Airbnb Claim Problem with Bank Account

Posted on January 20, 2017

We have been hosts for Airbnb for two years and pride ourselves on making sure our home is in a ideal state for guests. This year on the day our first payment was due Airbnb contacted us with a claim that our bank details were incorrect. We were surprised, because nothing had changed since our last payment, but responded as requested immediately afterwards. Now it’s been three weeks and there is still no sign of the $5000 we are due. We tried to call the company, due to the fact no email address is available. We have had to phone four times now, each time waiting in a queue for over 40 minutes, all on our bill. We asked to speak to the relevant department, but was told they don’t have access by phone. Because of this, we asked to have their email address; they avoided answering this request. Basically you receive lip service but the person at the call centre has no understanding of anything. I was told I should use PayPal, however I informed customer service it would incur a cost to us. They didn’t care, just saying, “well, if you want the money.”

On my last call I was in control and explained I wanted to resolve the problem so therefore I needed to speak to someone who would be able to help and understand the process. Eventually the help centre representative informed me she would be terminating the call. I was left speechless, put out of pocket for thousands of dollars with no way of getting any assistance to resolve our situation. We literally have no other phone lines to which to turn. Other than Airbnb being a very corrupt company, I don’t believe this level of looking after your customer service provider is the norm.

Airbnb Guest Stole from me

Posted on August 21, 2016

I had a guest for one night, who walked away with a few items, including: TV, air conditioner, coffee machine, toaster. I have contacted the guest on his mobile – the man who answered said he’s never heard of Airbnb. I contacted the police, who asked for any traces that might help the investigation. Then I contacted Airbnb. They absolutely refused to provide me with any clues as to the guest’s real indentity, and said they will “run their own investigation.” They asked me for the police report, which obviously takes a bit of time to come through, and 48 hours later closed the case indefinitely. More over, they did not even transfer payment, which they have collected from that guest. On that basis that, I have opened a legal case. This is insane. If anyone knows an alternative to Airbnb I would love to hear it.

First Airbnb Cancelled my Listing, Then my Account

Posted on August 5, 2016

I hosted for four years and had over a hundred reviews, all of them positive. In the last year I expanded from one to two rooms in my New York City apartment. One day last week, one guest called me in the middle of the day and said someone had been calling her nonstop and leaving scary voice messages about how she wasn’t safe and needed to leave immediately. My other guest reported the same. I was extremely confused and called multiple times that day. The help department was unable to give me the tiniest detail, from the lowest levels to management. After all this mayhem, I got a legalese form email essentially saying, “We’re canceling your account and not telling you why. Goodbye.”

It was totally insane. The next day I called again and demanded to speak with someone until someone could explain why this had happened and what I had done. The person talked to her manager, then got back on the line and said something along the lines of, “We’re now deleting your whole account. Goodbye.” Then she hung up. When I called again this week, I waited on hold for a half hour, and as soon as they answered, they hung up immediately. What is amazing is they just wrote me today, as they often do, to ask me to write all my local representatives to help support their causes in the legislature. I took the opportunity to write all my representatives about what a truly terrible company they are. For all their talk about helping the little guy make ends meet, they seem to not give a second thought to completely ruining my livelihood. They campaign ruthlessly for their own expansions and pit their customers and massive war chests against local governments. Local governments need to make a strong stand and repel this tyrannical intruder. These are by far the worst practices and standards of conduct I’ve ever seen from any company in my life. I will now do my part to make sure everyone knows about this.

Airbnb Closed my Account without Cause

Posted on August 2, 2016

I was a member since 2010 with positive reviews from hosts. Last year after being continually cyberstalked by numerous entertainers, their online followers began to harass me through various sites. They started to mess with the hosts on Airbnb and I was struggling to know who to trust to rent. I asked this company if they could bother to protect its users by setting up a private option for guests and hosts to keep their profile pages private. They refused and I began to get cyberstalked. Last year I got one host and these entertainers who messed with me. I made a complaint to Airbnb demanding to know who was behind this; their response was to block my account and refuse to let me rent from hosts that were keen to rent to me.

