Tag Archives: airbnb business model

Only Case Managers Can Help with Problems

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We booked this apartment in Harlem for $780 total. Flash forward to more than a week later (booking was instantly confirmed and the host and I chatted) when I receive a request of alteration, i.e. “your host wants to modify the reservation – pay an additional $710.”

Naturally, I rejected the request and asked the host what was going on. The host answered that “due to high demand for the weekend” (we were staying four nights) she made the business decision to double the price. I told her that although it’s fair game to adjust price to demand, we already booked and already agreed on a price, and that it is not normal business to ask for double the amount. Can you imagine a world like this? “I’m buying this phone… wait, too many people want it. Give me back your credit card – it’s now double or I might take the phone back.

I reached out to Airbnb who talked to her. Her answer was that she needed more money for this booking, and that, if we weren’t willing to negotiate, then “she might need to cancel the booking”. Might. I asked the host to either uphold or cancel the reservation; there was no answer. I had to get in touch with an Airbnb case manager (who, by the way, did a wonderful job – they cancelled for us with no fee and gave us a coupon to make up for the difference in price to rebook somewhere else due to being close to the departure date). However, the classy host is still operating on Airbnb and continues to force her way through her bookings.

Another person lived a similar situation before me and yet the apartment has not received a single soul yet. Airbnb has let her schedule open for our dates so she’s basically getting out of this without any penalty. I’m sure one way or another this will bite back, but just wanted to keep everyone informed and aware.

Beware of these disgusting practices; it doesn’t stand by Airbnb but you have to get a manager on the phone. Standard employees don’t have any power besides trying to mediate the conflict. I reached out through email, phone, and Twitter. The answer was fairly fast and I could get in touch with someone immediately every time. but had to wait the whole day to get the case manager.

Denver Airbnb Horror Story – Just go to a Hotel

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My fiancé booked three nights at an Airbnb in Denver. The listing said that it was multiple acres of beautiful mountain country. It was less than an acre and it backed up to a trailer park. She barely missed crossing direct paths with a bear because of poor composting practices.

The listing advertised no pets. She found evidence of animals and the person tending to the property admitted to a dog being in the room. The door didn’t lock. There were holes in the door looking directly at the bed. It was repulsively disgusting. She found white dried up bodily fluids in the bed. When the person changed the sheets she watched in horror as the girl crawled around in the bed with filthy dirty bare feet to put the sheets on.

The host was rude and never even present. Airbnb has been rude, uncaring and dismissive. This host is terrible and a scammer, and Airbnb is a terrible company.

Airbnb has gotten so bad that they received a D- on Better Business Bureau. Magically recently they appear as an A+ now. When the BBB was asked why, they said it was a glitch. There’s no accountability. Just the fact that there’s a website called Airbnbhell.com is probably a red flag, but hopefully after reading this you will come to the conclusion to just stay at a nice motel. At least they will answer and be courteous and there is a management system in place to deal customer concerns.

If you were wondering: even after all of this we only received half of what we paid.

Couple Comes and Destroys Serenity with Airbnb Rentals

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We bought our land two years ago. We built and moved in last year. This is (was) our dream home: quiet and secluded on a pristine lake. Not a big lake, a very small one that is non-navigable.

A few months after we moved in, a few chalets started popping up. I turns out it’s all the same couple that built them… for the sole purpose of short-term rentals. They have turned our nice, quiet neighbourhood into a constant stream of loud strangers who disrespect the surroundings and the nature.

I’ve had to call the police numerous times. I’ve even had a renter call the cops on me accusing me of making death threats with a shovel (which is BS). I am in the process of taking this up with the city to get their rental permit revoked. In our HOA it states that the lots are for residential habitations only and cannot be used as a commerce or business, even liberally.

These people don’t live here and I, along with the other owners, have had enough. Quite frankly, f$#& Airbnb. Airbnb, and other short-term rental companies like them need to be outlawed entirely. This is unfair to people who just want peace and quiet.

Airbnb did not transfer money to host, booking was cancelled

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Well this is a strange one as I never even made it to my holiday. I had booked an apartment in January 2018 at the same time Airbnb had started up their new “pay less up front” system. I had funds in my bank but decided to take advantage of this feature because the booking was eight months away. Everything was fine and the initial payment for 50% of the full bill went through when booking.

However with time passing I had my payment method bank card lost/stolen in July, just a month before my trip. Now my future holiday was not on my mind at this stage, the only thing on my mind was to cancel my bank card and order an updated one. I still thought all was well and Airbnb next contacted me shortly before my trip to state they had been unable to take payment via the ‘cancelled’ bank card that was still on my account. The email simply told me to “update my payment method” so this would be seamless: I had my new bank card so I logged in, added a new card number to my account, and set the card as the “default” payment method.

