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479. Damage Claims

 [00:00:00]

Welcome and Weekly Celebration

Sarah Karakaian: Hello. Welcome back to another great [00:01:00] 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 celebrating one of you who’s going on over to strshare.com. Sharing everything you can about your short-term rental so that we can celebrate you here on the podcast and on our Instagram account every single Sunday.

Annette, who are we sharing this week?

Spotlight on Bloom House

Annette Grant: This week we are sharing at Bloom, B-L-O-O-M. I think it’s about two or three underscores house, but when you put the underscores in, they’re gonna pop up. Listen close everyone. This is, um. A really great lesson in diversifying your listing places. Bloom House, uh, is also on Peerspace.

If you are not on Peerspace, you definitely wanna go to their Instagram. Go to their link and bio where it gives, um, it says Links at Bloom House. You will see create [00:02:00] content at Bloom House. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Lincoln Bio where they specifically. Have a call to action of create content at Bloom House, and when you go to that create content at Bloom House, it is gonna take you to their peer space booking page.

And I absolutely love that Bloom House is doing this because their space is gorgeous. It is so well designed. I mean, pause on their Instagram page for a while before you actually go to create content at Bloom House because. It is a content creator’s dream, and so I just wanna bring this to everyone’s attention.

If you believe that you have a space that either would be great for content creation and or maybe small. Corporate meetings or small, um, baby showers, things of that nature. You do definitely wanna check out Peer Space. It is a listing platform for hourly rates. So you’ll see Bloom House, they’re around a hundred dollars per [00:03:00] hour.

So imagine turning your nightly rate into an hourly rate. Um, but check that out. I haven’t seen a host be that dialed in and direct with. Create content at Bloom House because that’s what they’re looking for is content creators, not so much events. And I encourage everyone, check out their handle, go to their Lincoln Bio and see how they are representing themselves on peer space.

Well done at Bloom House.

Sarah Karakaian: And it’s gorgeous. The home. Mm-hmm. Like the tile, the tile decisions, the, it’s so intentional.

Annette Grant: Yeah, it is. The design is really, really well done. And I think they’re gonna have great success with content creators coming to their space and guests.

Sarah Karakaian: All right now. But what happens when a guest accidentally ruins a towel at Bloom House?

Annette Grant: Or one of these like, or amazing bar stools that look a little fragile?

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. What if someone tips over and [00:04:00] I don’t know, tears the, the ruffle on this cute chair at Bloom House? Mm-hmm.

Introduction to Damage Claims

Sarah Karakaian: So today’s episode is all about how to file. A damaged claim. Yes, we’re gonna focus on Airbnb because Airbnb touts Air Cover and so many hosts out there still think that’s really all they need is Air Cover.

So you already know here at Thanks for Visiting that you need accurate insurance for your short-term rental operations. But if you’re gonna file a claim with Air Cover, we are gonna share today in the episode. How best to do that. And that includes you removing the emotion out of chatting with the guest about what happened and submitting that claim with Airbnb.

Annette Grant: Facts over feelings. Yes ma’am. On ma’am. This one folks. Facts Over Feelings.

What Constitutes a Damage Claim?

Sarah Karakaian: Annette, what constitutes us filing a damaged claim, whether that damaged claim [00:05:00] is with Airbnb and their Air Cover, whether it’s the guests themselves, what do you believe constitutes a damaged claim?

Annette Grant: A damaged claim is true negligent damage. Okay. Not general wear and tear.

Sarah Karakaian: We’re gonna get a lot of heated responses on this. I know, but I’m here for it. Yeah.

Annette Grant: This is where we really do want you to have this mindset shift right now. So I am going to go through what is a, not to us a damaged claim. Alright. Listen someone, me, like me, taking their eye makeup off on a white towel versus your black makeup towel. That is not negligent damage.

Sarah Karakaian: No. A missing hand towel or a washcloth.

Annette Grant: Uh, let’s say a, I’m rolling my roller bag down your hallway and I accidentally get a little scuff on your paint.

