Tag Archives: airbnb email

Airbnb Sends Link No One Can Use to Comment

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Airbnb sent me several emails asking me to post a review of an experience/tour we booked through them. I would have been happy to do that. This is the email I sent them, when I was finally able to get a hopefully workable email address:

I would have been happy to give feedback on this experience, but your completely dysfunctional system made that impossible. I received at least three emails from you asking me to post a review. Each time I tried to do that, I encountered the same impenetrable, multi-step barriers:

  • The first step asked to me to login to my Airbnb account; fine, I did that.
  • The next link asked me to click on an “I am not a robot” captcha; also fine.
  • This led me to a page where I could book a new reservation, but not a review, with the header: “Unable to perform action. Please try again later or contact support if you need immediate assistance.”
  • Unfortunately, contacting support requires logging in, and each time I attempted to do that, I was connected back to the same page: “Unable to perform action. Please try again later or contact support if you need immediate assistance.”
  • I tried to reply to the original email but of course it is a “no reply” email address.
  • I was only able to get the email address I am using now by going to a website aptly titled “Airbnb Hell.”

That allowed me to call a phone number in Northern California, where after 7 or 8 minutes on hold I was able to reach a customer service representative. She went around and around for several minutes attempting to verify the original reservation, which was done through another family member’s Airbnb account.

Please remember: you sent me the original email asking me to review the experience. If you cannot locate or track that, that is a failure of your system and should not be my responsibility. After several painfully futile minutes wasted on the phone, I asked the representative: can you give me an email where I can share my concerns with the company, yes or no? I had to ask directly at least four times before she gave me this email address. Next time I think we’ll use one of your competitors.

Technical Problems Keep me Signed out of Airbnb

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My problems started with my first attempt to set up an account with Airbnb a year or so ago. I started with the email I normally use. They somehow got it misspelled and started setting it up. I don’t remember why now but I was not able to complete the setup either under my correct email or the email they had on record.

Eventually I got them on the phone and tried all their suggestions. They could not make it work so I asked them to delete everything, email address and all, and I would start over. They said they had done so but anytime I entered my email it went to the incorrect address but wouldn’t let me set up under either account, as it had done before. I got a new email address and eventually got set up.

Now I want to get back into it and it says my password is wrong. I tried options to reset the password but it just keeps rejecting it or saying: “Something went wrong. Try again”. I made contact with Airbnb help via chat. They asked me to wait a moment. Before they came back it timed me out. They emailed and asked if I still needed help with a link to get back to them but it required my password to get in. Again, the reason I was trying to contact them was my password would not work.

I got in the first time through a link that said something about signing in instantly. I have not gotten that to work since. I had given Airbnb my phone number and said I would prefer to talk but they did not call me or make any attempt to get back with me, other than the one email link. I have two reservations set up through Airbnb but wanted to get back and get a phone number to confirm them and will soon want to make another if I can sign in.

From all the other complaints I see, it looks like they may have a poorly functioning website and are not trying to do anything about it. I have probably spent 20 or more hours altogether trying to deal with Airbnb. Total frustration.

Can’t Share Phone Numbers When You Need Help

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Airbnb has no way to for hosts and guests to share phone numbers via their email system. You select “contact the host”, enter your number, and it gets removed from the email, preventing the sharing of information.

Here’s the scenario. I stayed at a great place two weeks ago and left a jacket there. I contacted the host, who offered to give me the number of the person managing the unit (the host was traveling). The first few times we tried to share the number, in place of the number was a message saying the number had been removed. It took us a good number of attempts to trick the system, but we finally succeeded.

While we were going back and forth, I called Airbnb, waited about 15 minutes for someone to answer and then went round and round trying to explain the simple problem. They had no solutions. Wouldn’t it be really easy to say “we can’t share the host’s number with you, but we can give the host your number”?

That would be so simple. It would protect the host and allows us to contact each other with the host being in control. Did they do that? Nope. The person on the phone spent a few minutes telling me it was the host’s email account and not Airbnb that was stripping the numbers. Once I finally got her to understand we were using their system via ‘contact host’, she then denied that their system stripped out the numbers until I offered to send her the email with the number removed. At which point, she admitted that they did.

Then, believe it or not, she told me she could show me how to send the number. First, she said I should go to the listing. Then click ‘contact host’. I thought she understood that’s what we were doing from the five minutes of explanation we just endured. Clearly they have a serious shortage of skilled resources.

I know this isn’t a big deal for most and my issue was simple, but what if I had a problem while staying there and couldn’t get in touch with the host? What if I left some kind of medical device there? Clearly there needs to be a way to simply share a number. This whole incident shows that Airbnb is still very immature in their systems and processes and that means if you use them, be prepared for to waste time fixing simple things that their systems can’t handle. Also be prepared to get no help from folks who don’t seem to understand the fundamentals of how their own system works.

