Avoiding retaliatory review - human feces left in my shower

I am beyond shocked right now. My most recent guests, two elderly ladies and their little dogs, just left. I was incredibly gracious with them, allowing them to arrive early, and turning on the a/c three hours ahead of time to make sure their stay was comfortable from the get-go. Unfortunately, they failed to return my courtesy. My housekeeper just sent me pictures of the mess they left in their wake. They include human feces in the brand new shower, which clearly someone had been trying to stomp down the drain, and urine all over the toilet seat. They booked my house 8 months ago, so I don't see senility being an issue here. I also have Ring video of them being perfectly able-bodied. Either way, if it was an accident and they were unable to clean it, they definitely knew how to message and/or call me to let me know what the housekeeper was going to find. So now, my poor, wonderful housekeeper will be tacking on extra cleaning and biohazard fees, which I obviously need to pass on to the guests. So my question is this: I believe I have only 14 days to request reimbursement for the extra housekeeping charges. This is the same amount of time I have to leave a review. Last month, a guest also let their dog leave a mess, so I gently let her know there was an extra charge. However, rather than acknowledge it and apologize, she somehow managed to manipulate me into paying the fee myself, and then left me a 4-star review. (My guess is that that was in anticipation of me leaving a poor review of her.) She started saying that now that I mention it, she did have issues with her stay (once I told her about the pet waste fee). And this time, the mess is considerably worse, and the bill will be considerably higher. How would you guys handle the timing of everything? I'm afraid that if I send her the invoice and/or review her too soon, I'm going to get a retaliatory bad review. But then it seems shady to me to wait until 5 minutes before the review window ends to do everything at once. And, of course, this is all assuming she's not going to leave a review first. --- **Post Details:** - **Subreddit:** r/airbnb_hosts - **Author:** u/ilovewormss - **Score:** 41 upvotes - **Upvote Ratio:** 77.0% - **Comments:** 81 - **Posted:** 7/8/2025 - **URL:** https://reddit.com/r/airbnb_hosts/comments/1lv1ccg/avoiding_retaliatory_review_human_feces_left_in/