A worried Airbnb guest took to Reddit for advice after her host charged her $3,000 for staining a couch during a memorial gathering for an old friend.
Lauren Sanders, 31, rented a two-bedroom house with a friend for a rate of around $500 a night in Nashville, Tennessee, to hold an unofficial memorial event on the weekend of October 4. She admittedly didn’t notice the guest limit of six people at a time.
According to Sanders, she had a 15 people come and go over a period of several hours, with a maximum of eight guests at one given time.
Whilst the old friends caught up, drunk, and remembered their old friend, Sanders had a mishap and spilled some Taco Bell avocado verde sauce on the couch. She shared her dilemma in the subreddit “mildly infuriating” where it garnered 22,000 upvotes. “I’m panicking a little! Please help,” Sanders pleaded in her post.
“I made the mistake of eating on the couch—something I do in my own home all the time, but in hindsight, shouldn’t have done on someone else’s sofa. I have white couches, and am constantly spilling on them,” Sanders, a metal fabricator from Knoxville, Tennessee, told Newsweek. “Stains are usually easy to remove. I noticed a stain on the couch the next morning. I was embarrassed, obviously.”
She added: “I’ll be super transparent, we broke the house rules by having more than 6 people over. I’m willing to pay whatever additional fees that comes with.”
The Airbnb host messaged the guest outside of the app to discuss paying a fee to cover the damages.
Sanders apologized and said she would cover the cost of any professional cleaning to rectify the situation.
“All communications were done outside of the Airbnb app, which seemed most convenient, but was a little bit of a red flag to us. She said she would keep us updated as she tried various ways to fix the stain,” Sanders explained.
A few days later, the host called to say she had tried professional cleaning, but it didn’t work.
She also said she had tried contacting the manufacturer for replacement cushions but that it had been discontinued and then asked for $1,100 outside the app for a couch—which she said originally cost $2,500.
“I was distraught, but willing to pay if she submitted me a receipt from a professional cleaner first,” Sanders explained.
Sanders then sought advice from the subreddit “legal advice” asking how she should proceed, and the common consensus was to move the conversation into Airbnb’s platform since she would have to provide evidence of her efforts.
However, things took an unexpected turn when the Airbnb host then requested $3,000 in the app.
“With the economy being the way it is, this is almost all the money I have in savings. I was anticipating paying an additional cleaning fee of $500 max,” Sanders said.
The stained couch. Lauren Sanders was extremely worried she would have to foot the expensive bill for the stain.
Lauren Sanders/Lauren Sanders
Redditors offered their verdict on the conundrum and shared advice taken from their own experiences.
“This happened to me but it was over ‘excessive electricity usage’ the airbnb owner wanted to charge us €30 more, we refused, he made claim over airbnb, I showed airbnb the messages and they took our side. NEVER pay the airbnb host outside airbnb and always go through their guidelines, they are fairly helpful when it comes to additional charges,” one Reddit user wrote.
Another added: “I just had to look really close to see those stains. 3000 USD is a completely absurd amount to ask for compared to the damage these stains have caused.”
Fortunately, Airbnb stepped in to help solve the situation between the guest and host, and shared the “superhost” did not have a history of previous claims.
“Following a review of this case, we have contacted the guest to explain that, as a gesture of goodwill by Airbnb, they will not need to pay for the damage. We are supporting the host through our host damage protection, which reimburses hosts up to $3 million in the rare event their place or belongings are damaged during a stay,” Airbnb told Newsweek in a statement. “We advise users to use our Resolution Centre so our 24/7 Community Support team can carefully mediate any disputes to reach a clear, fair and proportionate outcome.”
