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429. Solo

Welcome and Introduction

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome back to another [00:01:00] great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian. 

Annette Grant: I’m Annette Grant and together we are Thanks for visiting.

Sarah Karakaian: Let’s start this episode like we do each and every week and that is sharing someone who is listening to the podcast and then heading on over to strshare.com, giving us all the information about your short term rental so we can share it here on the pod to our Instagram friends on Sunday to our entire email list. Annette, who are we sharing this week? 

Spotlight on WanderChatt

Annette Grant: This week we are sharing @WanderChatt. So W A N D E R C H A T T, because they are near Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

The Merry Mushroom Property

Annette Grant: And we are actually, this is, an account that covers multiple properties and we’re going to highlight one of their newest properties, the Merry Mushroom. And so a couple of things I really want to highlight here is number one, this vacation rental business is ran by two amazing people, Mike and Tia Hicks, and Mike is [00:02:00] actually a coach inside our coaching program and they specialize in unique builds.

And this one, they’re taking, they’re putting the U in unique. Okay. They’ve done the tree houses. They have done, like, shipping containers, cavaliered over, overlooking amazing mountains at this edge of a cliff, but they have taken their ideas that we saw drawn on paper and brought them to life with this new Merry Mushroom, when I say custom door, custom roof Wow, dare I say custom everything?

Custom windows. Yeah. It is literally like, My word for it is storybook. It literally looks like a drawing and a storybook, but you can actually stay in it from the roof lines to the round construction. I am not ever going to be able to do it justice vocally, you visually need to see it.

So please head over to Wanderchatt, give them a [00:03:00] follow because they will not disappoint. But the thing I really want to share with you is a them taking this idea and doing whatever it takes to bring it to fruition. 

Leveraging Influencers for Your Rental

Annette Grant: But they are an absolute masterclass on how to partner with influencers on their, properties and their Instagram account.

So I encourage you to take some time, go through their feed and see how they are leveraging influencers to create content and share content about their properties. they had to put in a lot of work to create this, they’ve had some duds, they’ve had some studs.

Mike goes really deep a lot of times in our coaching program with a lot of people on how to negotiate influencer deals, who is a good fit for you, who isn’t, because a micro influencer might be just as, if not more influential than, a bigger influencer, but please give them a follow. They really are [00:04:00] just an amazing account to follow and you can kind of see all the ways that they are.

up leveling their business. They keep us guessing for what’s next. So you’re going to want to give them a follow there. So thanks Mike and Tia for sending the merry mushroom in. 

Sarah Karakaian: I already hear Mike in my head like, well, you guys got to come stay. And it’s, I can’t do it. I hit Mike’s accent.

We’re going to stay. It’s so good. Yes. Speaking of storybook, I think it’s story 

time. Yeah. Here on the podcast. This is more of like 

a nightmare story than a story. Well, it has a happy ending. That’s true. All right, 

let’s do it. 

Airbnb Nightmare: Our Story

Sarah Karakaian: So you know by now that we hold ourselves in high regard when it comes to guest satisfaction, following rules, doing everything by the book.

That is what we pride ourselves on. And I never thought that I would be, that Annette and I would fall victim to Airbnb shutting down one of our Airbnb listings. 

Annette Grant: people who don’t follow rules. That’s for bad hosts. [00:05:00] Extreme issues. Or they obviously did something blatantly wrong.

Who does this happen to? It happened to us. Yes. It happened to us and there is so much that we want to share, that can prep you and prepare you for, if this were to ever happen. to you. So we are going to dig in. Let’s tell them exactly the incident and what happened. 

The Gas Leak Incident

Sarah Karakaian: So at around 3 in the morning, we had a guest who reached out to us via the Airbnb app that they smelled gas and they didn’t feel comfortable.

