Guest Broke My TV. What would you do?

[Luke Carl]

I touched on this on one of Pauls posts but here goes.... 

Guest checked in Saturday. Late Saturday night (midnight) I got a message and the thread goes as follows... 

guest: "Hey just FYI your tv is broken Netflix on displays a half screen and the cable box doesn't work. I hooked up my laptop directly to the hdmi cable and nothing" (i'm guessing too much moonshine) 

me: "Interesting that's a brand new tv try putting it on HDMI1, also why are you messing around with cables?"

Guest sends picture with broken screen. It's the left half. 

me: "Why is the tv slid all the way to the left against the wall?" (from what I can tell guest slid it to the left and banged it on the wall to its left which my guess is that's why it's broken. Probably drunkenly trying to get at hdmi inputs to hook up his computer) 

guest: "idk it was like that so i tried casting from my phone and same thing we're just goin to use our laptop. It displays everything else fine until Netflix plays a movie not sure" (so it went from not working at all to working on everything but Netflix which there's no way that's possible. The pic he sent the whole left half of the tv is busted)

Cleaner is headed over now for more info. If it really is trashed I'll have to send handyman to Walmart to replace it today. 

I called airbnb they said send him a resolution (bill) for the price of the TV and see if he pays it. If he doesn't it will get escalated and during the process he still has the right to leave a review. 

This was a $600 55" TLC that I purchased last may so it did't even make it a year. 

I have until 4:00 today (before next guest check in) to file the resolution. 

What would you do?? 

[JJ King]

The communication at this point is a careful dance. It's tricky because you don't want to make the guest mad and have them leave you a bad review but you also need to get paid for them breaking your TV. 

I say file the resolution ASAP, because as you know you need to get it in before the next reservation starts. 

We can assume the guest is not going to shell out $600 for the TV so you will need to wait a few days to escalate it. I'm not sure if you've dealt with airbnb escalated cases but it is a pain and they will do everything they can to not pay you. Make sure to document everything. Screenshot the conversations, take pictures of the broken TV screen, original receipt of the TV helps. If you can take a picture of the serial number and find the same TV online that will suffice. The new receipt helps but if its more expensive than the old TV they won't cover the extra cost. 

Good luck!