I opened my airbnb account around the 15th on September, at first everything seemed great. As I compared airbnb to his competitors online, I was actually impressed, it looked easy, simple, friendly….
After our first booking the problem started:
First we found out that our account has been hacked, email address has changed, payment method has changed to bank-wire to account: XXXX-9000 – Not my account, I can’t edit or delete anything and all in perfect timing with a schedule transfer of the last guest.
So, I send an email and I call airbnb after.
They said that they will “freeze” our account, so no money transfer will occur… so I don’t get paid until they resolve it. When will it be resolved? I asked, “it’s top priority” they said, so I thank for a good service and I waited.
To make it short, It took THREE (3!) days to solve until our airbnb account security issue.
Every day waiting on the phone with them, hearing they can’t do anything, and “we are working on it”, “it’s top priority”. Only at the end of the third day, after being with them on the phone during the day, I got a call!
A nice representative named Malena called and she said she can see that I have a problem with my account , and that she will solve it. It took her 30 seconds to solve it; 30 seconds, 3 days wait.
So the money was transferred and it was going well….. for about 36 hours, when all the messages in my account where locked.
I couldn’t access any of them and my listing didn’t appear on search results. I found out about all of it by a future guest that send me a scared email about him being unable to find us on airbnb… I felt bad.
I called them again, I told them that it’s a really big deal, and that I need to know what to do. I got no answers from them, the “urgent call” service can’t do something.
They don’t have any supervisors, managers, colleagues they can transfer you to, and they can’t help.
24 hours passed before they solved the problem… and another 24 hours passed until it came back again, the same problem , again my account is shut down, the only difference is that this time, I had no one to talk to.
The airbnb representative said that this department is Not available at the moment and they can’t say when it will be resolved, they can’t even say when this department will be available again.
The only thing that they will tell you is to wait.
So I wait, I have 3 bookings starting tomorrow… don’t really know what to do anymore…
Do you have Any suggestions?
Do you know a good alternative for airbnb?
Alon
hi there from berlin, my account has been hacked yesterday, too. contact opportunities given by airbnb are really poor. and that they do not communicate this problem is poor and not trustful, too.
cheers, michael
Just an update, i have finally solve the problem with airbnb, they give me all the payouts and now all my account is fine again. Hope to keep that way. Just a warning, please do not respond to a guest message that send you some kind of link or whatever that lead you to another page. I have done some reserch that could be one of the factor why we got hacked at the first place. Hope airbnb could resolve their security problem. My advise is do contact airbnb as often as possible since at the end they will respond !
Hi Again,
I would like to warn you that please don’t click on the link that send to your email or airbnb message , usually the hackers will pretend to be guests who want to book , then send you link to your email. and those link could hacked to some kind of airbnb page ( visualy ) but different page actually and they ask you to sign in . As we are a reliable host must get caught of it by thinking this guest would really interest in our property, and we have to sign in in that airbnb page, but actually is a hacked. I could give this information since i got those email few times. first time i got caught into it, but now i knew that was a hacked.
Just give you some warning so you wouldn’t get into the same problem as i did. If you already did like i was, then be careful of these suspicious people / inquiry that give their email address ( try in every way ) in the airbnb message.
Well right now i’m still in the same position as you guys, waiting for my payment for my last 10 guest.
Keep me posted here if airbnb has solve your problem, wish you all the best.
Hi Everyone,
I got the same problem i have 10 transaction freeze by airbnb, since my account hacked 3 weeks ago. i got 1 out of 2 payment back, the one that misrouted to the hackers, but the others are freeze till now. i can not pay bills, i have to cover the maintenance, this is crazy.I think airbnb has a lot of case like us, that’s why they are slow in giving us our payment back !
Hi, Alon.
I’m having the same problem right now. They don’t say anything, no explation at all. I already had two guests that left and I still didn’t get the payment. The problem started almost one week ago.
Is your problem solved now?
Hi Alon,
I am having serious problem with airbnb. They basically deactivate my account without giving me any explanation. I have a guest at my place that will leave on Nov 10 and I am not certain I will get paid. Can you believe in it? Anyway, my suggestions for you:
Check sites as VRBO and Flipkeys (with tripadvisor)
Hoping things will get better for us.
best,
Katia