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Post by High Priestess on Jan 8, 2016 10:48:54 GMT
This post is from the new Community Center: community.airbnb.com/t5/General-Hosting/CASE-CLOSED/m-p/15827#U15827CASE CLOSED Their customer service is awful. PERIOD! I had a guest stay, she broke my pull out couch and scored the flooring underneath. Air bnb will not answer any of my emails, saying they have closed the case. I now have to advertise my flat as a two person, rather than accomodating 4 as I cannot afford to get a new couch. I am will be leaving air bnb asap. Such a bitter taste in my mouth, I feel sick.
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Post by salvia on Jan 8, 2016 15:49:13 GMT
This "Suck-it-up"-and-shut-up" treatment seems to come up relally quickly when a claim is made. Gosh, it must feel awful! I am glad for every host who got refunded a damage out of the deposit or airbnb own pocket. But I do not rely for a minute on the host insurance or host guarantee. It seems to be worse than dealing with (some horrible) traditional insurance compa ies. Maybe in a seroius crime case the ID Verification is worth sometimesg for the police.. But if your own bome insurance does not cover damages or theft we are on our own. There is no chance to go after a guest from a road lohrselves if airb b fails. . I wouldi like the idea of a tailor-made Airbnb-travel insurance available (mandatory?) for GUESTS! CX staff would then not have to deal with claims untrained and inexperienced tas they so often are but the insurance company. I see better cha cey witt them.
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Post by High Priestess on Jan 8, 2016 16:00:32 GMT
Yes, I can only imagine the frustration when hosts dont' get the reimbursement for damages that they request. However, when a host states their claim was denied, I can't really know what happened there and why the claim was denied. Since I know that Airbnb does actually pay many damage claims (because hosts post on the groups that they submitted a claim and were reimbursed) then I have no idea why one particular claim did not get paid -- it can't be because Airbnb doesn't pay any damage claims.
Because I am a host, I tend to be biased towards the host, and tend to believe the host in most cases. There is much less reason for a host to lie, than for a guest to lie. And there are bad renters out there. At the same time, (and I think many of the posts on the forums indicate this) there are a lot of hosts out there who dont' quite know what they are doing, and sometimes that means, not knowing how to effectively communicate to a third party about damages, and provide evidence. On the other hand, who knows, in this particular case, maybe the guest lied so thoroughly and convincingly, that Airbnb really didn't know what happened and, not knowing who to believe, denied the claim. So it could really be the guest's fault and the guest's lies that created this outcome, more than Airbnb.
Which all comes back again to the importance for hosts of good screening, to try to avoid even taking the kinds of guests who will damage things and/or lie. I have had enough problems with renters in my life, that I finally realized that it is somewhat pointless to depend on legal cures that one has as a property owner -- meaning things like security deposit, insurance, or the court system. So you are wise Salvia in saying you don't depend on these things. I think it would be better for all hosts if no host ever relied on getting reimbursed -- and just be happy if it does happen, but don't depend on it. If you consider that your screening of guests is your only protection from potential problems, you will do better in being much less likely to ever have to seek reimbursement that you may not receive.
By the way, I read somewhere recently that Airbnb host liability insurance only covers accidents, nothing else. This is very limited. There are a great many instances where an insurance claim would not spring from an accident. For instance, if guest sues the host claiming negligence in some area, such as -- refusing to make repairs that guest said were needed to keep the place safe.
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