Airbnb money grabbers

[Toetapper]

Airbnb hosts: Would you consider the following grounds for a refund?

The property was situated opposite a very noisy outdoor bar. I recorded 80db at 10pm at night, and I have videos to share. This was just the sound of the revellers - it was much louder with the music. The bedroom window on the top floor didn’t close, and so the noise was exceptionally intrusive. The property had not been adequately maintained. The listing does not reflect how the property looks now. Most indoor plants are dead. The garden was unusable, as it was dirty. We found a hair on the loo seat, a chip in the oven, mould on the window, and old laundry piled up. The windows were very dirty. Walls were scuffed and dirty. Decoration used for staging the property were taken down, leaving bare walls. The property is not adequately provisioned. We could not find the hair dryer. There was no washing up liquid, no bottle opener and just a handful of mugs. We complained as soon as we arrived, please check.

So, we spoke to Airbnb as soon as we got there. They didn’t resolve. The host declined to help. Said it was our fault for booking it as we should have known about the bar?! I disagree, and think that a/ he should have been honest about it, and b/ should have taken steps to mitigate noise for a comfortable stay. Instead not only was our bedroom window a rotting single glazed window, it wouldn’t close!

Offered a £300 ‘refund’ for our £1100 three night stay, but only if we vacated right away… assuming so he could rent it out again and pocket the £800 it would have cost us for the one night.

It’s now with Airbnb for arbitration, but I’m not holding out much hope. Any advice?

I swear on every AirBnb/cottage thread on here people get told they’re idiots for booking them and should have gone to a hotel, and on every hotel thread they get told they’re idiots for staying in hotels and should have got an Airbnb. Why is it so hard to accept that sometimes people get a shit deal?

I'm puzzled by the "dirty garden".
What does it mean ?

I think £400 per night is a lot of money and OP is quite right to complain.

I wouldn’t be happy with mouldy dirty windows, dirty oven, someone else’s dirty laundry and excessive noise either!

This is where booking an AirBnB falls down. You can’t just pop down to reception and get them to move you to a different room.

@Toetapper I definitely wouldn’t just suck this up. Hopefully AirBnB can sort a more realistic refund for you.

^ this.

Re the hair: sometimes I find my own hairs in the spaces I have just cleaned, it’s incredibly frustrating!!

I don’t think the chip is great, but to me it seems like you are looking for things to complain about (the plants, the patio) vs focusing on the genuine issue (noise and being unable to close the window). Focus on the main issue

Keeping an Airbnb maintained to a high standard is very very hard work and costly as it takes hours and frequent maintenance (much more so than a normal home). If you paid £1100 for 3 nights (so approx £180 a night for 2 rooms x 3) I don’t think this is outrageous

Factor in cost of cleaners for say 4 hours for a 2 room apartment (we spend 3.5 for 1 bedroom), laundry, frequent replacement of sheets & towels etc. I find you calling the hosts ‘money grubbing’ a little questionable: do you expect to be paid for the work that you do?

Yes, these are exactly what I was thinking!

There's a gap in the market between basic hotel and fully-featured self-catering/apartment hotels. A lot of the apartment hotels in the UK are designed with business customers/wealthy people in mind. You don't need an American sized fridge if you're on holiday!

We booked and Airbnb a few years back that had 300+ amazing reviews. Got there and it was literally a cabin in a mans garden - later looked back on the reviews and they all sounded the same etc. so we assumed somehow they were fake. We managed to find one genuine review that stated it was in his garden etc. So weird!

I'm an Airbnb host! I would expect you to get a refund on the cleaning costs as clearly the property wasn't clean enough, so definitely make sure to make that the focus and send all of the photos.

The noise from the bar is a red herring. My house is in a village not a city, but there are bars in the village centre a few hundred meters away and there's no way to control/know when they do their karaoke nights/live music/dancing nights etc. 99% of my guests will have utter peace and quiet during their stay, as do we when we live there ourselves, so there's no point/way for me to warn future guests that the surrounding bars might be noisy, without making it seem like they're always noisy and put off potential guests! I expect potential guests to look up where the house is and decide for themselves if they want to be that "close" to bars/restaurants. Sometimes the Monday morning market is noisy from 7am because Gerry from down the road decided to bring his guitar and do some busking, should I also warn people of that?

I think you have a good case for getting money back on the cleanliness and the broken window so I would focus your efforts on that and drop the noise, certainly as none of the other reviews mention it, that'll only make you seem petty/annoying to the owner/airbnb. If you have undeniable proof of dirt, then at least it doesn't matter if they think you're annoying!

You cant review without a booking on airbnb

Most of what you complained about is not going to get you a refund - untidy garden, scuffed walls, laundry, 1 chip and 1 hair. Noisy location I would also say is to be expected if you book a city centre location and on you to check on street view. Others haven't complained suggesting it met their expectations sorry

The issues to complain about are the poor cleanliness of the apartment and the non-closing window.

Other things like noise (in a city centre location opposite a bar) and an unswept garden (?) will distract from your genuine grievance.