Now was the time to get excited by my upcoming holiday… wrong. Airbnb never tried to take payment from this updated card. The email that had told me to update my card details forgot one important thing – “they would not be taking any notice of the new details so unless I got in touch with them my booking would be cancelled.”Well I assume that is what was left off the email as the days elapsed and whilst I thought money had been transferred it had not. The day came a week or so later where by I got an email to notify me that my booking had been cancelled due to non-payment of the final installment.

What an absolute joke of a system. Offering a split method of payment feature but having no system in place to take money from an account via a different payment source than the first installment. It is beyond ridiculous. I immediately contacted the German host who told me I had “cancelled” the booking. I explained the stupidity of the above and she seemed to take notice. She notified me that she would contact Airbnb to find out more after I asked her to keep the dates of my upcoming booking available for me, as the money was in my account ready to be sent.

Unfortunately after this I was met with an eery silence from my host. Her apartment had now been strangely ‘de-listed’ from the website. I presumed this was my host protecting my booking making it impossible for anyone else to book the dates. The de-listing of the apartment lasted more than 48 hours before it resurfaced. I initially asked my host if she had an update for me but was greeted with further silence. Then later on when I looked at the calendar my dates had been ‘re-booked’ by another customer.

My money had been swiped from January and under Airbnb’s rules I had cancelled. The fact remains I had not cancelled and Airbnb had failed in their duty to act as the agent and make sure payments were made. I had finally found an email address for Airbnb during this debacle before I had found out my host was busy recouping money from duplicate bookings on her property. They were quick to respond and notified me via a voicemail on my mobile and via email that they would try and resurrect my booking and send payment to my host.

Unfortunately they soon realised my host had re-booked the apartment and decided to deaf me from there on in despite further emails to them to ask for the situation to be fixed. Ultimately I have currently lost £319.68. My host benefitted mainly from this but Airbnb took their percentage without any thought and have laughed at my requests for a refund of any money.

I opened a resolution centre request for a refund. My host told Airbnb I had cancelled so was owed no money, and Airbnb closed the case straight away. I have used Airbnb with no problems in the past, but if they are going to offer new payment plan options and not have the resources to make sure these are bulletproof then they should not be offered. There was no excuse for my cancellation booking and failure to provide the rightful compensation that I am now owed.

As all this occurred only a few days before my intended trip I had to book hotels at the last minute costing a further £600 on top of the funds Airbnb and my host had received. They do not believe they owe me a penny. Their customer support replied to none of my messages after their initial contact to ‘rectify the booking with my host’. I have full evidence of everything but no way of raising legal action to this company. The only method I can use is to contact various media outlets and show their company up as inefficient, customer ill-friendly and greedy.

Did I even mention that on my morning of arrival at my destination city of Berlin my host contacted me via WhatsApp to ask for a ‘suitable time to meet’? How amusing – she was in such a rush to take my money she had forgotten to rearrange her booking plans and contact numbers. On the first day of my holiday I was left with the option to reply and arrange a meeting to cause her problems, or just ignore her and try and enjoy what was now the most expensive short break I’d been on in my life.

Airbnb owes me the entire amount they received directly from me and they should be compensating me for my host’s greed. Hopefully telling this story will help make others aware of the greed of some hosts and the incapability of Airbnb to provide an efficient, stress-free holiday booking service. I will not be using Airbnb again unless this matter is resolved to my full satisfaction.

We’re Heading to Where Airbnb Offers Nothing

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My relationship with Airbnb has become more and more rocky as I have observed their tactics. I have watched them drop off lower price units that bolstered supply (and thus brought average costs down) trying to justify the move on the basis of quality control. More recently I have seen them shut complaint cases after providing a poor response – with no opportunity to see if the complaint response is useful – and more recently still shut cases without even responding. Either through negligence or design, I am currently ring-fenced.
The attached is a very recent complaint that has been closed with no solution provided.  I have lost the last three property opportunities due to this.  As an account holder where ‘legal consideration’ has passed, Airbnb is contractually obliged to afford a duty of care.  So many fundamental things are failing such as automatic acceptance of bank statement uploads and the promise of a couple of transactions to hit said bank account to be subsequently identified to finalize verification. This would suggest really bad glitches in areas such as banking and security or purposeful black balling techniques.
Either way, they selected the wrong customer for such fun and games because I have OCD when it comes to seeking remedies.  I am a god with a bone when it comes to man’s search for truth and justice. The good news is that my organization has a competing app on the horizon and if my situation is not unique there is a ready made queue emerging for the new services.  Thank goodness for Airbnb Hell as a platform.  I hope this gets resolved before the “open letter to CEO” phase.

