I’ve used Airbnb around 40 times as a guest since 2013, and have never had too many bad experiences. Sometimes rooms aren’t as nice as described, and amenities are limited to the letter of what was promised (watch out for rooms that don’t come with “essentials” – I’m pretty sure you can get away with not having a shower curtain). Sometimes you make arrangements with hosts and then they don’t answer their phones when you want to pick up the keys. Some hosts think they can charge seriously premium prices based on their location, and then not do the slightest bit of upkeep. When you stay at Airbnbs as much as I do, you’re bound to have a few disappointments. Basically, it’s let the buyer beware, and for the most part hosts have been fantastic.
So overall, you could say I’ve been a very satisfied Airbnb user for almost four years. After my last Airbnb stay, I logged into my account to discover that I was locked out. Airbnb offered only a message:
“To help protect your information, we’ve temporarily disabled your account. Please email us at account.access@airbnb.com to continue.”
There was no explanation of why the account was disabled, what “temporarily” means, or how to get it unlocked. I emailed that email address a few times, but never got a response. A week later the account remained disabled. One note about Airbnb customer service: if you’re familiar with this site, you can probably see it coming. Airbnb does everything it can to push the resolution of customer service issues to its online help system. But if your account is locked out, you can’t use the online help. Even the “contact us” page says “please log in to your account to access help.”
Fortunately, Googling for Airbnb’s phone number turned up a help desk number: 1-855-424-7262. You can call that number, but the help desk staff can’t actually do anything to help you. I’ve called multiple times already, and obviously my account is still disabled. If you do call, they’ll ask you for your name, email address, phone number, and associated payment information. But all they can do is put your issue in a queue sent to a technical support group (which “doesn’t take phone calls in or out”). And as you’d by now expect, that group is completely unresponsive and ineffectual.
Some lessons from this experience:
- Your Airbnb account is the property of Airbnb, and they may take it from you at any time with essentially no recourse.
- Do you need access to message your guests/hosts, upcoming reservations, billing receipts, or even Airbnb’s online help? Without access to the Airbnb website or mobile app, you’re essentially out of luck.
- If you do get locked out of your Airbnb account, take action immediately. The “temporary” lockout will not go away on its own. Call Airbnb (1-855-424-7262) as soon as you discover your account is locked out. Tell them you are trying to make a new booking for an upcoming stay in the near future. This will flag your issue as high priority. Which may or may not help, but it can’t hurt. I’ll keep this post updated if I make any progress.
I am also locked out of my account as my phone number changed and I can’t login to update it without verifying using the lost phone number.
will not use airbnb impossible to sign in no contact numbers
Hi everyone if you call the Airbnb hotline they can change your number for you and then you’ll be able to get your confirmation code to your new number and log in. I just did it 🙂
cannot save receipt in the app
Got locked out of my account and it wanted to send a text to an old number, of course you cant log in to change it, Claire says it best “Best part is, you can’t login to your account because you need to contact them… and you can’t contact them without logging in”
So just called Airbnb on the number provided here, and they updated my phone number for me so I could get a text sent and now I can log in. so thank you to this site for providing the phone number because I couldn’t find it anywhere 🙂
If it weren’t for this site, I would not have been able to resolve my Air BNB issue. Holy crap. Talk about bare bones and the user SNAFU. Good luck, all.
I have 150+ nights as an Airbnb guest – all in Europe .. Never had a single problem with the company and the CSRs. I have a sneaking suspicion this primarily occurs in the U.S., a country sinking under the weight of fraudsters, con artists and thieves. Your neighbor goes away for the summer – have a locksmith come, change the locks and rent the place out for the summer. Any idea how difficult this would be for them to control?
Hate that air bnb charge guests big bucks for the booking which they laughingly call “24 hour support” and then also charge hosts as well. Also notice recently that some hosts are charging seasonal prices now, the same as “legit” bed and breakfasts businesses. Hate what thats doing to the mainstream b and b sector.
Hi, probably not your area of BNB. Perhaps you can assist and contact them. I can’t contact them as each time I try the security questions i.e. name and birthdate are not accepted but I an registered. They keep sending the same thing to me and I can’t contact them. Al the frustrated.
Tried to book a place for this winter but cannot access the site. Can sign in but cannot complete the search because it just locks up. I will now go to another site and say, Goodbye Airbnb. You are not worth the aggravation.
I’m a host and I feel your pain. I’ve been trying for weeks to update my calendar. I can’t even get to my site! It keeps taking me to the guest site. Got an email last night that was automatic booking which I didn’t approve for them to advertise. I accepted it and approved it as I didn’t want it to affect my status. I have company and had to make alternate arrangements for them. I was able to shoot off 2 emails to the guest then a pop up message appeared something about my SMS then shut all communications down with the guest!
Thanks everyone, I feel better for knowing that it’s not just me !
Perhaps we should send a” please get well soon” card. This is far too frustrating and time consuming to be worth it
They Just helped me log back in, they must have improved their customer service. He helped me change my phone number.
After 2 years and several books – I will NEVER work with AirBnB again. If your reading this blog – it’s probably too late for you. I wish I would have just made my plans directly from the get go and not wasted my precious time, money or sanity with this organization. I predict within the next couple years they will go belly up. You can’t treat your customers this way and stay in business. I will laugh my ass off when I read the headlines about their demise. Karma always serves you back just what your dishing out. Good riddance AirBnB.
I am new to airbnb and there was a lot of confusion with a first guest and since then i cannot access my account even to try and cancel it through google.
I have been trying everything possible for 3 days now andam. ready to explode. I dont know where to turn to for help
Suzanne going through same frustration. Have you found a solution yet? Pam in Kzn
I am in the same situation for over 4 days with the same reply each time.
What is a good alternative?
Same problem. They keep saying to email them my phone number and email address (which is the email address they sent the message to…)
They say they’ll get back to me within 48 hours.
Never do.
Best part is, you can’t login to your account because you need to contact them… and you can’t contact them without logging in.
I hate so much about airbnb, how they destroyed the whole Couchsurfing ethos (which site itself was destroyed by the jaw-dropping greed of its founder, taking money from aribnb investors and sending the site spiraling down into a world of sleaze). I hate that people are getting evicted so landlords can rent out their homes…
But, like Uber – another bubble company – I hypocritically use it sometimes.
I ended up in the same situation recently. Actually, it’s the reason I was looking for Airbnb alternatives and found this website. I have around 20 Airbnb trips and was happy with the service until now. Really frustrating