Airbnb not Paying Hosts, Even for Normal Reservations

In the last two months Airbnb raised $2 Billion to survive on the coronavirus outbreak. It seems they are running out of cash. I have a group with several Airbnb hosts who are reporting the same problem: Airbnb is not paying the guests’ reservations to the hosts. The guests are paying, but the hosts are not receiving this money, because Airbnb is holding the money without a reason.

Their customer service is evasive, and they can’t explain why the payments are not being made. After ten days and several phone calls and DM’s, they said the problem was “with my bank”, but they refuse to give the transaction ID to the bank. I called my bank and Airbnb hasn’t sent anything there.

It’s a unfair lie. It’s a scandal. They used exactly this same narrative in 2015, as this Forbes article explains. This is a police case. They are running out of cash and holding the hosts’ money hostage. I know several hosts who are facing the same situation, and would like to collect more stories to publish an article to explain this cash flow scandal.

Posted in Airbnb Host Stories and tagged , , , , , .

42 Comments

  1. Hi everyone, AIRBNB owes me $1,800.00 they refunded a guest who cancelled and had already checked in, I can’t get answers they disconnect the call on me or hang up the chat, have anyone here taken legal action against them?

    • Did the ever payed you?
      They owe me US$7,000 since February and there’s nobody to talk to about it. They keep avoiding to give us an answer

  2. Hi I haven’t been paid by airbnb for a long term let. I have contacted their customer services with chat messages, I have called them and got told my case is being dealt with. This is day 4 without a £1500 payment. I think it is a matter for the small claims court but I am not sure about this. I really don’t know what to do.

  3. Same here
    Airbnb stop payments on July 26th and after about 2 months I have accumulated a credit of near € 18,000,
    I contact them every day to try to understand the reason for this suspension, saying that I can come into contact with the staff dedicated to these cases and every time they tell me “you will be contacted shortly by a supervisor”, but they don’t even know what to answer, they play a sad blame game, first stating that it’s account problems, then the payment method,
    they also came to the conclusion that the payments have been sent but Paypal does not issue them
    ridiculous (and dangerous)

    • We are so disgusted and fed up with the way we have been treated by Airbnb. We have not been paid since June 15th totally over £700. Lost count of how many times we have contacted them. Always the same, our case has been escalated and someone will call us back. No one ever does. We honoured their guests bookings. They got paid and never paid us. Its unfair. They have stolen our money and we want it back. They are ruthless and heartless. Our calender is blocked until we get paid. We are looking into the small claims court.

      • Hi Joanna & Angryhost

        Have either of you managed to resolve your issue. My payments were also stopped at the end of July and I have been getting the same response from Airbnb. They now owe me over £5000 and I am going to have to cancel all future bookings til this is resolved.

    • Same issue and same excuses. They even told me that my bank doesn’t want to give me the funds! What can we do?

  4. My payout method was sent to a different checking account that I know nothing about. I am missing $1300 for the last 2 reservations and these morons just keep repeating the same stupid I’m sorry blah blah blah. I don’t know if their system got hacked or what but I am out of that money; and they just keep giving me the runaround. I would love to join a class action lawsuit against these bastards. I’ll take my listing down. I have vrbo and homeaway; although not the best; they at least pay you accurately and ahead of time. I’m sick of this airbnb runaround if I could cancel it right away, I will; once I get my money. We’ll see if they call me back, it’s 1130pm east coast time.

  5. We have not been paid for March booking of$ 4000 and been given nothing but run around and bad excuses and responses. It is really sad what Airbnb is doing,lots of us count on those monies to survive. I would love to hear some good news… I’m going to talk to council next week

  6. This is me! I received an email over 7 days ago from Airbnb stating that Airbnb sent my payment. But payment was not sent! When I log into my account it states payment “processing” and shows the date of the email which is the date the payment was supposed to be sent to my bank.

    Are you guys finally getting paid? Or totally no payment? I blocked my calendar but I have a booking this weekend. Should I cancel that booking? Are you forming a class action? I will also google Mishan’s links. What a terrible situation, and especially since travel is back up.

    • I have not been paid for my last check out over a week ago it’s only £175.00 but I have guests next week I’m going to cancel
      I’ve been speaking to them all week but they say I have not got the correct payment process in place which is bollocks as my PayPal account is up & running they decline to answer or respond
      I am de listing my property with them & going to booking .com

      • We haven’t got paíd either since the beginning of March, about 2.000 us. The customer service has given us so many excuses, I lost count how many time we contacted them. It’s disgusting, we don’t know what else to do.

