have you ever had to submit a resolution center claim
on airbnb and it was denied on today's video i'll show you
everything you need to do to get your claims approved the first
time and get the money into your account faster
welcome to another episode of airbnb uncovered
i'm matt the creator of airbnb uncovered dot com
and airbnb super host on this channel i uncover some of the best kept hosting
secrets as well as share with you everything
that i've ever learned after hosting over 3000 guests my tips
tricks and best practices are all focused on helping new hosts earn more
revenue attract the best gas and achieve super
host status faster damage to your home from guests
is super frustrating can make you so angry and cause you to
feel so disrespected i mean you do all this work
to prepare your home for guests and they can't even take care of the
place honestly it's one of the worst parts about being a host on airbnb
luckily if you follow my two-step method to attracting the best guests
and avoiding the worst ones this likely won't happen to you
very often if at all but accidents do happen
you can and you should claim for minor damages or excessive cleaning
it could be a stained rug a broken lamp or just a general mess
left from a guest that didn't really clean up after themselves
the resolution center is not just reserved for
mega incidents i bet the average claim on airbnb
is something from a few hundred dollars to maybe a thousand
briefly let's go over how the resolution center works
and then i'll tell you exactly how to file a claim that will maximize
your chances of getting paid out you use the resolution center if you
come back to your house after a guest checks out
and you find damage or something that you want your guests to reimburse you
for to facilitate this you would open a
claim on the resolution center you must open your claim within 24 hours
of the guest checkout or before the next guest checks in
the resolution center will then notify your guests that you're seeking money
from them to cover the cost of something there are
three options available to the guests after
you open a claim the first is to pay the claim the second
is to offer a different amount or three to decline
the decline the claim altogether the guest then gets three
days to decide which option they want to go with
if the guest doesn't respond in three days or offers you a lower amount
or denies the claim altogether you then get the option to involve airbnb
airbnb will act as a mediator and work with you and the guests to get the claim
paid out the first part of this process is for
airbnb to contact the guest and ask them to pay your claim
the guests can still refuse to pay even if airbnb is asking them to do so
assuming your guest refuses to pay this is where the airbnb
host guarantee comes into play and with that comes the start of a new process
now instead of getting your guests to pay you must prove to airbnb that your
claim is legitimate and that it should be paid out by airbnb
and this is where many hosts get into trouble the most
common pitfalls are that the host doesn't push for their claim to be
processed under the host guarantee so that the claim is closed as soon as
the guest tells airbnb they don't want to pay or the host
doesn't provide the necessary documentation to validate
their claim and then airbnb denies the payout and
closes the case so now let's go through what you need to
do to get your claims paid out when i'm creating a resolution center claim
i always begin with the end in mind i know that often my claims are going to
be denied by the guest so i create the requests
knowing that most often i'm going to need to prove my case to
airbnb to get paid out since the standards
since the airbnb standards for proof are generally pretty high
this gives me the double benefit of providing the guests every
single piece of evidence up front in an attempt to convince them that they need
to pay ideally avoiding involving airbnb
altogether so how do i do this there are three
steps i always take the first step is to
document everything take lots and lots of clear
pictures and take pictures of everything if you
have a big claim you could have between 40 and 60 pictures remember airbnb
isn't going to send someone to your house to do an inspection
they rely exclusively on what you upload you can also take a video but submitting
the video to airbnb is hard because they can't access external websites to
download your file instead you have to break the video
into smaller segments that can be sent via email which
is a bit annoying remember to take pictures
before you do anything it can be tempting to just take a few
pictures and then start cleaning and repairing only to realize that
something is worse than you original originally thought
but then you have nothing to photograph since you've already remedied this
situation or you're halfway through it i've been
caught in that before so please don't do that one thing that is
hard to document though is smells since you can't take a picture
of a smell instead take a picture of what produced
the smell if you come back to your home and find
that it smells like smoke for example i guarantee you that you will find ashes
somewhere in your home you just have to look for them if a
guest is careless enough to smoke inside your
house then they're gonna be careless enough in hiding the evidence
so it'll be there somewhere i then create my write-up for for my
claim this is the second part and this is not a story about how upset
and distraught you are because trust me you're going to be both
of those things instead limit your write up to just the
facts nothing else list every item you would like replaced
and the value for each also include the cost of services for
example an invoice from a cleaner for extra cleaning
to prove the value you're going to need one of two things
either a receipt or an invoice or a link to a similar item on the web then total
all this up and that's the value of your claim
this is also where the timing gets a bit complicated
remember at the beginning of the video i said you only get 24 hours or before
your next guest checks in to create a claim
so for items that you can't easily put a value on just put a guesstimate in
and note that the real cost will be coming will be forthcoming
don't let this part hold you back from submitting a claim
you can always refine costs once airbnb is involved
and to do that you'll attach your your proof or your receipts to emails that
you send to airbnb and the last step is to communicate
generally i don't send messages to my guests reminding them about
the red my resolution center request i let the system do the work and if they
don't respond i'll go through the host guarantee
process one thing to note here is that the
resolution center request does not appear in the guest message thread i
believe the guests are notified via an actual email
and sometimes through a notification on their airbnb account
at this point it is of vital importance to keep
all communication over airbnb so if a guest sends you a text or a
whatsapp message reply to them on airbnb and paraphrase
or cut and copy the guest message along with your reply
a few points about communicating with airbnb sometimes communicating with them
can be a little frustrating they can be slow to respond
but you have to own this process and keep pushing for an update if you're not
getting one if you have escalated to airbnb and no
one has contacted you after about a week call in to get someone to pick up the
claim if after your guest has declined and your airbnb rep tells you that since
the guest has declined the case is now closed do not take this
as an answer push for the case to be reviewed by a
supervisor and paid out under the host guarantee
in many cases you will be eligible for some sort of payment
under the host guarantee and in many instances airbnb won't give you an exact
reason for denying the claim but usually it is because they think you
haven't provided enough documentation to substantiate your claim so remind
them that you've taken pictures of all the
damages and you have provided receipts or links
for every single item you have listed and don't be surprised if this process
takes between a few weeks to maybe a month
question have you had an experience where airbnb
denied paying your resolution center claim leave it in the comments
below i'm kind of feeling like this episode has sounded like one of those
commercials on tv for a law firm wanting to take on your
disability claim i assure you this is different you're
not trying to maximize your claim instead you're just seeking to be
compensated for what you're owed and i think it goes without saying but
i can't guarantee that you're gonna get paid out but i do think that if you
follow the three steps that i just outlined
taking pictures of everything creating a clear and factual write-up for your case
and owning the process then your chances of getting paid out
will increase dramatically please please please remember needing to file a
resolution center claim is rare if you're being choosy with your
guests then it's probably not going to happen
so please don't let this video deter you from par from starting a hosting
business instead anticipate that this might
happen i know many hosts who have never had to claim
anything and i know of many others who have had to make a claim
in maybe one out of a hundred stays and they're
never major and also you don't and also just
remember you don't need to have a disastrous incident
in order to file a claim i bet most claims are under 500
as always i'm trying to provide new hosts with practical advice that they
can use to earn more money and to only host the best
guess if i've done that for you in this video
then please give it a thumbs up or rate it highly as you're asked
hopefully you want more tips for me and if so please subscribe to my channel
and click on the notification bell all of these actions liking subscribing
clicking on the notification bell they go a long way towards building this
channel since youtube will see that my videos are liked by viewers
and will then in turn show my videos higher in search results
so that more people can see my videos that's it for today thank you so much
for watching and i'll see you again next week bye for
now
you