So we have been renting our vacation rental for 15+ years. The daughter of a previous guest contacted me directly and asked to book. I rarely do direct bookings, I usually direct repeat guests to Airbnb or VRBO. But she seemed nice and I remembered her family, so I agreed. She and another couple were splitting the cost and each sent me their payment via Paypal. One person used seller protection, the other sent it as a friend. Everything seemed fine with one hiccup that the AC wall unit in one of the five bedrooms stopped working. They told us at 9 p.m. one night and we had it repaired by the afternoon. The central air was totally fine, it was just a supplemental unit. They seemed happy and had no other comments. However, the left the house in terrible shape. It was so bad we had to hire an extra cleaner for four hours. We had taken a $500 deposit, so I wrote them and advised we were keeping $100 for extra cleaning and I returned the rest via Paypal. The woman's husband called and threatened me. He then sent a text saying they wanted $1,200 or they would be take it up with Paypal and/or their credit card companies unless we pay them by the end of the next day. I have never run into this. As I did research, I keep finding conflicting info, but what most often comes up is that as a vacation rental host, I have no standing with Paypal because they don't support payments for that. I also read that since I accepted a friends and family payment for a service, I can lost my Paypal account. In either case, from what I understand, I won't be able to defend myself and they can rescind their entire payment and freeze my Paypal account for months. I'm pretty freaked out about this. I cannot get through to Paypal to discuss. I went to the resolution center and got the message that my transaction was not eligible for dispute resolution. Any advice? Not sure how to respond or proceed. Obviously, I will never use Paypal for the rental again.
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