  7. Same here, I have booking with check-in date Feb 22 2021 and now, 9 weeks and two customer-service contacts later, I have not received anything. The say they need to pass it over to another department and then they never get back. I am going to close my listing now.

  8. Would love to be involved in a class action suit. Noticed I hadn’t been paid on two reservations, and when I looked into it I noticed they had gone to a PayPal account that wasn’t mine. I have sent several messages, as now I have not received payments for my last five reservations that have come and gone. When I contact customer support the only response I get is that they have sent my message to the correct department and someone will be in contact with me but that never happens. My favorite response was, “we cannot contact that department because they don’t have phones”. I was just going to start exploring any legal recourse I have

  9. I have been a host on AirBnb since 2014. In 2018, AirBnB decided not to pay me for one week booking after I have filed a claim with their insurance, which they advertise and guarantee! The claim wasn’t so much claim but a request from one of the guests that twisted her knee while getting out of her car in the driveway a two months prior that. It was not related to the booking that AirBnB did not pay me. The guests were happy and left me a Thank You note.

    AirBnB did not give me any response to my claim.
    AirBnB did not pay me for one week booking

    After I demanded my money, AirBnB NOT ONLY DID NOT PAY ME, BUT CANCELLED MY LISTING and canceled 6 months future bookings.

    I have been calling them for about one year and NO RESPONSE, NO MONEY

    If anyone files Class Action Law Suit welcome to include me: med.dreamcatcher@gmail

  10. Hi, unfortunately I did not read this until it is too late.
    I have problems both with Airbnb and with Payoneer bank. In certain countries, there are few payments methods. After removing western union as a mean to receive fund, there was only international wire and Payoneer bank card. Perhaps Airbnb is getting commisison from Payoneer or are part-owner.
    The Payoneer was fine, but then suddenly they started to ask for more paperwork. During two months, I tried to solve this issue. They keps saying they could not read the copies I sent (They were perfectly fine). Finally, I asked the UK office to return the money to the Airbnb account. This was not done. Next time, I called, the lady hung up on me. Finally, I got a hold of a man who sent a confirmation email that the money was returned to Airbnb. Airbnbn are saying it is not there. Payoneer says it has sent it.
    On top of that, Airbnb is not paying me the internation wire (which I of course switched to)
    We may want to do a class-action law suite. I am myself a retired lawyer.

  11. Today I only got pad 70% of the due amount. The remaining amount is showing as pending, due to be paid in a month’s time. I tried to call but waited forever and no reply. How is this allowed? Are they not in breach of the contract?

    • I lost my job on pandemic so i shared my space on airbnb. Same case specialist will contact.. No one is even replying closing report saying that report has been taken. What i can do now? I have taken loan even from my friend for paying electric bill now he is calling me cheater

  12. Airbnb owes us for a long term guest who is still staying in the unit (and happy!)… Guest paid them in October! I have called 13 times and get the same ridiculous reply every single time – it is really hurting us and Airbnb doesn’t care. Is anyone doing a lawsuit for unpaid hosts (not related to COVID)?

  13. I’m currently owed over $8K since Feb 2020 and still getting their BS runaround.

    Their shit stinks more and more each day.

    Sounds like lawsuit time.

  14. Same here in UK. They blame bank delays or their own technical problems when Airbnb fault is exposed.
    This always has happened but it got a lot worse since covid19.
    I have cancelled all future reservations and blocked all dates, then I’ll take my time to have a look around. Airbnb is not a firm to do bussines with.

  15. Not only have I not received funds from a May 2019 reservation, but have not been paid for August, 2020 guests who left 2 weeks ago.
    Unable to get through on phone – not taking any calls unless current reservation within 72 hours!

    This is unacceptable and criminal.
    Seriously considering cancelling upcoming guests and have them book direct!

    • Same thing here!!!! No payouts since March! Have had a dozen check ins and checkouts and we are owed OVER $10,000!!! They don’t get on the phone for hosts!!?? Very suspicious indeed and possibly criminal.
      They say “due to the tremendous amount of activity…” that’s complete BS!! Travel is down like 80%!! I’ve gone to Twitter and have gotten no response from Airbnb help worth a try if we all attack them on Twitter where the world can see it;)

    • I am a new host and JUST started to experience this same situation. Airbnb have not not paid 2 guest now and I am starting to think if I should cancel future reservations or reachbout yo customers and get them involved

  16. I just had several conversation that kept telling me that it takes several days to get to the overseas bank – I’m in New Zealand. But I can see it has never even been paid out. It is still sitting in the Future payments. I’ve been a super host for nearly 5 years and the payment has always been sent the day after arrival, and during that time I have started receiving the money through the system very quickly, sometimes even the same day as the payment sent. This is a great improvement, but now they are telling me that the $6500 for my long term guests has been processed but it is my bank that hasn’t processed it. Despite throwing every bit of logic at it, ie there is no way my bank can process when it has not been sent, I’m getting no joy from people who are clearly obfuscating. Very annoyed.