So they had already reached out to Airbnb and Airbnb canceled her reservation and moved her to a different property. So, when we saw this message come through, we were like, well, okay, so the first thing, she’s already gone. So, the first thing we did was, of course, call the gas company. And I need to make sure, because this is in a four unit property, I needed to make sure that there [00:06:00] weren’t other safety issues in the building that I needed to be aware of.

And I already knew from other instances that I, where I wasn’t shut down, and mind you, at this point, our listing was still active, that Airbnb is going to want to know that everything is okay before they, I thought they would at least, they would close down the calendar. I didn’t think they would completely like unlist the property.

Well, call the gas company. They come out. And I remember telling my inspector, I was like, make sure you get like their signature on whatever they give you. Like you, they can’t just give you a verbal, like everything’s fine. If everything is fine, we need a receipt of some sort. I knew that much too. They come out and They walk the entire property. In the basement, all four units. They walk outside. They find nothing. 

Annette Grant: Listeners, you need to understand that this particular guest had just had, I did not share that yet, their own scare. This is why this got escalated and heightened and someone was so concerned so quickly and reaching out to all the things is this particular guest [00:07:00] had just dealt with a gas leak in their property. I think that’s actually my home. I think that’s why they were even staying. So they were on high, high alert and maybe had a little post traumatic, you know, like, Hey, you know how when something happens, we’re on high alert. So I do want to put that caveat out there that, they had just encountered this incident.

So it was very fresh. on their mind and probably very scary. 

Sarah Karakaian: obviously anxiety can do a lot of things to us. And I would always tell anyone to do, do what makes you feel safe first. So, yes, does it stink that she left the property and she didn’t even give me an opportunity.

Like, All that aside, when it comes to like life or death, you got to do what you got to do. So I really wasn’t upset with the guest. And at this point, Airbnb hadn’t reached out to me either. So I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but they hadn’t reached out yet. So I was just excited to get the clear bill of, Hey, it’s safe to be there.

Cause we had other guests in the building and I wanted to be prepared. Should [00:08:00] air if, and when Airbnb reaches out to me, I could prove to them that the property was fine and that we can just go on with business. Well, That’s not what happened. 

Dealing with Airbnb Support

Sarah Karakaian: So I got a message on, well my team did, got a message on Airbnb that they wanted to get in touch with the owner.

Because this is a co hosted property. Well they didn’t say the owner. They said the owner’s name. So I’ll just make it up. With Dan. Right? I don’t know. Annette’s laughing at me right now. I don’t know why I need to save, like the, the, it doesn’t matter. We need to talk to Dan. And so we responded back as, as a listed co host on the property.

That we co host the property for Dan. Dan is, does not want to be. contacted and actually Dan won’t know as much as we know about what is going on. And so since we are a co host on the property, could they please speak to us? And it wasn’t that they said, no, we can’t speak to you. They just kept going. You know how it is with Airbnb support sometimes you feel like they don’t understand the words that are like being [00:09:00] typed in that message thing or that they don’t understand the words that are coming out of your mouth when you’re talking to them.

And they just kept going back to wanting to reach out. To the listing owner and it was really frustrating because our client, like he, he’s not going to want it. Even if he hopped on the phone, he’d have, he’d have to have me next to him that would or the team next to him that just wouldn’t be possible.

So we actually had to log into his Airbnb account to get anywhere with Airbnb. And at this time they shut down the listing entirely. Like it was, you couldn’t even search for it. It was non existent.

We finally convinced Airbnb support to have a chat with us because we said, listen, Dan’s not gonna know anything. They’re gonna, he’s gonna need to refer to us anyways. We are, I, then I threw in, like, I was like, tell them we are a licensed property management company. Like, we are literally their, like, their, Fiduciary.

Like we, we are their agent. That whole mess aside, and that took way longer than necessary because by the time we [00:10:00] got to brass tacks, from starting the conversation to getting to the point where they’d actually ask us the questions, they had unlisted our property.

They had removed it, everybody. Like not shut down the calendar, but she’s gone. 

