Their First Guests Were Their Last
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“We thought we’d try Airbnb hosting… and our first guests were addicts. The chick had paranoid schizophrenia, would wander around the house laughing and crying while hysterically staring at the walls and screaming at her partner throughout the day and night. She’d walk into our bedroom at 3:00 am asking for money. The guy was constantly in and out of the house. We found out they were slowly taking our belongings that weren’t immediately obvious and pawning them. The guy ended up squatting in the other room and we only found him on the last morning. We lost over a thousand dollars worth of stuff, Airbnb wouldn’t cooperate with the police to identify the people who stayed in our house because they gave us false names. Never again.”
A Secret (And Destructive) Wedding
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“They had an Indian wedding without telling us. The place was trashed. Stank like curry. They left a hot iron on the kitchen table and left a burn mark. There was pizza face down and smashed into the carpet of the kid’s room. Garbage in the pool. Trash all over the yard. Never again.”
She Blew Up Over A Small Rule
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“We had an old lady who wouldn’t comply with one of our clearly listed rules about no outdoor shoes in the house. First, she tried to make us think we were gonna lose a potential valuable guest because she was ‘really considering staying long term.’ She got upset that ‘kids’, not half her age, were telling her what she can and cannot do. She sent me a wall of text of her complaints, all of which were nonexistent before the shoe issue. Eventually, she called to tell me my family was stupid for not knowing our place in life. She threatened me with ‘trouble’ if I was gonna cause trouble in her life then followed up by saying this is not a threat.
I told her she was no longer welcome to stay with us.”
Bombarded By Bros
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“We had a couple of different Airbnb groups staying this night…the troublemakers were some younger Europeans who were staying for a couple nights. We had no issue before their arrival or at check-in, the first night went fine with no incident, all seemed great.
The next night, I walked downstairs at 3:00 am to the kitchen into a drinking game area using our table and my other guests had called or texted me as they were being kept awake. These people were not being quiet, they were acting like it was a weekend in their party house. After I asked them to stop the game and wrap it up as they are keeping other people in the house awake, they apologized and eventually wrapped up about 30 minutes later.
I thought everything was good, until around 6:00 that same morning. I woke up to fire alarms going off in the house and run downstairs to the living room and kitchen filling with smoke and a bunch of confused idiots just standing around. I notice that a suitcase had been left on top of our floor furnace. Apparently, the Europeans left their luggage on the furnace, and then turned the heater to full blast, thus melting the suitcase, and no one thought to pull the suitcase off as it was dripping into the furnace, so I just grabbed it and dragged it off and yelled at them to start opening windows. It caused hundreds of dollars in damage to the furnace and the carpet around it.
They ended up fighting me for reimbursement, they didn’t feel inclined to give me anything. Luckily, Airbnb stepped in and covered the expenses. Oh, and I forgot to mention that one of the males of the European group punched a hole through the bedroom door on their last night. I had almost forgotten about that, and they couldn’t be bothered to notify me, found the poor door the next morning after they left in a hurry. It was a real class act.”
He Caused Thousands In Damages
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“The worst guest we ever had was a very large overweight guy, we will call him Willie. He seemed nice enough but he had a tendency to leave his milk cartons in the sink with the cold tap running instead of using the fridge ‘because he didn’t want to bother us.’ This, of course, led to a flood in his upstairs room but we didn’t realize this until after Willie’s other problem came to fruition.
Willie, due to his size, had a tendency to take mammoth poops, poops so massive that our plumbing had issues dealing with it. Because he couldn’t use his toilet and didn’t want to trouble us with the overflowing toilet situation, Willie had started going directly in the shower and tried to use the hot stream of water from the shower to melt his mammoth poops down the drain. Lovely.
Anyway, Willie thought he had the problem solved, but all it did was delay the inevitable. The shower drain started flooding soon and this was where the fun part started.
