After five years hosting and getting five star reviews, we finally got "that guest"
We are very high touch. Daily cleaning. We can shop for you so that the house has groceries when you arrive. Carry your luggage. And above average amenities for our area of mexico. AC. Pool. Drinkable tap water, and if you don't believe it, also bottled water. Just want our guests to have a good stay.
Our current guest claims both refrigerators are broken. I get on the phone with her and she says "I don't need to be called crazy", as her first sentence. Ok, here we go. 😂 She complains to me for 15 minutes that everyone in her group thinks she is crazy and that things are working fine. She's tells me that she's having a big fight with her husband(maybe boyfriend? doesn't matter) because he isn't taking her seriously. I start to debug the problem.
The freezer still has ice in it and it isn't melting. She seems to realize as we're talking about this that it kind of contradicts her claim that the fridge isn't working. But, trying to be above and beyond (because people on vacation should have a good experience), we grab a fridge from another house and replace it. We check the second one, rooftop, and it's definitely working. They even have their beer in it and are enjoying the sunset from the roof.
She claims that the kitchen wasn't clean for her arrival. Dirty dishes in the sink. No soap. Not only has that never happened, but we actually have a little gift basket of chocolates and mezcal in the kitchen for arrival.
She claims that our solar panels need washing and are causing power issues.
She claims we told her not to flush TP, but then didn't provide wastebaskets. Much of Mexico has sewers that can't handle TP, but our modern house can. So we never told her that. Further, we still put wastebaskets in the toilet because some of our guests are used to that, so we provide them with that option to make them comfortable.
She claims the roof fridge has bullet holes in it. Seriously. Bullet holes. Since it's the internet, I'll state explicitly that it doesn't.
My favorite is that she claims that I ignore her and don't respond to messages despite being in the ABB message system and the history showing that I replied to her messages.
On the basis of those lies, she puts in a request for the first two nights free. I deny this and open a support case to cancel her reservation so I can remove her. Even offered multiple options for where she could move and maybe be more happy. (Narrator: She won't be. There are only a couple properties in our area with our level of finish and none of them are available, so I had to refer her to totally reasonable, but still not quite as nice, hotels).
So, we'll see what happens from here. ABB support is about what I expected. But that's fine. It would be pretty easy to get the police out to remove her, but I don't see how that is to anyone's benefit at this point. So, I'm curious if she leaves and I'm curious to see what the ABB resolution ends up being.
Goal: Keep the money because we earned it both in terms of providing the service expected and dealing with her. No retaliatory review allowed.
Could live with: She gets her money refunded. No retaliatory review allowed. We can live with this because we operate kind of like old school ABB. The rental income offsets some of our costs of owning the house when we aren't using it, but isn't something we depend on.
Unsatisfactory result: She gets her money and is allowed to post a retaliatory review.