Sarah Karakaian: Uh, this will really get you guys all fired up because I do not believe it is a damaged claim if someone gets makeup [00:06:00] on your sheets. Mm. Or. Ooh, you’re really gonna not like me for this. They dye their hair in your short term rental and they get dye on a back towel. Mm mm

Annette Grant: That is good. Someone accidentally throws a piece of silverware in the trash can. Ooh, I’ve been known to do that.

Sarah Karakaian: They break a wine glass. Yes.

Annette Grant: Um, maybe playing a board game and again, maybe a small board game piece goes missing.

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. What does. Constitute a damaged claim, Annette?

Annette Grant: Okay. So a true damage claim is negligent. Um, action. So for instance, let’s say there is, hmm, let’s say like a broken piece of furniture. Mm-hmm. Due to someone, Ooh, I hope they’re not doing this. But standing on it or tipping it back, you know, things and where.

You know that you’ve been checking it and all the screws were tight ahead of time.

Sarah Karakaian: Yes. Let’s say they were smoking inside of the home [00:07:00] and they actually left marijuana buds all over the place. Asked me how I know, and it is, there’s a deeper clean, because the smell is just in my linens, on my sofa, on the walls like that is a damage claim.

Annette Grant: Let’s say there’s like multiple stains throughout the house where you could tell maybe they were like spilling things and had no care for trying to clean, clean up after themselves.

Sarah Karakaian: Right?

Handling Damage Claims with Airbnb

Sarah Karakaian: So the di it truly is an important step in your hosting business when you can take the emotion out from what happened. Mm-hmm. And ask yourself, is this something that I need to file a claim for or ask the guest to reimburse me for? Or is this wear and tear or was it accidental? And the cost of replacing really should be the cost of doing business.

Annette Grant: And I encourage everybody when I was reading, when I was like um, naming off all of those non [00:08:00] negligent things like the, you know, makeup on the towel, accidentally throwing the fork away, a broken wine glass, I think all of us can look in the mirror and say, we have done that in our own homes. And there was no malicious intent against ourselves or to true like negligence. They were actually just, you know. Normal wear and tear going about our day. So I do want to always just like everyone, take a deep breath, take a step back.

Has this happened in your own home?

Sarah Karakaian: Why are we talking about separating what is a damaged claim and what isn’t? Because we see so many hosts get up in arms and create a culture, whether it’s for yourself or for your team, that is unnecessary stress. Mm-hmm. So, mm-hmm. And sometimes this can happen at the cleaner level.

The cleaner walks in, whether the cleaner is you or a third party, and whatever happened to them either the night before that morning, they spilled coffee on themselves and they walk into a place there’s a heavier footprint [00:09:00] and all of a sudden it’s this giant deal. They bring that giant deal to you or to your team and it spirals where we’re all just like, humanity is terrible and everything is damaged and we’re never gonna get back to square one.

And like, I’m quitting this business like, and so obviously the only person you can control is yourself. Mm-hmm. And so this is for you and to help you change your mindset that when you can remove the emotion out of did this guest do this to get back at you? Or were they having a good time? Did they not even know their 3-year-old or their friend or Uncle Bob over the other bedroom did X, Y, and Z?

Is it easy to replace and get it back to square one? Does it take five minutes to fix and ask yourself as you start seeing emotions flush you? Mm-hmm. Is it really a big deal?

Annette Grant: The um, something that I was really thinking about, ’cause I knew we were gonna be recording this , is, I thought about this over the weekend about, um, I was a server for [00:10:00] many years, so was Sarah.

And busing. And busing tables like we never took, like people just leave the table. They literally, what do they do? They get, they pay their bill, they get up and they leave, and literally they push away from the table and their crumbs are there, their forks are there, their knives, they might’ve spilled, they might’ve broken something and like, what do you do as a server?

Just clean it up, clean it up. It’s like part of your job. So I want us to kind of have this view of be like the guests paid for that. Like they should be able to. Leave the property and walk away, you know, and like not be judged. And I guess, you know, every now and then when I was serving tables, I would judge, ’cause someone would bring their kid, there’d be a lot more crumbs than normal or whatever.

But like, if we kind of just take that stance of like, if you’re serving a table and someone spills their drink or breaks their glass or you know, you, you’re not, we’re not so like, um, we don’t take it so personally. So I think that’s what we wanna remove too, is we want this to become more transactional and not so personal.