A guest on the ground floor was complaining about the power cutting out to his room, turns out the problem was larger than that, something was tripping the power on that entire half of the building. We tracked it down to the bathroom light in the room directly beneath Willie’s. I removed the casing for the bathroom light only to be greeted with a face full of brown, slightly lumpy water.
This was how Willie wrecked two rooms, caused over £10,000 in damages and created electric problems we are still dealing with.”
She Tried To Seduce Him, Then Tried To Sell Him Organic Products
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“I was new to Airbnb and my prices were very low. At that time I was 21 and thought it was only boys and girls like me who used it. I signed up pretty much to hang out with people my age, show them the city, and have a great time.
My first guest was a middle-aged woman who was attending a Robbie Williams concert in the neighboring city. She was very sweet and kind when I talked to her through Airbnb, so I let her use my cheap apartment, which I also live in.
She didn’t check in before 3:00 in the morning and she was very wasted when she arrived. I had work the following morning, so I really felt like sleeping. When I let her inside, she was very noisy but after about 30 minutes she fell asleep. Then I was woken up suddenly by her trying to sneak into my bed (keep in mind, she had obviously been drinking heavily), so it was not very smooth.
I asked what she was doing and told her to use the other room. She refused and said she wanted to cuddle with me — also saying she was willing to pay more. I told her, quite aggressively, to use the other room or leave. At that point, she simply got mad at me. After about 15 minutes, she busts the door open and comes back into the room trying to sell me some of her organic product called vitamin plus or something. I was furious. She kept going on and on for about an hour before she fell asleep. At least she gave me 5 stars. Since then I had two more guests, they were was also a nightmare – I quit Airbnb after that.”
His Guests Drove Him Insane
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“I’ve been renting out for Airbnb for about 18 months now. I’ve had about 48 different stays for roughly 90 nights and made $4k. Nothing special, but money for our own vacations.
Anyway, it was the last weekend of 2015 and we needed 10 stays to become Superhosts (a status that sticks out and helps bump up our price). It was three people — I thought they would be dudes for some reason, but they were women. They were students visiting from China and their communication was pretty bad.
The whole thing started off terribly. One girl was deathly afraid of dogs and cats… we had a dog and two cats. They are excellent pets; my girlfriend is a dog trainer. She wouldn’t even come inside. We finally convinced her to come in. She keeps her back to the wall her entire stay and asks in broken, mumbling English if the dog or cats were in the area so she could walk up and down the hallway from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Speaking of the bedroom, we had two rooms available, but they picked just one and all three slept in the queen bed. They cooked one meal a day and would stand in the kitchen and eat from the bowl. The never sat down, relaxed or enjoyed any part of the house.
Day 2 got weird. I started noticing one girl constantly pacing up and down the hallway. She would stomp-walk all over the house while she paced. She also would open and close (slam) the bedroom door 10-15 times in a row in quick succession.
I’m getting angry at the dog girl because she SPRINTS up and down the hallway because our dog normally just sleeps on the couch. This was offensive to me because this dog is a saint.
Then New Year’s Eve comes and they stay inside. They yelled and argued from 10:00 pm to 12:30 am when I finally knocked on the door. They apologized immediately so they knew they were loud, but it was yelling for 2+ hours.
It just got to the point they were incredibly annoying. When they left, they left our front window wide open and the door unlocked.
I just…it sucked. We increased the price per night, being the cheapest in the area just brought the worst people trying to save a dollar. Even bumping up our price $5 or $10 kept them at bay and gave us better people.”
The Festival Girls
“My worst guests were my first guests. They asked if I could give them a lift to a music festival they were going to later for a bit of extra cash, no big deal. So they arrive and seem really nice. Six hours later, I’m driving them to the festival and I’m glancing in the rearview mirror at two girls sitting behind me every now and then because I notice they can’t keep their heads up and their eyes are rolling around like crazy. I ask if they’re alright and the girl behind me just spews everywhere in my car and it goes between the gap of the headrest and the seat and bits are splashing down my neck and then her friend starts vomiting at the sight of her vomiting.