They ruined my trip last year and my life in general, as I couldn’t find other accommodations and had to come back home. Then my second pre-booked rental was canceled by Airbnb and I struggled once again, which also affected me at university. I had some brilliant hosts but on other occasions I had to deal with: guests’ friends having violent sex in the other room; being bullied at a dorm where I dealt with disturbed staff; one host who only allowed me to sleep there at night and then leave; another host who tried to rip me off twice; and the last one ruined my life by causing Airbnb to cancel my reservations.

They used to be helpful up until these followers not affiliated with Airbnb got involved and wrecked my entire life. What happened as a consequence to them canceling my reservation last year is I’m still struggling to find a home now. Their customer support is terrible and an embarrassment. I found out later that several individuals had been stalking me through Airbnb and with the companies knowledge. They don’t care about their guests; it’s all about the hosts. If you have anything stolen, they won’t be held responsible. If you get stalked online, they won’t make your profile page private. They recently reopened my account, and when I asked about my password settings and who was behind all my cancelations last year, they closed my account again. I have shown their rules and regulations to my lawyer, and he has agreed I didn’t break any of them to the extent I should have my account closed. They’ve become so popular they just snub the people that built them up.

Airbnb Customer Service Unprepared to Help

Posted on July 31, 2016

This has nothing to do with my host, but everything to do with Airbnb’s horrible customer service. On Airbnb’s mobile site, it states I have to call an 855 number in order to change a current reservation. I did that and waited almost 30 minutes listening to the same song over and over and over again, and no one came on the line to help me. Then, when I went to the full site on my computer, I first learned that I could request a change through the site from the host. As a customer who has done a lot of business with them, I do not appreciate Airbnb putting me on hold for ages when I have a problem that can be resolved by the website. This isn’t the first time I have had a problem reaching Airbnb when I have had to call them myself. I am at the point where I am ready to stop using their service because of this.

After I was on hold for 15 minutes, a representative told me over the phone that she would contact the host and wait 12 hours for a resolution. Another representative tried to talk to me early the next morning after I was on hold for 20 minutes but the call got disconnected after two minutes! Then the second representative told me at 4:00 AM that only the first could help me and that she would call me back. Why can only one person help me? This person did not even know how many nights I asked to cancel! He didn’t seem that interested in taking the time to read through my file to familiarize himself with the case even though I took an hour of my time on hold to talk to him. After all that, I dug deeper into the website and learned I could cancel the remaining days of my reservation through the website itself.

Why don’t the customer service representatives tell you this while they have you on the phone so we don’t keep wasting each other’s time? Now I have to calculate 24 hours before the first night I want to cancel the reservation for. So when does the first night begin? If I put in my request a day too early, will I be kicked out the day before? Or if I put in the request too late, will I lose 50% of that extra night? What is the cut off point? Why does it have to be this difficult dealing with Airbnb?

Airbnb: Unreliable, Unscrupulous Company

Posted on July 19, 2016

Airbnb is a terrible, negligent company with awful customer service. I booked an Airbnb in Italy three months prior to my arrival. My credit card was charged and confirmation emails were received. The day of check in, I emailed my host, who said he had no record of my reservation. I called Airbnb and discovered they screwed up the billing and reservation; they never communicated to the host that I paid. They admitted it was 100% their fault. I spent four hours dealing with issues (stress, international phone calls, shoddy internet, unhelpful Airbnb hotline, seven-month pregnant wife, etc.); finally, I was forced to book an expensive hotel as a last minute alternative since everything else was booked.

Airbnb had awful customer service; their offer of compensation was severely inadequate for the additional time and costs that their screw up caused me; they still have not refunded my credit card. Do NOT use this company. If they can’t handle something as basic as this then how can you trust them?