We see so [00:11:00] many hosts. Taking these small damages. So personally, and we wanna remove that, um, from your thought process

Sarah Karakaian: because it weighs you down. Mm-hmm. Because it gets you upset, right? Because it potentially prevents you from really flourishing in this industry and making money because you’re so upset that you know, this is your third hand towel, or this is like the second fitted sheet you’ve had to replace.

And it’s like, yes, hosts, this is going to happen. People are gonna sleep in your bed. And there are. I’m just gonna say it. There are body fluids. There are things that happen in that bed, and that is the part of having overnight guests like you run those risks. Now, if someone is taking scissors and cutting up your sheets, that is different, right?

But you really need to just decide now. What is going to spur action for you in terms of getting compensated for something and what can you build in to your margins that you can just let it go and, and then share that with your team? Mm-hmm. Okay. When your cleaner does message you, and it’s [00:12:00] like this heightened, like, oh my gosh, things were a mess.

I’m using a very specific example of this cleaner. Walked in and like, yes, our faux trees that were inside ended up outside of the apartment, and these crystals were like painstakingly taken, taken off of the chandelier. We’re thinking they were like playing beer pong on our dining table. Um, and what else was wrong?

There was, there was extra trash like scattered about, but truly at the end of the day, you brought the trees back inside. You picked up the trash. The chandelier was a little bit of a bigger deal, but I can tell you we did ask for compensation for the chandelier because the crystals, we could not find them to put them back on.

But other than that, like, it’s like it went back to square one in five minutes. Like, you know, it’s not that deep. And once you can get that more transactional mindset, it’s gonna make your job as a host so much more pleasant, so much more doable, and you’re gonna create a better environment for your family.

For your business partner, for your team.

Real-Life Examples and Best Practices

Annette Grant: So let’s talk about true damage. [00:13:00] The, the guest removed all the crystals from the chandelier. We think too, they genuinely were trying to be nice and not damage it. Weird but nice, right? But they, we could not find all the crystals. So the actual chandelier was not going to have all of its chandelier lings.

Is that what you call ’em? Chandelier Lane.

Sarah Karakaian: Your mother be disa appointed you.

Annette Grant: All the crystals are not going to be there. So we had to file a claim because we could not get it back to square one on our own and to its original form. Right? And this is where speed and thoroughness matters. All right? If you were going to have a claim, um, turned in with Airbnb, we wanna be.

Quick with it.

Sarah Karakaian: Honestly, whether it’s with Airbnb, your own damage way, like anything, right? Your insurance, the gas directly. Yeah. Your insurance speed and thoroughness matters always. Yes. So first of all, let’s talk about the big one though. Airbnb and their Air Cover. Host reimbursement program does cover up to $3 [00:14:00] million in damages.

No, this policy is not in your name. They don’t owe you anything. So if you want the best chances of getting reimbursed mm-hmm. You’ve gotta be thorough and you’ve gotta be quick. I’m talking day of. Mm-hmm. So whether you have a system now or after watching this. This, you develop one, develop it, because the time to do it is not when there is damage that you want reimbursed for and figuring it out.

Mm-hmm.

Annette Grant: And we have always the, the number one thing we, we equip ourselves, our team, is we need photos and videos. Yeah. Because obviously those photos and videos can be date and timestamped at

the actual property.

Sarah Karakaian: So obviously we use a chandelier example, I’ll use another example. There was a guest who. He didn’t say that he was intoxicated, but I have to imagine he was.

But he was staying with us for three nights. Was it? He was a great, he checked out otherwise and like the rest of the apartment was great, but you never believe this. So he, apparently his phone died the way, [00:15:00] only way in his car is via his phone in an app, I believe. All that actually. Yeah. So could not get in his car, um, could not access his phone, did not have the code to the apartment. Mm. Okay.

Annette Grant: And can’t text you.

Sarah Karakaian: Can’t text me. Figure it out. He could have, I’m just gonna vent with you guys for a minute here. He could have walked down the street to like the, a hotel or a bodega or a store and asked to call the VRBO customer support line, or Airbnb’s customer support line and asked, Hey, can you reach out to my host and get my code?