I’m absolutely freaking out and try to find somewhere to pull over so they can finish vomiting outside my car. Eventually, they stop and ask me to drive them back to the house. When we get there, I call up a neighbor who is a nurse come and check out what is up with these girls. She tells me she suspects they’ve had some illegal substances, which I sort of expected.
The other two girls who weren’t vomiting and struggling to keep their heads up wanted me to take them to the festival still, so I drove them there and quickly came back to see if the first two girls were okay. I periodically checked up on them while cleaning my car seats but I decided to just leave them until morning.
The next morning I see two cars that weren’t there before driving out. They apparently had invited some friends over. They come to say goodbye, thank me for the stay, and quickly drove off. I immediately inspect the place to see what they had done, and it was horrible. Vomit on and under the couch, used rubbers on the couch, makeup everywhere, face washers and towels covered in actual poop, food left out all over the place and on the walls and floor, poop next to the toilet on the floor and all the little things are gone like soap, cereal, tissues, coffee pods, etc. It was unreal. It took me a solid six hours of cleaning and sterilizing to get it to get it back to the way it was before.
Not the greatest start to Airbnb for me. I was terrified every guest would be like this, but thankfully so far, they have been the worst. A year later I’m still doing it and I’ve had some really lovely people stay.”
“He Freaked Me And My Partner Out So Bad”
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“We hosted a guy in our spare room who had night terrors. He would thrash and scream bloody murder in the middle of the night, and freak me and partner out so bad. It seriously sounded like he was being assaulted by demons — howling, yelling, thrashing. He stayed with us a few days and would get up and leave for work really early in the morning before us so I never was able to confront him to ask, ‘Uh, you know, you were screaming and thrashing last night, are you alright?’ I also didn’t feel it was right to mention it in his review — what good would that have done? Otherwise, he seemed completely normal.”
She Has Only Written One Negative Review…
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“I rent out my boyfriend’s vacation house on a very expensive Greek island. The worst guests we ever had were a couple from California. They ruined all of our pots and pans (burning it to such a degree that we had to throw them away), hid garbage anywhere that they could, painted on the floor in black paint, called the lovely friend of ours who was helping with the booking at all hours SHRIEKING about literally everything.
The next day when they were supposed to check out, they harass me and the other girl helping, saying that they wanted to stay and refused to leave. After they finally left I found the woman on LinkedIn and one of her jobs is a snake dancing therapist… I wrote them my only scathing review because I sincerely hope that no one rents to them ever again. By the way, after I wrote them that review they never contacted me to apologize for all the damage they did or rude stuff they said. We have a very serious screening policy with Californians now…”
A Horrific Scene
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“My cousin is a crime scene photographer and had to go take pictures at an Airbnb place a few weeks ago. The guy who was renting it drank himself to death, there were a ton of empty bottles everywhere (some peed in) and he had pooped at some point and smeared it all over the place. The owner of the place was like ‘You gonna clean this up?’ My cousin said, ‘Nah man, I’m just here for pictures, but I can give you some gloves.’ So the guy had a dead body and poop all over his house.”
They Lied About Who Would Be Staying
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“A woman that my mom works with rented out her house during SXSW a couple years ago. It was supposed to be a guy renting the place for his son and a few of his friends, but as you can guess, it wasn’t.
Turns out, it was A$AP Rocky’s manager (or someone in a similar role) who rented it for the group. When the woman got back after the festival, the place was trashed and absolutely reeked of smoke; they spent at least a couple grand repairing the place afterward and Airbnb wasn’t too helpful either. The worst part was that the woman and her family had just made significant renovations to the house and finished them with a couple weeks to spare to get the house ready for the event, only to have to redo everything.”
She Couldn’t Understand Why She Got A Bad Review
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“I own a house that has two apartments, upstairs and down. We live upstairs. When my tenants moved out I turned downstairs into a vacation rental. 95% of my business comes from Airbnb.
