Airbnb Needs to Work on its Occupancy Taxes

Well, After talking to five customer service people, going downtown to Airbnb’s Portland office, and getting turned away, I have just about had it. I had a reservation to start a guest rental from July 1st to July 31st. Airbnb charged her an occupancy tax of $223. The city law here is anything “fewer than 30 days” is classified as a temporary rentals, not 30 days or less. That’s one error.

To figure a new solution, we tried to add a day so we were in the 31-night category. That added over a thousand dollars for the extra night. We could not get any help from customer service. In fact, we got five or five different suggestions, which began with canceling and starting over; this would have penalties.

It seems to me Airbnb is great at wanting the business but poor at actually wanting to fix the problems. Finally a lady got back to me from the Portland office and we figured out why we could not add a day. I had listed two days before and after reservations for cleaning. If a guest needs to stay longer Airbnb’s software should have pushed the cleaning days out. I am going to look for new alternatives to Airbnb. They can afford luxury offices but can’t help fix something with what should have been done with a single phone call.