But it’s fine. ’cause you know what he did Instead, he broke the window so he could crawl in the apartment, which that’s gotta be painful like. I, I don’t even know what happened. I’m thinking he was intoxicated. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Okay, so we had a damaged lock. We had a damaged door.

Annette Grant: Thankfully he’s okay.

Sarah Karakaian: He’s fine. Damaged window as well. So quickly the next day, once our cleaners walk, walked in and he, he notified us of this damage, but we didn’t realize the extent of it, so we went and got checked it out. You better believe we had pictures of the window. We had pictures of the lock and some, and [00:16:00] here’s the thing that we see, like whether it’s your cleaners doing it for you or your inspector or yourself.

Think about seeing this photo and not having the full understanding. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Context of the whole scene, the narrative. Mm-hmm. Yes. Make sure context is there. So if you wanna get up and close and get a detail of the damage, fine, but then also pull back so that you have like context of like the damage and like what’s going on.

Annette Grant: And also they can cross reference it with your listing photos. Like, oh, this is the back door on that property, or this is the window of that property.

Sarah Karakaian: Right. Technically with Airbnb’s Air Cover, you have 14 days to file a claim. So if Airbnb needs 14 days, great. Find out what your insurance coverage needs, um, to file a claim.

If it’s much larger damage, understand what the, what that process is like. Or if you have your own damage program in-house of your business, just develop a, how many days do you need to get this done? Truly, you should be thinking it’s one day. Mm-hmm. Like, get it done and get it in ASAP and be as thorough as possible.

I’m talking if you can. Receipts. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So, and you might think [00:17:00] like receipts. Yes. Receipts. Like

Annette Grant: especially if you have the original. Yeah. So let’s say that chandelier, if we have the original copy, which I did going ahead and, and including that in the original. In the original claim.

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah.

Annette Grant: And also if, if it’s strictly, um, we wanna give this. Um, pro tip, let’s say there’s just additional cleaning that needs to happen. If you can have your cleaner give you an invoice for that too, being able to not just tell Airbnb that you had to have additional cleaning, but show an actual invoice of the work that needs to be done for anything. If there’s labor involved in remedying the situation.

Sarah Karakaian: Here’s a little hot tip. Let’s say you are the cleaner. Let’s say you are the handy person. Mm-hmm. Airbnb is still gonna want an invoice.

Annette Grant: Yeah.

Sarah Karakaian: So go on a software like your, you know. Uh, Google documents or go into Canva, create an invoice. If you’re l if you have your property through an LLC, you know, put your LLCs name on there.

Have it look like an actual invoice. If it’s your first invoice you’ve ever sent, make it invoice number one. Yep. You know, but like, make it [00:18:00] invoice. Have an a business address, a business name, what it was, make sure the amount is, market value, right? Like you might think, well my time’s worth X, Y, Z, so this clean is actually $1,000.

And it’s like, but if you were to call other cleaning companies in town, it’d be like $500. You have to be realistic. Yes. If you wanna get this claim covered by Air Cover, who again I’m going to repeat owes you nothing. They do not have to do this. And there are many times they will deny it and not offer you any compensation.

Annette Grant: You have to be prepared for that too. And we always side note here, we always. Go to the guest first. I mean, within Airbnb, if it’s an Airbnb guest, but most of the time we found that the guest will, if they know that they did the the negligent act, they will go ahead and pay for it.

Sarah Karakaian: That’s a whole conversation, actually, right there.

Mm-hmm. You just open up a can of worms. I’m sorry. No, I’m here for it because I think a lot of you, because it’s such a sensationalized topic. Right. Like you don’t, there’s no news, [00:19:00] uh, article coming out about how great Airbnb guests leave the property. It’s only when it’s a giant party or there’s like crazy damage or Right.

Reflecting on Past Experiences

Sarah Karakaian: Like that’s what makes the news. And so you might think like, what? Like there’s no way. But I’m telling you, we actually, we were preparing for this, for this episode. We look back at our last, like, I’m talking like two years of damage negligence. Like even whether they were meaning to be uh, awful humans or not, um, damage happened and we were asking for money for it every single time the guest paid for it.