A lady stayed over Christmas with her two kids. She spilled jellied grease all over the gas stove top, high enough to clog the igniter, and left it there. Her kids smeared chocolate all over the couch pillow. The place was left a mess. I took pictures and left her a bad review. She started texting me the next day, saying shame on me. I simply replied with the pictures, especially the measuring cup full of the jelly we pulled off the stove. She said, ‘So you want to make sure nobody ever rents to us again over a dirty stove?!!!’ I didn’t answer but I mean… yes. Exactly. I wouldn’t rent to you again, so I want to let others hosts know the truth.”
“Some Beefs Never Die”
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“It’s not my story, but I saw this in my local newspaper and this happened about two miles from where I live. A man rented out his mansion for a weekend to a couple on the understanding they wanted to ‘live in luxury’ for a few days. Turns out, these 35-year-olds decided to have a ‘high school reunion’ at the place. A couple of guys who had some longstanding fight going on showed up. One of them brought a weapon.
Some beefs never die, but people do.”
This Experience Made Him Stop Hosting
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“My worst guests were a pair of 18-year-old boys. One of them, it was his dad who made the arrangements on Airbnb because the kids’ flight was canceled or something and they were stuck in Atlanta for a few days. My housemate and I live only five minutes from the airport.
Anyway, it was a last-second booking and it was late when the guys got in. There’s only one queen-size bed but it was obvious they were hung up on sharing it because one guy was going to sleep on the sofa we had in the room. Nice guy that I am, I bring up my air mattress, hand pump, a set of my own sheets, my spare blanket, and two pillows. Then I brought them a couple burritos and cans of pop so they didn’t go to bed hungry.
These little brats were loud and obnoxious. They were up half the night cranking up the television and their music. They texted me one afternoon to ask if their female friend could also stay. As I was typing out a reply I saw them walking up the driveway with a girl between them. My housemate was livid. I had to explain to them why she couldn’t stay, that it was against the Airbnb rules and we could lose our account. They tried to offer cash and I kept saying no because if she got hurt on the property Airbnb’s insurance wouldn’t cover it and we could’ve been sued.
I think they stayed four nights. When they checked out I went to clean the room and it was TRASHED. Rubbish bin was overflowing, litter everywhere, some pink sticky substance on the bed and wood floor (80-year-old house, by the way). The microwave interior was covered in spattered food. They didn’t even bother to pull the plug on the air mattress. Normally it takes 30-45 minutes for me to clean the room, but it took three hours this time and our cleaning fee was only $20. We stopped hosting after that and I was tempted to send the father a lengthy note about how crappy his kid was.”
“They Had Their Revenge…”
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“I had a young couple want to start their booking a night earlier and promised to pay cash upon their arrival that night. Upon arrival, they refused to pay the next three nights after their booking started. They only came up with the cash once I reminded them that they had actually stayed longer than their booking dates and I was quite within my rights as a host to have them leave before their last night.
They got their own revenge on me by leaving fleas in the room. How can people carry fleas in their clothes and luggage and not do anything about it? Disgusting!”
They Left A Mess And Demanded A Refund
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“My wife and I are hosts and had a young French couple show up on a Friday evening.
We had guests checking in on Saturday afternoon and needed to clean the room between guests, but by midday (our assigned checkout time) we hadn’t heard a sound from the room. By 1:00 pm we were getting anxious, so I began knocking on the door. After 10 minutes of knocking and not getting any responses, I went into the room.
The guests had gone, spilled chocolate ice cream on the white sheets and left used rubbers on the floor.
We cleaned the room for the next guests and then noticed that we were reviewed by the French guests – they were demanding their money back because they didn’t realize my wife and I would be home (even though we advertise as a private room), because the place was ‘dirty’ and the common stairs in the apartment building were dirty. Turns out, they’d didn’t even stay the night but left and stayed in a hotel.
Needless to say, we did not refund them since they made more of a mess than any other guests we’ve had who actually STAYED there.”