Annette Grant: Without warning either. Without warning. A recurring guest had to actually. Because I think one thing that we have to like, and obviously we’re like so removed from this situation. Please understand how disruptive, terrifying, completely took precedent over any other thing that was like happening.

So we do want to just warn you that Let’s say there is anything like a potential emergency situation. This is where your team, it is so imperative to have a team or someone that you can lean on because there were so many calls going back and forth. There was obviously still like check ins that needed to happen, the turnovers that need to happen.

This was a day where. Things just got off the rails. So we also would just [00:11:00] want to let you know that being a host those days are going to happen and they are going to be tough, but if you can handle them with grace and be persistent because you’re going to have to get through it. But so while all so think about all this chaos that’s happening and a repeat guest is like, Hey, we’re in every book.

So Airbnb did not Let us know at all that the listing was being, that it was gone. Someone, a reoccurring guest just so happened to look that day and was there. So that, that’s like a whole new red alert happening on top of it.

Sarah Karakaian: I was getting heated because the co host program is your program, Airbnb, and we are a co host on it. Plus we have like licensing and we’re doing all the things in the up and up. You should be able to talk to the person who has the most information, especially when it has to do with the safety issue.

Like we’re wasting time right now. I know that it’s safe there and I would like to tell you that it’s safe, but you’re wasting time trying to talk to the listing owner. So yeah, we did have to stay calm and [00:12:00] we had to be persistent because getting heated or sassy wasn’t going to help the issue.

So finally, I don’t remember how we talked sense into them and I probably said something to that effect of like, Hey, there’s a safety issue going on here. You are speaking to the person who is the most informed. Can we please move forward? 

So then we get to the fact where I tell them, Hey, the gas company came out and I can send you, I can upload to our chat the receipt that there is no safety issue. And so I send it and they, and it is signed. It has a date on it.

It is pretty clear, but I feel like it didn’t have, I don’t, I don’t remember what the detail was. It wasn’t like it didn’t have my name on it or they couldn’t read the signature of the inspector who came out, even though it was on like letterhead from the guy. It was like ridiculous. And so now my brain shifts from safety issue.

To, I am managing this property for someone else who’s counting on this revenue. I have someone who wants [00:13:00] to book it and I’m just frustrated. And I’m frustrated because they wouldn’t talk to me for a while. And now you’re, now we’re like talking about these little details that don’t really matter at all.

Annette Grant: And so of course I’m like, Oh my gosh, this gas company, I’m going to have to reach out to them and have them give me all the things that Airbnb wants and will they, will they do it? kind of old school. 

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. And I was right, because they were happy to give us what we needed, but they wanted to fax us.

Annette Grant: Yep, you heard that. F A X. Fax.

Sarah Karakaian: I don’t know how to get a fax. I was like, you can’t scan it and email it to me? This isn’t created online, and digital signatures, you can’t. And they kept saying, no, we can fax it to you. No, it’s like, Oh my God, I got to play by everyone else’s games today if I want to get this listing back.

And that’s the thing too, I didn’t know how long it would take to get the listing back up either. That’s also going no visibility on that. Airbnb wasn’t speaking to it. They’re like, we cannot talk to you about any of that until we [00:14:00] know this place is safe. 

Annette Grant: You got the fax figured 

Sarah Karakaian: So if you’re wondering, everybody, I actually called Staples.

And I was like, I need to send a fax to you from the gas company. Can I give them? How does this work? They told me. Here’s a fax number. Give it to the company. The fax will come. You pick it up. You pay. Or I even asked him. I was like, do I have to come pick it up? Could you, could you email it to me then? I can still pay.

And he was like, yes, actually. So a couple of hours go by and I haven’t heard from Staples. And I was like, I’m pretty sure faxes are pretty immediate, right? And he was like, we haven’t gotten any fax, I was like, Oh my gosh, I have to do this into my own hands. So I knew that they were fax apps. Applications.