Annette Grant: Right.

Sarah Karakaian: Even the guy who climbed through the window, he paid for ev everything,

Annette Grant: and that was not as small. Small,

Sarah Karakaian: no, it was over a thousand dollars. He paid for it all. Mm-hmm. It took persistence and we’ll get into that.

Effective Communication with Guests

Sarah Karakaian: But anyway, I like that point of, most of the time if you just ask the guest first and you approach it in a way that is fact-based, not emotional, and we’re gonna dive into that too.

Annette Grant: Like we said at the beginning, we wanna keep our emotions out of it. So this [00:20:00] is where we want you to always, again, speed matters, but we also want you to take a deep breath, okay? We want you to take a deep breath. Um, and because we do take things personally, and so it’s just like recognizing it. Take it personal for a minute, then go, okay, now it’s time to state the facts.

I’m gonna have Sarah read two different, um ways to communicate via, let’s say it’s Airbnb, to Airbnb to the guest. This is where we want to be factual. Uh, this is a really good thing that, uh, uh, Colleen, one of our team members shared with us of like, uh, she, she worked in hotels for a really long time. And like when you’re chatting with a guests or anyone for that matter, like if you are gonna be in like the court of law, if you’re just stating the facts, you know, if you’re on the stand, state the facts. The judge, the jury, you know how they’ll always try to like, infuse emotions there and like, you know, that’s when the attorney will like, objection. ’cause those are, those are feelings. So we’re gonna give you two examples how [00:21:00] you wanna state the facts during your claim.

Sarah Karakaian: Here’s an example of an ineffective emotional claim.

This guest completely disrespected my property. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. I can’t believe they left such a mess. They should be banned from Airbnb. Ineffective. Like you felt good after saying it. I’m sure I get it right. Like say that to your pillow. Say that to your, your partner. Like say that to your mirror and like, just get it out here for that.

Like Annette set it. Acknowledge, but that is ineffective to winning your case. Yeah. Alright. Here’s what is effective. A fact-based claim like this. The dining room chair was broken during the guest stay. Here’s a photo of the damage, a receipt for the original chair and an invoice from the furniture company for the replacement.

Annette Grant: Boom.

Sarah Karakaian: That’s it, y’all.

Annette Grant: And here’s the, here’s what we really want you to understand. Is the person on the other side, the receiving side of this message, they are doing this all day, every day.

Yeah. All right. Oof. That has got to be. [00:22:00] A rough job. Okay? Like I, man, I cannot imagine that just dealing with this day in, day out.

So the more factual it can be, the more you can, um, just understand what that person having to deal with the claim is, is going through on a daily basis. It’s also going to help your case.

Submitting a Damage Claim

Sarah Karakaian: Let’s take you step by step on how to submit a damaged claim. Two Airbnb in their Aircover program. Um, now you can submit to Airbnb and ask the guest takes care of it first, and if the guest fails to, then you would tell Airbnb to get involved.

Mm-hmm. But this, I’m gonna build your, your checklist for you now so you have it. And you don’t have to do that homework right now. You can just grab a pen and paper, take what I’m saying, infuse what you like, what you don’t like, any other ideas you have that’s specific to your business. But this is effective.

This is what we’ve been doing for years, and it proves fruitful. So step one. You are gonna gather documentation, so take clear timestamped [00:23:00] photos or videos. Any smartphone these days will, when you take a photo, it will timestamp it. Um, a lot of times it’ll even tell you what location you’re at, which is really great to have that information.

Mm-hmm. Gather original receipts or estimates for repairs and replacements. You might have to get on the horn. If something happened and you don’t know what it costs to replace it, call some local companies and tell them what happened and and say, what would it take to get this back to square one? What would that cost be?

Can you just give me a rough estimate? Mm-hmm. Okay. Because you can use that information in your invoice that you’ll send Airbnb. Obtain a detailed invoice from the cleaning company if extra cleaning was needed. Again, if your cleaning company is a solopreneur and they don’t have like proper invoicing, that’s okay.

