Guests damaged carpet in front of the entrance door in communal area

[Jordana3]

Hi everyone,

We're are new on Airbnb, unfortunately, our expereince so far hasn't been great. The first group of students we had as guests, partied a lot, judging by the 20+ beer and vodka bottles, despite our no party policy. The second family with teenagers broke the toilet flush, which we had to pay 80€ to repair. Our current guests had the fire brigade check the apartment this morning as they were cooking without the extractor fan on and the smoke in the flat triggered the communal alarm. Unfortunately, it looks like they burnt their food and in order to cool the cooking pot, they placed it on the carpet in the communal area, which left a deep burnt mark. The management company has suggested that the carpet has to be replaced and this may end up costing thousands of euro!

Is there anything we can do? The guests are still at the flat. The Host insurance doesn't seem to cover communal area damage and we have no security deposit set up. What can we do? Has anyone expereienced something similar?

Thanking you.

[Gordon0]

I don't hold out much hope for you I'm afraid. You could ask the guests to cough up, but I'd be surprised if they did. Don't you have communal area insurance as part of your block service charges?

Moving on, be choosier with who you accept. 

[Jordana3]

Thanks Gordon,

I'm not sure how the management company will react with regard to the insurance - the melted carpet spot is quite deep and in the middle of the corridor, I hope they won't have to change the whole carpet. I thought there might be something we can do...Guests are leaving tomorrow.

We are certainly not doing this again. Three very bad experiences. I thought all these horror stories we read in the news about guests were isolated cases, turns out we were wrong.

[Gordon0]

I think it's true to say that you haven't had the luck of the Irish, because these bad experiences are few and far between. Hope you get sorted. 

[David126]

@Jordana3

Make sure you have the name and address of the guilty party, the Guests, and pass their details on to the Management Company.

[Jordana3]

Thank you both, can you tell me how to get the guests full details - will Airbnb provide them? We texted them that we will be making a damage report with Airbnb, but there has been no reply so far.

[David126]

Seems AirBnB will not, something you need to collect.

[Amy38]

A terrible story!

a couple thoughts....never rent to students.

                                Raise your prices....you are charging hostel rates and you will only get hostel 

                                                                   level guests when you are too cheap. Charge extr for each         guest  over 2 and raise your cleaning fee...a good back door way to increase price.

i have had about 70 guests and the worst I have had has been one broken glass, 3 dirty dishes in sink, oil stain on sheet which came out.  I would say this is par for the course for most of us.

Dont give up, get mean.

[Jordana3]

Amy, thank you for joining,

The worst part of the story is that there will be a 500€ charge for the fire brigade call out fee which the county council collects from home owners.

The carpet installers I contacted with the photos replied: 'there would be a lot of work involved in fixing the damage, we would have to order 4 meters x 6 foot of carpet which is the minimum we can order from a supplier, we would then have to scrape the old carpet and underlay off the floor as it appears to be glued to the ground and then replace an re-glue the area. 

I called Airbnb to discuss options and they were to call me back but no response so far. There has been no reply from the guests either.

I just want to know if there is anything that can be done?

This was a once off (well just trying it for a couple of weeks) and certainly not right for the future.