This is the Problem Airbnb Hosts have with Guests

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I’m putting this in guest stories so that guests actually read it. I have been a guest many places, and I’ve been a host for almost two years. I have been reading a lot of the guest “horror stories” and with very few exceptions, I think it all boils down to one thing that is not being understood. Airbnbs and short term rentals are not hotels. Say it with me now. It seems like most of the problems stem from guests expecting their stays to be just like a hotel stay without understanding why the two are so different.

Hotels have staff and employees. They have maintenance crews. A lightbulb goes out and they have a closet full of spare ones. Sheets and towels get stained… no problem, that is built into the nightly rate and we just replace them. All rooms are relatively the same, and if anything in those rooms ends up being a problem, is inefficient to clean or to use, they are replaced in every room. The cleaning strategy has a chance to be developed to where not a speck of dirt is seen, every time. Your basement at home is probably actually “cleaner” (I used to clean hotel rooms – who here likes their glasses washed out with windex because that’s how it’s done).

Anyway, I digress. Your Airbnb host is probably making a tiny profit if any at all, has a life and obligations outside of running the place you’re staying, wants guests to be happy with their stay and wants good reviews, has to deal with enormous amounts of BS to serve you, and probably is already killing themselves trying to make the place as nice as they can for you within reason.

An Airbnb stay should be like staying at a friend or relative’s house. Would you notice one speck of dirt in the corner or a stain on a mattress under the mattress pad and declare her house to be “unfit?” Would you go to your grandma’s and storm off in the middle of the night because there were a couple of ants in the kitchen or a cobweb in the corner? We simply can’t keep normal, functional homes the same way a hotel can keep their properties. You need to be a little bit flexible and a lot less OCD. I think the majority of people who complain are just people who are not comfortable staying in another person’s home. Which is fine – just don’t use Airbnb.

If I think back to all the places I’ve stayed, I can probably pick out something majorly wrong with each ones of them: crumbling tubs in New Orleans and questionable bedding, leaky faucets, an overly friendly raccoon on a private property in Miami, cockroaches in our gorgeous eco-villa in Tulum, hairs in drains, water that was too hot or too cold, hard beds… it goes on and on. Did any of this stuff actually bother us or make us have a bad time? Hell no! You notice it, accept it, then move on. You are on vacation, and you chose an Airbnb. Suck it up. Focus on the good stuff.

If you want to be super picky and miserable please stay at a hotel, hopefully one with a 24-hour concierge you can ask all your high-maintenance questions about how to use a remote for the ceiling fan at 2:00 AM (true story – I was like “um, press the buttons?”). Otherwise you are ruining this whole thing for everyone. Seriously, please stop it.

Your reviews aren’t helpful; they’re not innocent little tips for future guests. They actually make our scores go down and make Airbnb threaten to remove our listings over very minor things. They start promoting our listings less often, and therefore we end up losing business and therefore losing money and actually decreasing our chances of being able to afford to be up to your hotel standards. Please just tell us directly if there is a problem or if you have a suggestion. Thank you.

After Confirmation, Airbnb Host asks for more than Double the Money

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On August 5th, my husband and I booked a one-month long rental for a house in Aruba, inland in the Noord area, not near the beach. The total was CAD $2161.23 for the two of us from January 31st to February 28th, 2019. A daily rate of $145 had been posted, but once I put in the 28 days, a more favorable monthly rate had popped up and we were happy with it, though a 28-day rental falls under a Long Term Cancellation Policy and the first month is nonrefundable. In our case this meant if we had to cancel we would not get any money back.

The same evening I received an email confirming our reservation and payment of $2161.23, and the full payment has since been debited from my visa account. I thought we were all set. Three days later I received a message that the host wanted to change my reservation; if I agreed to the change I would immediately be charged an additional $2908.37, for a new total of $5,069.60.

We were in shock. We thought there had been an agreement and commitment from both sides for $2161.23, but in the meanwhile the host had left a message saying that the daily rate for that period was $335 (much higher than what was advertised on the web site), but for a monthly stay it was $3,500 + the cleaning fee + a 15% service charge.

I called Airbnb. A polite representative took my information and said someone would be in touch with me soon and try to resolve the issue. Within the same day an Airbnb support staff called and explained that the host was new at this (I figured that already since there were no reviews – something I should have seen as a red flag), and obviously does not understand the Airbnb smart pricing system, though she had agreed to it. Obviously she had also agreed to automatic confirmation.