You can actually create your own invoice in Canva, in Google Docs, in Microsoft Word, and there are plenty of invoice templates out there. You just fill in the information, have it look as professional and detailed as possible. Step two. Submit a reimbursement request in the Resolution Center on [00:24:00] Airbnb.

This must be done if you’re, this is Airbnb here Within 14 days of the guest checking out, we want you to get in your mindset one, two days max. Mm-hmm. Get this in there. Don’t be so hasty that you miss information.

Annette Grant: That’s true too.

Sarah Karakaian: But speed matters. Yep. The guest has 24 hours to respond. If the guest does not respond, then you can involve Airbnb and escalate it to their support.

And that is when you’re like crossing your fingers. ’cause I’m gonna tell you guys again, they owe you nothing. Airbnb can deny you. We have been denied before. And at that point, the guest didn’t wanna cover it. They disagreed that it was negligence. Airbnb also disagrees that it was negligence. So they don’t wanna cover you.

You have to have a plan C at that point, and we just wanna prepare you emotionally for that. Mm-hmm. Step three. The Airbnb review process. All right, so Airbnb support will step in to review the case. Airbnb may require additional documentation. You want to respond quickly, and the more [00:25:00] you have to support your case, the better.

And I’m gonna prepare you for this too. Like their perception versus your perception. You have to remember, you are much closer to your business and your property than the guest is, than Airbnb is. So I can’t emphasize enough. Being prepared for Plan C. Guest says no, Airbnb says no, and you having to have a plan to get back to square one if they say no.

Handling Retaliatory Reviews

Annette Grant: One thing we haven’t mentioned yet, we wanna make sure that we cover it because it is something all hosts are so nervous about is retaliatory reviews. We know hosts are always kind of on pins and needles. Like, should I even say anything? I don’t wanna get a bad review. Listen, we like. Hear you. We see you.

We’ve had these same exact thoughts because sometimes we’ll refrain from maybe turning in that damage claim, turning in, um, even, you know, letting the guests know, because let’s be honest. [00:26:00] They know where we live. Like they know the address. You’re like, what was going on? What were their intentions? You know, sometimes you start to to question that and it’s just like, okay, is it worth it?

Should I just let it go? What if they leave me a bad review if they don’t agree with it? So we definitely wanna make sure that we discuss that right now. ’cause we know that retaliatory reviews are always top of mind for hosts.

Sarah Karakaian: The first thing that piece of advice we can give you is as much as you can leave the communication in the app. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, if the guest calls you and tells you about the damage, which is always great. Which is, which is common, or you know, you are in a heightened state of like, oh my gosh, I gotta get this fixed. We have a guest checking in later on today. What have you end up calling the guest just to get down to brass tacks.

Mm-hmm. Take that conversation that happened via. Phone text or phone call and put it into the application messaging system so that Airbnb [00:27:00] support can see. Yep. And you can say something as simple as, Hey, John, per Yeah. As discussed on the phone today at. Give the exact time and anything that you can do to prove that you did have this conversation and here’s what was said here is what was agreed to is very helpful.

Mm-hmm. Okay. But if you can have that conversation in the app, that is the most direct way to not have to then re. Uh, narrate everything that happened on a phone conversation.

Annette Grant: And you can even, like, during that phone conversation with the guest, you can say like, Hey, what I’m gonna do after we get off the phone, I’m just going to reiterate what we discussed on the phone call.

So you’ll see that come through, um, through the messaging. So letting them know, Hey, you’re gonna see basically an outline of our call. So they’re prepped and ready for That is always a great way to to wrap up the conversation.

Sarah Karakaian: Here’s an example from the gentleman who had the window damage and the door damage.

We, uh, it was extensive, so I ended, we ended [00:28:00] up calling the guest. I actually can’t remember the, the whole story, but regardless, we messaged the guest and we said, hi, Jerry. Just to recap our phone conversation, you indicated that you broke the kitchen window in the unit because your phone was dead and you could not access the code.

Can you please confirm that you intend to reimburse us for this damage? This gets Jerry to then buy in that he did agree to me verbally. Mm-hmm. That he was gonna take care of the reimbursement cost. And just to confirm that. Yep. But you, but it’s, I’m not over here being like, Jerry, you know, putting emotion into that conversation.