Why Can’t I Contact Airbnb Directly for Help?

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I recently had a booking with a host. That was fine. Then I was forced to cancel. I did and the refund didn’t come right away. I had been told that it takes ten days to process. The ten days went by and I asked the poor host. He said I had to contact them directly. I finally got through to them and that’s when I was told that it was going to take longer. Now I’m trying to plan a different trip. I had to fill out this form on Airbnb; it required an ID of some kind: license, passport, etc. That’s isn’t a problem, because others require it.

However, that was something that should have been in my account when I first started to use it. You should not have to give that information when you decide to request your booking. I also had to use a cell phone. I don’t have one, so I used a land line. That’s something that also should have been part of one’s Airbnb account. I requested the booking from the host and then Airbnb took it from there. Basically, this is all fine. I just wish that they could make the process a lot smoother. They could be a great site, but they make it almost impossible to complete bookings. In trying to get assistance for the booking, there was only a list of possibilities to try.

Websites like Airbnb can be helpful, but if they can’t get it together then get out of the business and let some else who can do it.

The Tables have Turned: Hosts Rating Airbnb

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On March 10th 2017, I happened to check my account on Airbnb and found that my response rating had been reduced from 100% to 50%. No prior warning was provided. It appears that I had not responded to Airbnb inquiries, but I had not received any. I set about trying to make contact with Airbnb, but that proved to be impossible. There is no contact point and no way of raising a support ticket. There is a feedback form I found on their website but after trying to write in my complaint, I got a response saying that the feedback form will not receive individual responses and it s not a support ticket. So where is the method or means to raise an individual support ticket request? It appears there is none. Airbnb is happy to take our money and dish out severe ratings but certainly does not want to hear about any problems that they may have created themselves. I tried to post the following to their feedback form, but I think this will not get any response:

Complaints about Airbnb as follows:

1. Unable to make any form of direct contact with Airbnb, almost suggesting the company is not interested in any contact from its customers.

2. Airbnb suspended my listing without any notice or threat due to my lack of response to their inquiries. However, none of these enquiries have come through in any of the methods usually deployed by Airbnb including:

a. No email indicating an inquiry was issued by Airbnb.

b. No notification alert from Airbnb.

c. No mobile phone text message from Airbnb.

However, Airbnb threatened to suspend my hosting as well as immediately reduce my response rating from 100% to 50% with no prior notification. This clearly is an Airbnb system fault and not my lack of response. I know this because customers have actually made contact with me since there was no response via Airbnb. This clearly supports the fact that it is your system that has the problem. A Google search on the matter brought up multiple similar occurrences with other Airbnb hosts. While this may be a glitch in Airbnb’s system. There is no way of contacting Airbnb to inform of the problem or get help to rectify this problem. There is no human contact available. Given this lack of response, there is a loss of customer revenue from the host’s point of view, which also translate to a loss of revenue from Airbnb. I would therefore reduce my rating of Airbnb as a hosting site from 100% down to 50%, similar to what they have given me. Unless I hear from Airbnb within the next two days, that satisfaction rating on Airbnb as my hosting site will be reduced further from 50% to 0%.

Terrible Communication with Airbnb: No Error Message

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As a first time Airbnb user, I booked a place for one night. My visa card was debited immediately. After that, I needed to contact my host regarding details for an airport pick-up. Over a 3-4 day period, I found that the Airbnb messaging system is worse than useless. I received both emails and texts from my host, but I couldn’t reply to either. The texts came in truncated; only a few words appeared. However, my replies appeared to have been sent (no error messages after sending). I also replied to emails, which appeared to have been sent (again, no error messages). After a few days with no response from my host, I realized she was not getting anything from me. I also finally received an email error message saying the Airbnb address did not exist. I then spent about an hour on the Airbnb website trying to contact them for a fix, but got into an endless loop on their help pages. As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no customer support. Finally, going back to their website and messaging from there was the only thing that worked. If the emails and texts simply did not work, they would be useless. However, this system is worse than useless because it gives the appearance that it is working. The Airbnb email invites you to reply and returns no error message when you do, so it looks like it sends successfully. In the case of texting, who does not reply to a text? It’s quick and easy. Again, there is no error message saying the text was not sent. As far as I can tell, the only way you can contact your host is by going through the Airbnb website and sending a message from there. I am astounded at the stupidity of the people who designed software that wasted my time and caused a lot of confusion between me and my host. They need to put a disclaimer such as “you cannot reply to this email” or “do not reply to this text” and send the user an error message if they do try to reply.