To my dismay I now know people do make false allegations. I had a woman staying with me on Airbnb. After she left she went to stay at her friend’s. She left me a great review. However, she then contacted me because her friend had thrown her out two days later. She begged me to stay at my place. I had a spare room, so I agreed as I knew she had a plane to catch a few days later.
After two nights of hearing her clunking and banging around at night, she was being outright rude, even irrational. I realised she was going to jeopardize my reputation with my latest Airbnb guest. I asked her politely and tentatively to leave because of the above issues and that I would take her bags anywhere in the city she wanted. She claimed she couldn’t sleep because she had bipolar disorder. I said I was sorry if that was the case, but that meant she needed professional help. To that, she threw a verbal fit (luckily the new Airbnb guest wasn’t home to hear it). It was the first time in my life I felt physically frightened by a woman.
She then threatened to “report me into Airbnb”. I said to go ahead and call them, but she still needed to leave. She had other friends in the city so it wasn’t as if I was leaving her in the lurch. Anyway, she left and two months later Airbnb contacted me to say there had been an ‘incident’ at my place. I had a 100% positive review rating and was a Superhost. They asked me to think who could have complained and structure my answer around that. I explained the above facts. I waited two weeks and was then informed that I was now banned from Airbnb permanently.
Lucky for me I can get a flatmate at the same rate, but it goes to show all someone has to do is have a gripe with you and make up an imaginary allegation and you will get banned from Airbnb. There is no fair investigation; Airbnb will just believe what’s alleged and keep the person who complained anonymous. I never even got to find out what the allegation was. That’s proof right there that people dream up lies out of spite. Airbnb cowardly discards their loyal hosts out of utter laziness. Please do not rely on Airbnb financially or expect their support. They are too big to care about their hard working hosts.
This is yet another frightening story from a well established Airbnb host. Airbnb better get it’s act together and protect it’s hosts from false allegations. I know that many hosts have committed large amounts if capital to cater for Airbnb sourced guests and I believe that they deserve better than a kick in the teeth by Airbnb.