At this point, there is practically no point in staying in an Airbnb. They’re overpriced, often far above the cost of a hotel, and on top of it frequently require all kinds of chores before you can leave. That’s before we even touch on the fact that you have to deal with the Airbnb’s host.
In the case of one guest on Reddit, that particular aspect of the Airbnb experience turned into a full-tilt drama when she spilled a bit of dipping sauce on a piece of furniture.
The Airbnb host demanded a guest pay $3000 to replace a couch she stained.
On one hand, expecting someone to replace something they damaged isn’t entirely unreasonable. However, if you rent your house out to strangers, it comes with the territory that things are going to get broken at some point. That’s just part of the deal.
So it’s kind of hard to feel like this host’s demands are even reasonable on their face. But once the host’s method of making the request is factored in, the whole thing seems on par with the overall trend with Airbnb in recent years — basically, that hosts have gotten entirely too big for their britches.
In her Reddit post, the guest explained that she and her friends had an informal memorial gathering at the Airbnb for a friend who’d recently passed.Â
“Unfortunately, I spilled some sauce on one of the couches,” she admitted. “I offered to pay the host for her time and efforts to clean it. I didn’t think much else would come of this.” Boy, was she wrong.
The host contacted her directly, outside of Airbnb, demanding more money. When she refused, the host threatened her.
All questions and disputes are supposed to be handled through the Airbnb app itself, not outside it. This prevents fraud, identity theft, scams, and other incidents.
Yet this host decided to go rogue, calling and texting the guest directly to demand $1100 to replace the couch, which she claimed could not be cleaned. The couch is an off-white color so this may of course be true. But as the photos show, the stain was primarily on what appeared to be a throw pillow. Can’t you just… flip it over?
Vegetable_Earth_1319 | Reddit
Guess not, because the host insisted that the couch, which was apparently discontinued, needed to be replaced entirely. When the guest refused to deal with her outside the app, requesting that the host file an official damage report instead, the host threatened to ruin her guest rating.
The host then upped her demand to $3000 to replace both the stained couch and the matching loveseat.Â
“It seems like she’s extorting me for more money and is upset I wouldn’t send her money outside of the app,” the guest wrote.
Airbnb is said to usually side with guests in these situations — something hosts have been complaining about for years.
“Wanting to do it outside of the app just screams scam to me,” one Redditor wrote in response to the guest’s post. Another chimed in to add that “Airbnb generally sides with the guests in these situations and only asks them to pay, they’ll never force them to. The host [definitely] knows that.”
Hosts have indeed been complaining about the way Airbnb seems to favor guests in these situations for a while now. In 2022, one disgruntled host even organized a strike to protest Airbnb’s guest favoritism and changes to their policies that granted guests up to 72 hours to make complaints.
Be that as it may, this host is violating Airbnb’s rules and few of us would agree to handle something like this outside the app. Perhaps more to the point, it’s hard to argue that demanding $3000 to replace a couch over a stain is reasonable, especially when a white couch in a weekly rental property is… well, a VERY interesting choice.
Or, as another Redditor put it, “What kind of idiot host puts a $3000 WHITE COUCH in a rental that turns over once a week?” It’s pretty hard to argue with that. It’s also pretty hard not to feel like this host’s absurd demands are part of a larger trend.
Airbnb’s stock took a huge plunge earlier this year, falling more than 14% in August, mostly due to fewer Americans using the service. There are myriad contributing factors, including local governments making it harder to run Airbnbs as a way to tackle the extreme impacts Airbnbs have had on housing affordability.
However, experts say the hosts themselves are a factor too — charging absurd cleaning fees, demanding litanies of chores before checkout, and, yes, handling disputes in ways that feel extortionate.Â
No wonder, then, that at the same time as that 14% Airbnb stock plunge, hotels announced that their revenues are bouncing back. Nobody at the Hilton is gonna charge you three grand for a couch cushion, after all — nor will they even have a white couch in the first place.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