The staff member gave me the sense that Airbnb wanted to give this new host a break, let her out of her commitment, and issue us a full refund. She told me that we had the choice of either accepting the new price (more than double the original one), or agreeing to a cancellation of our contract with a full refund, and they would send us some suggestions of other listings.

While we sympathize with the predicament of the host, we don’t think this is a fair solution for all parties. Because in the meantime I looked in the area and could not find a comparable listing in terms of location, features, and pricing. I told Airbnb that we were really looking forward to renting this particular house and don’t want to rent another, but it seems Airbnb is siding with the host. They said I could email the host and tell her we want to stick to the original agreement and price. I just did that, but I don’t see the point; if the host had been okay with that price we would not have this situation now.

I will post an update once I have it. By the way, this unexpected increase in pricing is not new to us with Airbnb, except that in the past it happened when I made inquiries with hosts prior to booking. It seems that once they know you are interested in a certain time frame, they increase the price before you have a chance to book. I also discussed this issue with the support staff, but her answer was that it was then up to us to book or walk away from it. Are there no ethics in business anymore?

Cleaning Fee? Ripoff. Airbnb no Help. Broken Junky Place. Amateur Hour.

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We rented an apartment in Costa De Caparica, Portugal, for 17 days. The place was adequate, although it was clear the tenant/owner was just doing this on the side, and has not figured out whether she is subletting or just renting rooms. Overall, everything was average, but not rental quality for the money.

There were broken curtain rods that fell on you, hot water running out unless you switched on additional, a nasty kitchen, and cleaning brushes filled with mildew and grunge. The worst was broken rolling shutters that you had to have two people open and shut – just basic maintenance things.

Then, deliveries for the owner started showing up several times, and at least three different crews of workmen wanted access to the apartment for the gas and electricity maintenance. Amateur hour. It advertised a hot tub, but really it was a broken tub jet thing. As we were at the beach, we just went with it, but then, came the cleaning fee.

It was a checkout nightmare. We were told, in writing, that a cleaner would arrive to collect the keys from us when we left and clean the apartment. No one arrived. We were told to lock the keys inside, that the cleaner would come, so we did. No cleaner ever came, and the apartment stood empty for a week in the summer heat.

We left a small bag of rubbish, and the bathroom needed regular maintenance cleaning – nothing bad, just normal for a seventeen-day rental. It was never requested that we self-clean. We paid the fee. No cleaning occurred. Airbnb, in classic style, took her side. So, like so many others, we got ripped off, left a bad review, for cleaning we were told would happen.

I really hope the governments crack down on this nonsense. In no other industry can you make a contract, break it willfully, and have zero recourse. Had we known or been responsible for cleaning – topical cleaning I might add – we would have hired our own person to come do it, or done it ourselves. The place was not left poorly – just normal daily cleaning was needed.

Most Airbnbs request we don’t do our own cleaning, as they have a particular way they want things done – fair enough; I’m happy to pay. Not this woman, and I will be surprised if she doesn’t run into many more problems like this. Long-winded emails, smiling in our faces, then a knife in the back. We could have worked out many solutions, but were not allowed the option. Word to the wise: do not leave a nice review until the owner has left theirs, or leave none at all. Knife in the back, lesson learned. Airbnb is awful. Avoid this amateur.

Airbnb Refuses to Remove Fraudulent Listing

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I have been in dispute with Airbnb for a good seven months regarding a fraudulent listing not authorized by myself (the property owner) on their website. The listing had been created by an agent that had been working without my knowledge with a property manager I had employed to look after things as I live abroad. I have since discovered that the two had been allowing their own clients into my property for over a year, not disclosing this to me and therefore making money from my property.

I have confronted the two who admitted to doing so. I am currently in the process of removing my property manager from his post, however this has proven some what difficult as he is also living at the property. Needless to say it has been a hellish situation exacerbated more so by Airbnb’s refusal to remove the listing. During countless calls I have made I have been assured that the matter has been escalated to the right department and that someone is looking into it. The case has been closed and re-opened without my knowledge.

The last response I got was from an agent who questioned if the listing was indeed fraudulent the customers will not be able to gain access. I have explained that I am dealing with a dishonest staff member who is still living at my property and allowing entry to customers despite my insistence that this should be stopped. I feel powerless to do something regarding the listing, all the while trying to remove this former member of staff from my property has its own challenges, in a country of which does very little to support foreign investors and business owners.