Ask HN: Dealing with Surreal Homeaway Tenant?

I just got back from a VRBO week at an east coast beach, place was passable but not great — overpaid for a worse experience than previous year, beds were godawful, locked cabinets in the kitchen and rooms locked off, guy was running some sketch iptv setup but I brought an Apple TV so not the end of the world but just puzzling. Worst part by far was that the guy was waiting there and I had to suffer through an hour of him bitching about prior tenants and wondering if I was next. He also had a modified lease he wanted signed — which I did because it was probably unenforceable given we had an existing lease, one that wasn’t signed after basically extorting me with family present. But figured it was a bad sign.

Which of course it was. The guy called today and is claiming that there were 17 individual spots on the carpet that required cleaning (carpets were not very clean when we arrived and we walked lightly, family event, 4 people mostly out of the house except sleeping). “The lease points out $50/spot but let’s just work this out the easy way for $250.” I tussle with the guy for a few minutes but at this point i figure the cheapest way out is to just tell him fine (at which point he goes from a running in the most belligerent asshole award 2019 to my best pal) and hang up.

So now I’m curious what others have run into & would do. This is far and away my worst “homesharing” experience, everything else has been 5 star reviews for tenant and me. Enough to probably be scared away from it in the future because this is such a pain and aggravation for what was (and still was, despite this) supposed to be a nice family vacation. Part of me wants to waste more time trying to fight this with vrbo, and the other says I just escaped a psychopath for $250.