It’s very factual.

Annette Grant: Yeah. That was very direct, like broken window. You couldn’t get in, you’re gonna reimburse. So again, keeping it super clear.

Sarah Karakaian: So let’s say guest damage happens and you’re on Airbnb, you’re not gonna call them, you’re just gonna have that conversation in the Airbnb message. Here is where it’s very important you leave emotion out of it, especially, especially if it’s evident that the guest was being super negligent and really disrespectful to your home.

Even more so, remove that emotion and be very straightforward about what happened, [00:29:00] because this way the guest doesn’t feel combative. You haven’t made mm-hmm them or they, you’re not making them make you their project of like tearing you down and ruining you even more. That’s what can happen when we create this like combative environment with the customer, with the guest.

So a good example of using professional neutral language is we have entered the home and found the living room chair is scratched and damaged by a cat. Could you please explain? Right. Not like, you know, we didn’t have a, we have a pet policy where cats aren’t allowed or you didn’t tell us, you know, it’s just like seeing the facts.

We entered the home, we saw this. We don’t allow cats. Can you please explain? Bad example? Did you bring a cat? You aren’t supposed to have a cat. Your cat ruined the chair. Now I have to tell the next guest, the chair won’t be there. Why did you do this? Like, yeah, they might get retaliatory with their review.

Mm-hmm. Um, if you need to. There is that chat GPT tool or other tools like chat GPT, where if you don’t have that skillset of [00:30:00] turning how you really feel into a neutral professional excerpt, that’s okay because now we have tools these days with, with ai.

Annette Grant: Use the AI in your favor. For sure.

Sarah Karakaian: I honestly, I’ve done it where I like talk into the app and I am, I actually vent heated.

I get heated with my, with my bot and I’m like, but you have to turn this into a professional neutral. Response that I can actually use to the guest. ’cause I want to avoid a retaliatory review, but I do wanna remain factual and try to get reimbursed to this damage. And then it will spit out a really lovely response for you if that’s not, you know, something that you’re good at.

Um, and here’s, because here’s the thing.

Approaching Guests with Grace

Sarah Karakaian: Always approach every single incident with the thought that maybe the guest didn’t mean this. What do I mean by that? Let me tell you a couple stories. I’ll tell some stories and Annette tells some stories. Okay. I’ve got a story of a family stayed in a two bedroom apartment and she had great reviews who, the woman who booked and she had two kids staying with her adult [00:31:00] kids ’cause we have, we have a college town. This is very common. They come to visit their kids. They booked for three nights. And they checked out, and I’m telling you, you’d have thought like a frat house, like came over and like threw a party in this apartment. It was so random. It’s like,

Annette Grant: but still easy to clean. So don’t freak out over the party. Don’t, yeah. No. We didn’t get any noise complaints. There’s a couple beer bottles, you know, or a couple dozen.

Sarah Karakaian: More than a couple. But still, but still it’s easy to clean up. Yeah. But it was, it was, it was intense of a cleanup. And so there was an extra cleaning fee that we, that we were being charged by our cleaners and we felt that this, that this, um, warranted, warranted.

Uh, notifying the guest. And so it really was approaching it like, I don’t know, I, my, at first my head was like, I don’t know how this happened. This nice, sweet, very communicative, lovely lady with all these reviews, left the place like a frat house had just been here. So I approached it like, there’s gotta be more to this story.

And so. You know, I don’t remember her name, but like, Hey Sue, just letting, I wanna show you some pictures of the way that the unit was left. I’m hoping you can help me understand, because it, it is incurring an [00:32:00] additional cleaning fee from our cleaning team and we just wanted to work with you, see if we can come to an understanding, uh, of, of what happened so we can get to a resolution. Something like that. I’m making this up on the spot. Come to find out her and her husband left. After the two nights and the third night.

Annette Grant: Yeah. Left the kids alone.

Sarah Karakaian: Left the college kids alone in the property, and the kids threw a party in the, in the, in the unit. Mother was mortified, obviously paid the cleaning fee, like left us a glowing review because I approached it like mm-hmm.

Annette Grant: I’m assuming you did not mean for this to happen. There are charges, like I’m saying like there would love to be reimbursed for this, but I just wanted to talk with you first about it.