Software. So I sign up for a fax software application, give that to the gas company, it comes in right away. And now I actually have it digitally for me to And that’s a win. That’s a win. I remember being on a call with Annette and Colleen, who is on our property management team as well, and we like all celebrated because we finally had the proof that the property was fine.

Right. 

Annette Grant: During [00:15:00] this whole situation, did you actually get assigned one Airbnb rep or were you retelling the story every single time? How did that actually? 

Sarah Karakaian: It’s one continuous chat. So they’re privy, but it’s not the same person.

you like, I’m ending my day and then you get frustrated because you’re like, no, it’s got to start back. And then they’ve got it. Where they left off so that happened at least once.

But as this gets remedied they get the facts. How quickly did they say? Okay, this is good to go. There’s no more safety issue. And then how did you turn it quickly to how do we 

reinstate the listing? Well, that’s the thing. So I sent it to them. No response for a while like, you know They’re not there waiting for the thing to come in like I’m wishing they were.

So I think a whole day goes by before they even acknowledge receipt and then they’re like, okay, we’ll let our safety team review this. and I don’t remember how long until they told me that everything was fine. But even once it was fine, they did not repopulate the listing for [00:16:00] at least a week.

Annette Grant: No transparency. No communication. 

Sarah Karakaian: No. 

Annette Grant: And again, just completely removed from the platform. 

Sarah Karakaian: And you better believe I was like, I, I got very I was like, I’ve been on this platform for 13 years. I’m a super host and I’ve been a super host since you started.

I was giving them all the accolades, all the like, let me talk to your manager. 

Annette Grant: You’ve done partnerships with Airbnb. 

Sarah Karakaian: I, yes. Uh, yes. And so, I think that’s the moral of the story, everyone, is that your status, matters in terms of, do they boost you in the algorithm? If you’re a super host, you’re a guest favorite, sure.

But not when it comes to, but not when it, and I’m not going to say like a safety issue because we actually have a friend of ours who we are friends with on Instagram and he was telling his story about how a guest who just opened up an Airbnb account had no reviews. It was his first day with him and was claiming that there was a camera, an inappropriate camera in the property.

And he got refunded and [00:17:00] his listing 

Annette Grant: was shut down, 

Sarah Karakaian: right? 

Annette Grant: Yeah. So I guess we just want you. 

Lessons Learned and Final Thoughts

Annette Grant: Obviously heed caution, but this is where we do want to flip the script a little bit, give you what happened. Obviously persistence, instead of just getting completely frustrated and like, you know, not going to put the listening back up.

Being persistent, but that same guest, and there are reasons this particular guest, who is reoccurring, they like to stay on the Airbnb platform. You can’t convince her otherwise. It’s just her, so fine, but she really wanted to stay this, this time, so we could get an additional booking. That is why it’s so important to have your direct booking up and running and as an option because, you know, if this would, you know, Airbnb technically, they didn’t have to reinstate it.

They could have just said, no, there’s been a reported safety issue. And they could have just kept it off indefinitely. 

Sarah Karakaian: writing on that, Annette, I am 99. 9 percent positive. [00:18:00] I got like this, like slap on the wrist at the end of it. Hey, this has been accepted.

we’ll reinstate your listing. This will take time or whatever. They’re like, just know that we were noting this as a safety issue. And if it happens again, and I was like, but there was no safety issue, right? You’re not even paying attention. There was, it wasn’t like there was a gas 

Annette Grant: leak 

Sarah Karakaian: we fixed 

Annette Grant: If it happens again, we’ll probably shut you down indefinitely. 

Sarah Karakaian: I made them say that in the chat. I remember this. I was like, I need you to say right now that you understand. There was no safety issue and that I am not being marked. No, because this is important. Like, because yes, direct booking.

Yes. Diversify your channels, but I’m not going to lie to you all. Yeah. Airbnb is one of our biggest lead generators in downtown Columbus. No matter how much I tried my direct bookings and it’s, it’s pretty darn good. Like, and they’re constantly bringing new, but yeah, yeah. it’s, it’s hard to, to compete with that Goliath.

