An interesting airbnb story

We had an interesting experience with airbnb last week...

- We had a guest and her best friend staying for 3 nights. They were lovely via airbnb messaging and had 41 5 star reviews- all shouting praises from the rooftops. They checked in on Tuesday with checkout on Friday.
- On Thursday at lunchtime, we received an email from our strata manager saying that there were several complaints from neighbours about lots of shouting and screaming including "see you in heaven" and someone yelling "help me, help me" repeatedly.
- We contacted airbnb first to ask what to do and they recommended we contact our guests which we did, and the main girl wrote back immediately apologising profusely and saying yes her friend had basically gone crazy and started yelling and had subsequently disappeared. She had since filed a missing persons report with the police!
- We thought it was all a bit strange so called the police to verify a missing persons report had in fact been filed - it had.
- The next morning (Friday, when they were due to checkout), we received some more complaints from our neighbours via our strata manager saying they'd had a weird altercation with the guest and the police had also come to the house at 1am.
- We checked in with the guest again (who by this time had checked out) and they said they had actually checked out the night before and the friend had returned- so not sure whether to believe the guest or the neighbour who is very clearly anti-airbnb
- Cleaner confirmed everything was in order and nothing seemed amiss other than loads of candles everywhere which did seem strange...

Some thoughts:
- I realise this was not ideal and do feel bad for the neighbours but not sure what additional screening could have been done- from a risk perspective I would have never denied these guests in a million years given their friendly and responsive messages and excellent reviews
- As I have said before, as above, yes this is not ideal. But the guests were due to checkout the following day and if I was really mean I could have kicked them out immediately. Compare this to a traditional rental (in which case you wouldn't pick this kind of issue up through traditional screening) and you would be limited in terms of what you could do in terms of kicking the tenants out- it would be an uphill battle
- regardless of the above, I am looking forward to some time off from airbnb and not have to deal with things like this

 

Ah, candles. Coupled with the 'help me, help me' and 'see you in heaven'. Clearly an exorcism.
Not much you can do, I guess.
Next time you see that neighbour you'll have to say, 'Hey, how bad were those guests? Aren't we both lucky they were only there for a few days and not long term tenants. You would have been stuck with them for ages.'

 

Very bizarre indeed, I would probably just kick them out in the first instance. I do not want to upset my neighbors and the BC manager.
Would you give them a good review or a honest one?

 

Make sure you give them an honest review.
Marg

 

Why is that, have you decided not to do it anymore?

 

What would you write in the review?

 

Our bank doesn't count airbnb income as income so we can't release our equity! I have written about this separately "Airbnb and Banks"

 

The facts as you described them.
Marg

 

I am guessing mental illness may be a factor here.

From what you've said, it sounds like the situation could not have been avoided and you handled it in the best way possible. Neighbours will always hate Air BnB so there isn't too much that can be done there unfortunately.

 

HAHA I can't imagine how you would write that review to be honest. That sounds pretty freaky to me and I don't reckon I would had turned them down either as everything appears to check out. As the review is mainly written about the person you can only assume that woman's friend was the cause of it. In terms of marks for communication, cleanliness and observance of house rules it should like you can only mark her down on the latter which should include adherence to laws (noise pollution after hours) or BC bylaws.

I would probably just say "XX was lovely and communicated well. They kept the place neat and tidy on check-out." You can't really say much else.

 

"Had a devil of a time"

 

"XX was lovely and communicated well. They kept the place neat and tidy on check-out. However the neighbours made complaints about noise multiple times and called police at 1am."

 

I think I used to be Airbnb's number one fan but it is definitely losing its lustre for me lately.

In addition to this crazy guest in the last week we've had:
- incessant messaging from a neighbour in regards to this incident via the airbnb app
- two guests who locked themselves out
- one guest who got a parking permit when they failed to display the parking permit (which we clearly state numerous times in the instructions)
- one guest who refused to check out on time even after the cleaner came

Does anyone have experience with complaining neighbours?? What do you do to appease them?

 

I feel bad for you as all of these things are little annoying things. I haven't taken the leap to Airbnb yet, but I think these little niggles are likely worth the trade off for the extra $$$$
Maybe you could make the neighbours life miserable and drive her out of the building (joking) maybe just bribe her with some movie tickets and chocolates or something?

 

This maybe helpful.
Noise complaint by neighbour - Airbnb Community

 

Jodes, some people will never be appeased. Your troublesome neighbour will keep complaining. I suspect he/she complains about lots of things all the time. Does she harass your guests and make them feel unwelcome? That will come and it will affect your reviews. I'm lucky with my Airbnbs because I am the neighbour.

 

Stop givening them the S H 1 Thompsons.

This is their home, and if you check Strata By-law 1 in NSW:-

Noise
An owner or occupier of a lot must not create any noise on the parcel likely to interfere with the peaceful enjoyment of the owner or occupier of another lot or of any person lawfully using common property.

then maybe your business ventures are placing you in breach.

Given your earlier post says the police attended at 1am, maybe you have the laziest police in the area, or your guests (and I use the term loosely) were carrying on like pork chops after midnight.

Maybe your should consider buying some flowers and/or a bottle of wine (don't skimp) to go with your apology to your (hopefully not long-suffering) neighbours.

And give your guests a 1 star review.

 

Maybe you could use the extra $$$$ to alleviate your own grief when you find out that your IPs doors and windows have been super-glued shut.

If you want to share your apartment, fair enough, but if you want to operate a hotel, then buy a hotel.

 

@Depreciator , luckily you are the neighbour, and keep a lid on any issues.

Maybe @jodes neighbour just gets p'ed off with some Airbnb nutter going berserk at 1 am in the morning, which just seems to cause some review anxiety for the OP, as opposed to being excruciatingly sorry for the pain caused to other neighbours, due to the inappropriate choice of guest.

But painting the complaining neighbour as troublesome is a bit out of order, as no history has been provided by the OP.

But the $$$ coming to the OP will make up for it, so maybe the neighbours should just suck it up.