I think another story here that I wanna share is when you, again, have a property that could have, you know, multiple guests, a lot of them are gonna stay in different bedrooms, do things in said bedrooms, maybe break bed frames in bedrooms, but you weren’t there, you weren’t a part of that occasion. So remember that whoever. The [00:33:00] person is that booked your property, they’re not in each and every room.

Sarah Karakaian: Right.

Annette Grant: So let’s say there’s maybe a boat, a broken bed frame, maybe there’s, um, let’s say, uh, nightstands and maybe one of them is broken or something, whatever, like. The normal host is not going room to room to room and checking to make sure everything is exactly as it was when it checked in. So that’s also where you wanna be really, um, you wanna tread lightly and not be accusatory when talking to. The person that booked the property, because they might have friends, family, um, uh, you know, other, uh, relatives that were in other rooms that might have broken something and they were too shy or scared to tell the host that something went aw array in, in their bedroom.

So, or, or anywhere on the property. You know, you might not be out at the fire pit and maybe a chair out there got broken, um, late at night and you didn’t know about it. So just be. Don’t be accusatory is what we’re saying because the person that booked might not [00:34:00] have ever had any idea that anything was damaged at all.

Sarah Karakaian: Yes. So when they do say, I had no idea this happened, and then you have evidence or photos, uh, give them some grace to like wrap their mind around. Someone in their party had this damage, didn’t tell them. Mm-hmm. Now you’re bringing this to their attention. You’re asking for money like just put yourself in their shoes.

It really comes back to my friends that we’re in a hospitality business. Mm-hmm. And as hard as it is to come at it, when we feel so close to our property and so close to the situation of like, they may not have had the intention. Of damaging the place. They may,

Annette Grant: I’d say 99 times.

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. They don’t have the intention, even if they’re like, no way did my someone in my party do that thing.

Mm-hmm. Still find some grace and some patience within yourself to see if you can’t navigate and help them navigate to a place where they do accept responsibility that it could have happened in the property during their stay. And just remain gracious, remain hospitable, but firm and factual.

Annette Grant: And factual is the biggest thing.

Sarah Karakaian: And it will [00:35:00] go so far.

Final Tips and Recap

Sarah Karakaian: So I wanna recap some tips mm-hmm. That we covered that will really help you change how you do business. So first of all, damage claims should not be your first line of defense. Okay. Have a have clear house rules to prevent issues in the first place, and have ways that your guests can communicate with you where they might feel comfortable mm-hmm telling you that something happened in the property that could be in your welcome message, in your property, or the message that you send to them if anything happens during your stay, that you need to bring it to our attention. We are always available to have discussion about how to use things, let us know something’s not working correctly, or perhaps, um, some minor damages happen in the property.

We’re, we’re always here to have a discuss whatever sort of open line of communication, just like any relationship. Make sure you’re, you’re doing that with your guests. Mm-hmm.

Annette Grant: And then of course, again, speed matters. So if there is a damage, we wanna get photos, we wanna get video, we wanna get the documentation and make that claim as soon as possible.

Sarah Karakaian: Remember, [00:36:00] every claim is not going to be successful with Air Cover. Mm-hmm. Okay? And so you gotta be prepared to know that the cost of doing business includes negligence to, mm-hmm. All right. So if you do have a guest who is not ideal and they won’t pay, Airbnb fails to pay, we want you to pull up your bootstraps.

Annette Grant: And that’s also, you need to have your own insurance.

Sarah Karakaian: Yeah. Yeah. Cover the cover, the damages have some built in, uh, margin there. Mm-hmm. To cover the damage so you can get back on your feet and keep on doing business because no matter what business you’re in, there are going to be setbacks. And it’s not just the short term rental industry. Right. It’s every business. And you gotta be able to, as a business owner, get back up mm-hmm continue doing business. Remember why you started this in the first place. And remember after, you know, 12 plus years of doing what we’re doing. I can assure you and 99.9% of guests are incredible human beings, and they’re a wonderful experience.

With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

Annette Grant: I’m Annette Grant. And together [00:37:00] we are Thanks for Visiting