You know what I mean? Like it just is. So. I had them put it in writing and I put it in my client’s, I took a snapshot and I took it in my client’s folder because I just wanted to be [00:19:00] prepared. 

Annette Grant: want to ask any of our listeners, if you have had something similar to this happened, if you could write in to hi at thanks for visiting dot com.

Let us know if you’ve had your listing removed for some reason, how you got it remedied. We’d love to share that. If you have a great story that you think would be worthy to share on the show, please email us and let us know because these are important things to let hosts know. But the biggest thing we want to share with you here is.

And I know you guys are probably all asking, don’t you have carbon monoxide detectors? Yes, yes, we do. So we were already on top of that, but it really is speed matters here. So speed matters to getting the gas company out there. But speed matters of being persistent with Airbnb, getting them the information that they need so that clear communication and speed is going to matter in any situation that you might have with, with your listing.[00:20:00] 

Sarah Karakaian: I also want to share that it was shut. It was not bookable on Airbnb for quite some time. after our repeat call, guested, which by the way, now she feels more confident booking off platforms. That was actually a little silver lining, but we did send out an email sharing to our list that this property has last minute availability.

It’s in the prime location. And we did get it booked direct while it was off the platform. So not only did we, have a repeat guest, which was lovely. And she just so happened to want to stay there during this exact time. situation, but that we were also able to tap in that email list and, you know, it’s not tens of thousands of people, but it is active and it’s people who open the emails and it’s people who stay in Columbus and we were able to actually make more money for our client because the guests who rebooked over her was actually a longer stay, which was great too.

So there’s a silver lining there, but there’s also just a reminder to myself like, no, Sarah, you’re doing the right thing. Airbnb can sometimes feel very easy. and I will hear [00:21:00] host tell me we’re paying 15 percent because we’re connected to a software so and we don’t have a choice to split that fee with our guests.

So we have to raise our prices and that makes it even more difficult. And it’s a whole thing. And I do sometimes wonder like Do I just disconnect it from the software and just put all my eggs in that basket? But when these things happen, I’m so glad that I don’t do that. And I just do the work. I hustle and it pays off when, when things like this inevitably happen.

Yeah. We want to hear your stories. That’d be great. To not feel so alone. 

Annette Grant: Let us know, please. 

Sarah Karakaian: And again, make no mistake. Even the guest with the camera who was, I was saying that I was like, you know what? What if that was true? Like I get it. Although it seems a little bit like a scam. Safety’s first.

Annette Grant: Please remember that whenever a guest reaches out about any concern. We have no idea what a previous stay has offered them as far as safety. And that’s why Sarah [00:22:00] and I do what we do is like, we want to up level the whole entire industry. So please give your guests grace. If they are like, this isn’t working, or maybe they come at you in a way that It feels off when your property is perfect, but maybe that last day was dirty. You know, maybe they’re asking you a lot of questions ahead of the stay or during the stay, but maybe they had a host that wasn’t on the up and up and didn’t keep things as well as they should have.

So just remember, that’s why this guest, because at first we were like, why didn’t she give us a chance? And it’s like, well, wait, she seriously had a scare, which we get that now. So please always understand that there might be a story. behind some of the heightened feelings of your guest requests or, just their communication with you.

So you always have to look at each and every guest with a fresh set of eyes and know that they come with their own stories of their overnight accommodations and just life in general. 

Sarah Karakaian: All right. I hope you enjoyed story time. if you guys think I did [00:23:00] anything I could have done differently, let me know.

I did get a little sassy with them. 

Annette Grant: You had to. You did, it was okay. You took a deep breath. 

Sarah Karakaian: Thank you. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian. 

Annette Grant: I’m Annette Grant and together we are Thanks for visiting. 

Sarah Karakaian: We’ll talk to you next time.