After two nights of hearing her clunking and banging around at night, she was being outright rude, even irrational. I realised she was going to jeopardize my reputation with my latest Airbnb guest. I asked her politely and tentatively to leave because of the above issues and that I would take her bags anywhere in the city she wanted. She claimed she couldn’t sleep because she had bipolar disorder. I said I was sorry if that was the case, but that meant she needed professional help. To that, she threw a verbal fit (luckily the new Airbnb guest wasn’t home to hear it). It was the first time in my life I felt physically frightened by a woman.

She then threatened to “report me into Airbnb”. I said to go ahead and call them, but she still needed to leave. She had other friends in the city so it wasn’t as if I was leaving her in the lurch. Anyway, she left and two months later Airbnb contacted me to say there had been an ‘incident’ at my place. I had a 100% positive review rating and was a Superhost. They asked me to think who could have complained and structure my answer around that. I explained the above facts. I waited two weeks and was then informed that I was now banned from Airbnb permanently.

Lucky for me I can get a flatmate at the same rate, but it goes to show all someone has to do is have a gripe with you and make up an imaginary allegation and you will get banned from Airbnb. There is no fair investigation; Airbnb will just believe what’s alleged and keep the person who complained anonymous. I never even got to find out what the allegation was. That’s proof right there that people dream up lies out of spite. Airbnb cowardly discards their loyal hosts out of utter laziness. Please do not rely on Airbnb financially or expect their support. They are too big to care about their hard working hosts.

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I received a message from someone at Airbnb saying something along the lines of: “I am a neutral third party, an innocent and nice person. Oh, and we are canceling all – yes, ALL – your bookings for the next month while we investigate.” I wrote back and told her such action was not neutral. I really dislike hypocritical polite statements. I work for a large airline so I know better. I kept calling for updates; they claimed they were having technical difficulties and I should call back. I wrote to the representative telling her it does not make any sense to shut down listings in different parts of the world; if anything, I could understand they might remove the listing where the complain happened “while they investigated.”

Nothing happened for another week and I called some guy at Airbnb’s office in Ireland and gave him a piece of my mind. I told him they failed to protect their most valuable assets, a host like myself. I demanded the issue be addressed immediately as I was suffering undeserved consequences. I asked to what degree the extortionists were being investigated. The next day I received an email saying: “We are now canceling all your future bookings, removing the listings of your properties, and preventing you from contacting guests.” Fortunately, I had already printed all booking details and told my guests we were in the middle of a dispute with Airbnb; there would be a chance we would migrate elsewhere. It was the smart thing to do given the very strange behavior of the people in charge of our safety.

One representative wrote: “We are under no obligation of explaining our decision to you. Goodbye.” Fine, I am taking my bookings with me, and I have already recovered over $12,000 of what they canceled… and counting. I’ll make sure my guests have a fabulous experience. It is surprisingly easy to take my guests back… it must have something to do with Airbnb not being the owners of any property, not being the hosts nor the talent. They have no product. We are the product. Anyways, I will just take my $50,000 in bookings elsewhere… a couple places actually, as a precaution. It’s not good to keep all your eggs in one basket.

My advice to people after this glorious experience is to list your properties on sites other than Airbnb in case you host an extortionist or any other vindictive person. Happy hosting.

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