put a label on it already, and we would have been prepared to give her something for her trouble if necessary).
The thing is though, she's taken pictures as "proof" of the "catastrophic" state we left in. One was a close-up of the toilet bowl, which she says "we must have put something into as the water was red and it can't be cleaned out properly" - this was ABSOLUTELY not like this when we left, and looks suspiciously like the aubergine curry that she cooked for us so that we could all eat together on the last day... also because it's a close-up it's not even clear whether it's in the bathroom we used or her one. The other thing she took a picture of was some bits of rubbish on the floor - but she's clearly fished these bits out of a bag full of bag-for-life bags that we left (because we thought she might like to have these as they're always useful) and we'd forgotten one of the bags had a few of plastic in, and she's put these directly on the floor and taken a picture from above.
More details so that I can't be accused of drip feeding:
- We left food, tea, etc. which we agreed beforehand as we all agreed that waste is a bad thing, especially in these times of coronavirus, and she said she could pass things on if there was anything she didn't eat herself
- We offered her a lamp of ours before we left, which she was very happy to take, as well as a couple of smaller items (a picture, an almost-full thing of face cleanser)
- Before we left, I asked if I could have her number in case we had any problems with our flight (bearing in mind all the cancellations happening, and that we were leaving the flat two days early) so that we could come back if necessary. She gave us the wrong number (I now wonder whether this was deliberate, as I asked if she was sure it was the right number as it looked too short, and she was adamant that it was). As requested by her, I texted to let her know our flight was fine, once we got back home, and also let her know about the things we had left (food etc.), and asked if she'd mind sorting out the parcel for us. Obviously we never had any replies
Is it really reasonable to try and charge us for more money in this case? The only thing we did do that we really shouldn't have done was to leave some fabric recycling in a bag (but this would be really easy to just throw into the fabric recycling bin a few minutes down the road).
We were so careful the whole time we were in that flat too, making sure to keep things clean, sort out plates, cutlery etc. as soon as we'd eaten, keep super quiet and out of her way as much as possible so that we wouldn't be a burden, and so on. I'm really upset now. 
We even helped her with setting up her new TV and Internet package while we were there, and then she turns round and does this. And I'm worried that Airbnb will automatically believe her over us because she has a really good rating.