We are a Superhost family who has been using Airbnb since September 2019. This was the second time around the Airbnb had sabotaged our listings. We recently had a nightmare guest, who had horrible reviews on Airbnb. We tried to give them another chance and decided to host them.
She was a nightmare. She sublet our house to a group of filmmakers and videographers to shoot a commercial for Adidas, while she was away. We saw in the surveillance cameras that a large group of filmmakers came to our house. They were taking all the furniture outside. When I called her, she didn’t answer. After this incident, she lied to Airbnb, saying that her friends who were staying at a different house came to visit her.
After she checked out, she left a defamatory nasty review, full of insults and attacks, lying about safety, etc. Her reviews were thankfully removed for violating Airbnb policy, but the Trust and Safety department — which I do not trust one bit — emailed to go over her booking. The last person I was speaking to twisted the story around and 30 minutes later she suspended all our listings. She claimed she was doing an investigation, based on the guest’s lies. We asked to speak to another one of the untrustworthy “Trust and Safety” personnel. So far there has been no luck since last Friday.
We’re planning to send a demand letter by tomorrow, and if this doesn’t work, sue Airbnb for unlawfully framing us for wrongdoing that we haven’t done. Any suggestions?
Also a production company is the one who sniffs out the leads for such a commercial and us obligated to have a legal contract in place with the rental. You are entitled to royalties for them using your house. You could sue for 2 million for moving furniture against your will. You could even make Adidas in your lawsuit as well.
Your experience sounds a lot like ours, except we had a wedding reception being done at our home instead of a commercial shoot. We called the guest out for violating our own rental agreement they had signed as well as Airbnb’s party policy (not more than 16 guests). The guest retaliated by claiming safety issues due to our cameras that were all made aware of to the guest beforehand. Airbnb removed us as hosts as a result without any real explanation and canceled our bookings. We had all 5 star reviews before that and made Airbnb a lot of money. The guest violated policy, not us. I would love to take down Airbnb.
You need to find out who the production company was for the Addidas commercial. It was incredibly unprofessional for the crew to not have the proper permissions to shoot. You own the images of your house. You could basically sue to stop them from using any images of your property.