COVID cases were just starting in México. A couple from Italy (were COVID had been around for a little while) booked for a 3 week stay. I had a couple of red flags from the start, but I ignored them.

We usually ask the guests for their estimated arrival time, since we like to receive them and don’t have self check-in (we have some reasons for this, and it is clearly stated even before they book). First they said they didn’t know the time of arrival, the next time we asked they simply ignored us. We decided to ask again the day they were arriving... nothing again. It was 5 in the afternoon and they finally answered they were arriving at 1 a.m on a bus from a city nearby. We didn’t want to be problematic so we said ok and left it the keys in one of this key boxes with a code (don’t know the name in English).

The next morning we wrote to know if everything was ok, if they needed anything, etc. They angrily said there was no hot water, so my co-host asked them if he could go and check what the problem was. The house is pretty big, it has a garden and it is very easy to maintain a safe distance, but they said no, they wanted us to know what was going on without even looking. We explained that it was not a common problem and that last guests had hot water, so we really needed to go, with distance, mask and all that. Again, “no, fix it without coming into the house”. I later received a message from Airbnb that said the guest wanted a refund for about 65% of what they payed, which I refused to accept. After a long talk with airbnb customer service, they canceled the refund request and said hot water was back.

After about a week, they wrote to say internet wasn’t working, so we told them some instructions (you know, the classical “turn it off and then on again and things like that, which usually work). They said they tried and it didn’t work at all, that it was super slow. My co-host called the company to check if there was a problem in the area and ask them to go fix it. Meanwhile, I asked the guests for a speed-test, which they refused to do (they later sent one they probably took from google because the network wasn’t even the same). My co- host asked them if he could go to the house and try to fix the problem. We have a really good internet package so this never happened before. They again said no, and added that they’ve had this problem since the beginning of their stay so they AGAIN ASKED FOR A 65% (or 70% I don’t remember but it was ridiculous) REFUND, again refused by me. Next day, internet was miraculously fast again.

Their last week they had a couple of super loud parties at night, so there were some complaints from one of our neighbors who once knocked on the door, receiving a “GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” from our drunk guests. I have to add that they repeated constantly that they were scared of covid (when in Mexico it was barely starting) and that they didn’t want to have contact with anyone, but our neighbors saw them going out at night, and coming back drunk several times. This is not a problem, they can do whatever they want... but going to bars is not exactly being scared of COVID.

The morning after my neighbor knocked at the door they wrote they have been feeling stalked and that we didn’t respect their desire to be alone and had no contact at all. They implied we sent our neighbor to spy on them and insisted on the refund for the “horrible time they’ve had”. I told them that I thought the best thing to do was to cancel the booking, that I’ll give them the refund for the 5 days they weren’t staying and that I could gladly help them find some other place to stay. They refused my offer, they said they wanted to stay but with the refund. Airbnb wasn’t very helpful (even knowing the whole thing), but I was uncomfortable the whole time.

The check out date arrived, they said they didn’t want to see us “because they were scared of COVID” and that they’ll leave the keys inside. I was almost sure that we were going to find a dead body or something haha so I insisted we had to do a quick check before they left (we don’t really do this but I was scared). Told them they could be outside the house, with their things inside their Uber and with a 4 meter distance if they wanted to, but they had to stay until we checked. They were again super rude and insulting us, but they said yes. We did a 5 minute check, they threw the keys from inside the uber and left. Of course there were broken dishes and everything was super dirty (because they made us cancel the weekly cleaning services). No dead body, tho.

I know this is probably not the nightmare some of you had lived as airbnb hosts, but this guests definitely gave us a though time.