Warning to Potential Airbnb Hosts

Posted on July 4, 2016

This is a slightly different story. My husband and I have managed rentals for a number of years and we were thinking about signing up for Airbnb. I got an invite to an Airbnb meet and greet in our area. The location was at a house, which was hard to find; there were no markers outside, but we did find it. One of the folks attending asked the host if he had ever had his house damaged by guests. The host said yes. He then said that he contacted Airbnb, who told him he had to cancel the next guests, who were coming from out of the country, in order for them to process the claim. The host felt that would be unfair to the next guests and cleaned up the house with his own funds and kept that reservation.

Airbnb refused his claim for damages. Seriously? That’s the customer service you get with this company? Not only did they tell this host to screw the following guests, but they wouldn’t honor the host’s claim for damages? We asked what happened with the people that trashed his house. He gave them a bad review. Big whoop. A lot of hosts are hesitant to give a bad review because they don’t want to get kicked off the site. These folks are still renting and probably still trashing people’s houses. And this story is from a guy that works for Airbnb. We appreciate his honesty and we are looking into some other options for our vacation home.

Airbnb Policy on Refunds Leaves Much to be Desired

Posted on June 5, 2016

I am a foreign student studying in Canada and used Airbnb for my one-month holiday to the US, switching from one accommodation to another during the process. The hosts and the listings were fine in general, but AIRBNB DOES NOT HAVE A COMPREHENSIVE REFUND SYSTEM. During the trip, I had two bookings that were cancelled by the host, totaling a refund of about $600. The cancellations were made early and did not cause me much inconvenience. However, the issue is that I had just finished my studies and closed my Canadian account before leaving for the US; hence, the refund was made to a closed account. I thought that this would have been a small issue, since all Airbnb has to do is to retrieve the cash and transfer it to an alternative bank account.

How wrong I was.

1. AIRBNB HAS NO WAY OF RETRIEVING CASH THAT IS RETURNED TO THEM. The standard procedure for a cash refund in Airbnb is this: “Your money can only be refunded to the account you used for the booking. Your bank will issue you a cheque if your account is closed.” You cannot refund your money to an alternative account that you didn’t use to make your original payment. The bank does not always issue you a cheque. I have made numerous calls to the bank and found out that my bank’s policy on closed accounts is to return the money to the source, and Airbnb has no way of retrieving this amount.

2. AIRBNB PROVIDES NO WAY OF COMMUNICATING WITH THE PEOPLE WHO DEAL WITH MONETARY TRANSFERS/TRANSACTIONS. The people in Airbnb customer service center know very little about where your money goes. All they know and can do is to give you standard replies to standard questions. When questioned about what happens to the money that gets returned to Airbnb, the customer service center gave me the same response that I posted above (1). Want to talk to higher-ups? Want to discuss compensation? NOPE! All they have to do is to repeat this same standard answer again and again until you give up and put down the phone! So, that’s the tale of how I lost my refund and Airbnb lost a customer.

Horrendous Experience with Airbnb Customer Service

Posted on May 19, 2016

Update: Still accurate but this very minute they have come up with the refund they promised.

My experience with Airbnb was atrocious. I tried to book a holiday cottage and the host tried to send me an offer. According to the host, the button on the website did not work and she then asked me to book the cottage from my end. When I tried to do that the listing had disappeared. Later our dates appeared as unavailable. I then panicked and put in a request for another place which was accepted immediately. In between, the original host mailed me saying that the dates are still free for us and would we still want to go ahead. We then tried to cancel the second transaction, because we wanted to stay with the original host. After a day of frantic email exchanges between Airbnb and the two hosts and myself, I rang Airbnb (cost: £17) and they agreed to refund the money they had taken from me for the second host (minus their service charge), so I could proceed with the first host. I agreed to that. They confirmed everything in an email. A day later nothing was cancelled or refunded and the whole email process started again.Eventually they refunded me £98 out of £223 for a double booking that was not supposed to have happened, as their website did not allow us to stick with our original host. Talking to hosts is not possible, as Airbnb deletes all phone numbers and email addresses until they have taken the money. I am unlikely to be able to claim my money back through my credit card company because they retracted their refund confirmation email a day after they had sent it and I was stupid enough not to have printed it. All in all, a truly horrendous experience.