Imagine an Airbnb guest flooding your entire home from a clogged toilet, leaving you without a home and responsible for footing the massive bill. That’s what a San Francisco host says happened to her earlier this year, and she’s been fighting Airbnb to get reimbursed since.
Erika Gemzer, a career coach who uses X under the handle ErikaCoaches, posted on the platform the nightmare she’s been living since renting a unit above her apartment to a guest who clogged the toilet with feces and baby wipes on April 14.
If only a plunger could have fixed the problem.
Instead, Gemzer says the guest, who had checked in for a one-month stay and left early without warning, damaged the valve that manages water flow from the tank to the bowl.
“A perfect storm,” she said.
The valve damage led to water running for at least 15 hours, ruining half her building with fecal water. Gemzer, 12 weeks pregnant at the time, contacted Airbnb, who allegedly told her she first needed to complete the repairs and then file a claim against the guest.
Gemzer says she spent “dozens of hours” trying to reach someone on the phone at Airbnb with no luck as she scrambled to get a construction estimate for the damage to meet the company’s 14-day claim window. Just the estimate to dry out the house, not including rebuilding it, was $130,000, Gemzer says.
The guest declined to pay the cost, so Gemzer was officially put into Airbnb’s claim system. She says over the course of six weeks, she exchanged about 93 emails with the company and its third-party adjuster. Airbnb refused to discuss the claim until the adjuster completed their investigation, but Gemzer says the adjuster never came to her home and it took them seven weeks to hire a plumber.
The plumber confirmed the issues were caused by the clog and broken valve. Gemzer says Airbnb emailed her alluding to doubt about the origin of the baby wipes and feces and hinted at toilet maintenance issues. The company offered her $6,000, Gemzer says, even though at this point in the saga she owed $52,743, including $19,451 in lost revenue for canceled bookings.
The user says she continued to go back and forth with Airbnb representatives since the disaster plumbing issue and has moved three times. She has no clue when her home will be livable again and says she’s on the hook for $300,379 in repair costs.
Airbnb offered her a “final offer” of about $31,000, she says.
Gemzer is sharing her story in the hope that Airbnb will help, particularly as she faces the challenge of securing temporary accommodation for herself, her two pets, and her soon-to-arrive baby.
“I truly cannot imagine that a company like Airbnb intends to leave hosts homeless and otherwise high and dry in their darkest moments,” she says. “Especially when the source of the hardship was 100% caused by guest damages.”