  17. Thanks for the shout out. Traverse Legal is actually a law form representing hosts. FairShake appears to be a form service that takes the free AAA demand for arbitration form and makes it available for a fee. FairShake is ethically precluded from offering any legal advice. If you want to learn more about how to arbitrate agasint ABB for COVID-19 refunds, feel free to check out our free YouTube Channel ..

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFpLhJbPabWQPLTgUitfRA97yGmQF9kcX

  18. Message to AirBnb: You better get your shit together in how you treat hosts. I understand that AirBnb was in a tough spot with guests when COVID-19 hit. However, hosts have been affected more than guests. For most guests, it’s an isolated incident. For hosts, it a whole series of incidents all of which AirBnb set up for the entire weight to fall on us! Some host’s, thankfully not me,entire livelihood depends on their rental real estate hosting business. Yeah, your pitching in 25% of the cancellation fee (1/8th of the original revenue) for a month or so an then we’re on our own and you are still allowing free-n-clear cancellations until who knows when. Which leads me to another point. You continue to drop the bomb on us at the last minute! Now June with NO help? Not that your measly 25% of the cancellation fee helps much. What next? YOU ARE ONLY DOING THIS TO PROTECT YOUR OWN REPUTATION! If you continue to FUCK UP, you are only opening the door for a competitor to rise up and take your business right out of your hands. Hell, I am even thinking about starting an alliance of sorts among my real estate friends and associates here in St Louis. Would be better than this. BTW, this is coming from a guy who has offered discounts to veterans, discounted stay to COVID healthcare workers, and free stays to families coming to St. Louis because they had a child in Children’s Hospital. So, if you think I am not being sympathetic, don’t go there.

    Joe Libbra

    • We have not been paid for 2 groups for the month of August. Have been calling messaging over 5-6 times but nothing. I think we should all stop hosting.

  19. I always got contact info of good guests and they booked with me privately after. We both saved a lot of money.

  20. Warning. You can have a situation where your payment goes jnto the wrong acct. They will not verify your banking info unless you really push. Took me over 2 mo. To get a copy to find out they had the wrong info. They would not do anything. I lost $670. I stopped using them & will use VRBO because their bank & offices are in the US, not UK.

  21. Same thing happened to us. We are still waiting on a payout–or some correspondence–about a guest that checked-in on March 28th. We are/were on a ‘Super Strict 60’ policy, which means we should have been paid (over $7K USD) on March 27, when the guest booked. But they breached contract and are now paying one day after check-in, which would have been March 29. I have filed 3 support tickets – with no responses. I called and the rep told me the division that handles my request “cannot be contacted at this time. They will contact you if they require further information.” They also told me to check with my bank as sometimes there are transfer concerns that can take up to 14 days to show in my account. We have an Account Rep, who as unresponsive through the entire Covid Crisis and I sent him a scathing email about my frustration with this booking that has gone unpaid. He sent me back a quote from the “Level 2 Dept,” which said that payments are being determined and we will receive payment or communication when they determine the outcome.

    Airbnb is about to experience a massive legal battle with their decision to refund guests. Here are 2 companies representing hosts/owners:

    https://www.traverselegal.com/contact-us-airbnb/#form

    https://fairshake.com/invite/?IRC=Mishan-share58

    In addition to these lawsuits, I am seeing hundreds of concerns from travelers having a terrible time with support requests and Airbnb not responding to awful situations that Airbnb guests have felt violated and unsupported when they show up to rentals that are less than adequate or the hosts/owners are kicking them out unnecesarily or barging in on them and violating their privacy/safety.

    Now, we have owners that are not getting paid….. something needs to change and we deserve a response from Airbnb. I am quite sure that a handful of owners (waiting for payments) will be satisfied with the company imploding. If we are not going to get a payment, then at least give us the satisfaction to know that the company will not continue as a Ponzi scheme and keep promising payments with little-to-no delivery.

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