I am writing to see if any of you have had a similarly frustrating and disappointing experience to ours. My partner and I have been renting on AirBnB for almost three years. We thought, hey, if any one of these virtual strangers that we meet through the internet robs us blind, we're covered!
No worries. We were dismayed to learn that this insurance plan is essentially a hollow falsehood. We had a guest stay with us who smoked so much marijuana he ruined the carpet my imbedding an odor that did not dissipate even after professional cleaning and washing the walls. The carpet cleaners said if the smell doesn't go away, we would have to replace the carpet pad and subsequently the carpet. The first surprise there was -- you cannot submit a claim directly to AirBnB, you have to request this fee from the person who rented.
So we requested this money from the renter, whose son was the guest in the room. That renter referred us to our son, who we learned after the fact is mentally unstable, and took this request of funds as a personal offense. He called and left threatening voice messages, wrote a series of angry emails and incessantly texted me at work.
He threatened to report my partner to the police for crimes he did not committ, and sent so many insane messages that I ended up filing a police report for harrassment. Not only was that extremely stressful, he also managed to lose two of our house keys, so we became extremely stressed that he would return and gain access to our house. I called AirBnB and filed a report of the harassment , and took their advice, which was to file a report to the police. AirBnB does not allow you to get them involved in the claim until 72 hours have passed, even if you feel physically unsafe, which I did as soon as possible.
The next surprise was that after you involve them, they do not allow you to submit an insurance claim of any kind, even though I asked them repeatedly to do so. At first, they just said it would be hard to get money out of the guest since there was "no proof" that they committed this damage.