I think some people have very different standards. We had a dreadful, AirBnb, dust everywhere, filthy, damp (we actually had to leave in the middle of the night as I had an asthma attack. She later admitted their cats had been in the cottage)(I am seriously allergic).
Apart from a handful of other people giving it a 3 or 4 star review everyone else praised the place.

I think a lot of people don't say anything bad about Airbnb and prefer to just keep quiet instead. That's unfortunate as they should all be honest.

If there were only a handful of reviews on a fairly recent listing I would say:

a) I would not have paid much attention to the reviews, or at all, since it was at least possible, that the owner had got mates to write some good reviews. For me, at least, when looking at 'review' sites,
b) Having looked at the criteria for Superhost status it all seems to be based automatically on good reviews - so see my comments above, as that will impact this 'title' if the reviews above were not 'genuine'

I'm sorry you were disappointed and I wouldn't have been happy with the lack of cleanliness either, nor the broken window, but those are the things you should be concentrating on when asking for a refund, but some of your complaints aren't really justified and I wouldn't be mentioning them when pursuing a refund to be honest. ( Although fine for you to put those things in your review)

"People used to also think it was extortionately expensive. I sat one guest down and went through all the fixed expenses of running a home in that part of London (home, not dedicated professional rental) and demostrated to him that he was barely paying more than the cost of owning and occupying that property on a per night basis."

That's a ridiculous comparison. I'd hate to be bullied by an Airbnb owner to sit down and listen to their tale of woe.

"People used to also think it was extortionately expensive" = it was very overpriced for the condition.

I am surprised none of the reviews mentioned the noise if it’s a constant issue. There is a box you can tick to say there will be noise disturbance as a host.

I booked somewhere recently that was sandwiched between 3 pubs and had a look on google maps, I cancelled sharpish after and rebooked somewhere in a quieter location (though I did pay a bit more).

The dirt definitely isn’t acceptable.

When did you alert the host to the issues?

I don’t think it warrants a full refund and am not convinced £300 is entirely unreasonable. Tbh if you actually stayed and didn’t explore alternatives I don’t think a full refund is warranted.

Same. I recently stayed in an airbnb and it was more expensive than a hotel. But I had two kids who had space to play, somewhere to store ice lollies. It was lovely. When we go abroad we stay in hotels and it’s fine but it’s nice having space and cooking facilities.

Same. I couldn’t possibly act on all the feedback - otherwise I’d never have made a penny.

I did take some of it on board though especially when more than one guest mentioned it.

Hi OP. I'm a host (one Property) and I use airbnb a lot. I would say everything you have mentioned is unacceptable, esp if the host has not mentioned that the property is opposite a bar. I would take.pictures of the mouldy linen and send those to airbnb support. We did similar as guests and airbnb actually took our side (and no we weren't hosts back then)

What I will say about the high prices currently being charged is that many of us make very little money. By the time we have paid airbnb their percentage, paid the cleaning and laundry and hamper (mine is £140 each time) and the mortgage there is nothing left and i often have to support it from my personal funds. I also pay double the council tax now. So if I get a complaint (not had one yet, touches wood) then I'd be very wary someone wasn't just looking for a free holiday. Absolutely not saying that this what you're about OP!

^ this. Booking & staying in the property

Always more risky booking somewhere with only a few reviews. More often than not you’ll either get a bargain (as they’re slightly underpricing to build up good reviews) … or you’ll get a stinker.

From you’ve described I think most if it falls under “overrated/overpriced property - leave bad review” territory rather than “refund” territory. That said I’d probably be looking for a small amount of compensation say 100-200 given that the window was uncloseable. Thats not on.

So id focus on that issue specifically with Airbnb and forget the other stuff in your communications with them. However, I would of course be leaving the property a very honest review to warn other guests.

Nearly £400 a night? What kind of place is it??

They delete ones which aren't - though I obviously can't speak for all of them - as I found out when a place didn't have a crucial facility which they'd advertised (and which I'd already checked was present just to be sure)

I wouldn't mind but the review was thoroughly objective, even praising the things which were good about the place, and AirB&B claimed it was "retaliation for a policy being imposed" which made no sense since there'd been nothing which needed imposing

Never again

We stayed in an Airbnb in Tipperary last summer because we have a small dog.
Sounded perfect in the description.
When we arrived we realised the pics must have been taken years ago. The cottage looked as if it was about to fall down.
Thankfully it was clean and shower was OK. Bedding immaculate, otherwise we wouldn't have stayed.

I complained that there should be more up to date pics
Also left a very honest review, mentioning the good points first. At least then anyone else booking will know exactly what they are paying for

One huge flaw in Airbnb reviews is that (apparently) AirbnB owners ca see reviews that a guest has left for other properties. Thereby if a guest has left several critical reviews (even among many good ones) some Airbnb hosts might decline their booking on the premise of them potentially being “difficult” (possible translation - expecting a clean and basically nice apartment). This leads I expect to many Airbnb guests self censoring their reviews out of fear of being refused future bookings. Result - loads of dishonest reviews.

Not the OP but at £1100 for 3 nights for a couple & min 1 child (as noted by OP) it’s £183 a night /per room

In a city centre … I cannot find a hotel room for this sort of price in London or Manchester…