Hosts, be aware: our experience with Happy Guest

Hi ​@Ori-agonor, 

I’m Patrick, Senior Partnerships Manager at Hospitable. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and I’m sorry to hear about your experience.

Happy Guest is one of our partners, and I’m escalating this directly to their team. I’ve asked them to review the charges and previous communication thoroughly, contact you directly, and work toward a clear resolution.

We’ll follow up with the partner and continue monitoring for similar reports.

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for escalating this and for the follow-up. Unfortunately, my experience since has been that Happy Guest is more focused on holding their position than actually taking accountability.

They added extra liability coverage some of our reservations that we were never told they even offered. We carry our own liability and property insurance, so we would have no reason to add this ourselves. They insist we did, but haven't been able to provide any proof or record of when this was supposedly agreed to.

There are still three charges we dispute, each explained to them directly:
- One duplicate charge on the same reservation. (They insisted it’s not even that we showed why  it was duplicated) 
- Two unauthorized charges, where we used a feature explained to us, called "skip check-in", specifically to avoid being charged for their waiver when we didn't want that coverage. This only came to light after we noticed unrecognized charges on our card. We were never told during the sales call or onboarding that stays over 10 nights would also incur an additional $2/night on top of the $37 base fee.

That gap in disclosure had real consequences: I had to pass those unexpected charges back to co-hosting clients during a slow season, clients who had no idea these charges existed because Happy Guest never disclosed them to us in the first place. My clients ended up absorbing the cost since we couldn't pass it to the guest after the fact, and it put me in a genuinely difficult position with people who trust me to manage their properties.

Once we disputed the charges, the explanation changed entirely, we were then told that even without using their platform, the waiver fee still applies regardless. That's a different policy than what was communicated to us originally.

When we asked for documentation or proof supporting their claims, we were instead told our team was being unkind and rude, and the account was closed. To be clear, we're glad to own anything we may have overlooked, Happy Guest records all calls and emails; if there really is documentation showing we agreed to this. Instead, their team member Tim told me directly he'd review those recorded communications and follow up, and never did.

I'll be honest, this has left me wondering how many other hosts are trusting this company without closely auditing their charges, and how many are seeing similar duplicate or unauthorized charges without realizing it.

Hey there Oriana, I’m Kanan, one of the founders at Happy Guest.

Right away I want to say I’m so sorry for your experience. One of the highlights of Happy Guest is our support team who try to go above and beyond the call of duty and advocate on behalf of hosts.

I talked about your situation with our team, and found that the team did advocate on your behalf with the insurance companies for your refund request, but they weren’t able to provide the refund because your reservations did take place. 

***Even though the insurance company was unable to provide a refund for the reservations that took place, Happy Guest is going to refund you directly and make it right.

I also just want to softly clear the air around the accounting, because it was accurate, and I don’t want the impression that there is something wrong with the accounting.

I’m going to email you directly with my phone and contact information, and if you’d like to chat, my door is always open.

We wish you the best,
Kanan