A warning to all hosts: Airbnb can and WILL close your account (including all upcoming reservations you may have pending) without warning and without explanation or compensation to you or your guests.
I have been a host on Airbnb for almost 4 years and in that time have bought some small rental units in a resort town to rent solely on Airbnb as up until now it was the best platform and generated the most bookings. A few days ago I tried to log into my account to find that it had been deactivated for no apparent reason. Shortly after, I received an email with the usual airbnb account termination paragraph stating that I had violated some term of theirs and a link to the TOA page which is 5 pages of rules long. I have only had good reviews and had hosted 300+ guests at my units, so there was no good reason I could think of why they would have done this to me. The least they can do in the situation is to offer you a reason so you can understand, and if necessary, defend your position. If that weren’t bad enough, Airbnb also went ahead and cancelled $15,000 of upcoming reservations with no warning. I had some of the booked guests frantically call and email me as Airbnb cancelling on them was screwing them out of their vacation as the town was sold out of hotels and other vacation rentals and their trip was just a few days away. I had to explain how I had nothing to do with this and express my apologies and told them to contact Airbnb and ask them to reinstate the booking. They said they tried and that Airbnb just gave them the run around and showed no sympathy for their situation, even though they (Airbnb) were the ones who caused it. We ended up working out something on the side otherwise their vacation including flights etc would have had to be cancelled. Airbnb did however let the current guests who were already in my units at the time of them closing my account stay but all of a sudden I could not communicate with the people occupying my property nor could they get in touch with me as my account was now closed. I complained to Airbnb saying by doing this it must be a violation of their own terms as denying communication to my guests and vice versa is not only dangerous but it is extremely poor customer service on their part. After 4 days I finally got a hold of the case manager assigned to my case and he apologized and said they screwed up and the situation was not handled correctly but they still were choosing to terminate my account anyway.
This JUST happened to me a host of 35 listings, 20 of which are in a small concentrated area! Only thing I was told is a guest by the name DIANE was complaining every day from needing a crockpot, ice, the two extra air matresses and floor mattress for only two guests in one room…hmmm….that horrible person got me ghosted , & booted by airbnb, all awhile she and her guest were causing havoc and damaged my home, i made a claim to air bnb only for them to DO NOTHING for me as a host. they cancelled my long term guests all 10 of them i had worked for months to book and set each one up properly. Im fully in tears out of frustration and hurt after being let go so blindly after three years of great growth! this is AWEFUL. THANK GOD i didn’t quite my day job! considering getting a lawyer – this is completely UNJUST!
I am located in Australia, it is the Christmas holiday season which we heavily rely on…our country is in dire with most of it on fire, without notification or any communication, 18 hours before a reservation (guest has been communicated with, address and specific directions released to guest) Airbnb contacted the guest and said reservation is canceled. ZERO communication with me the Host. I immediately called Airbnb and they stated “Guest have a fraudulent account” Guest calls and they state “host has a technical error” this is a displaced family of 6 who are already trekking thier way towards me. I contact Airbnb 6 times to get no answers. Today the guests inform me that they have been re-directed to another property. So clearly Airbnb is communicating with the guests but not the hosts. While I sit here in a ready Home set uo for a family of 6 (I have a large farm stay property). They have since contacted other guests to transfer their bookings. Our day jobs are on hold due to the bush fires, the only thing keeping our lights on is our Airbnb income that had been pro-curred for months. No communication from Airbnb, I am a super host utilizing Airbnb for 2 years. Previous 12 years professional experience in property/vacation Management in California, Mexico and Hawaii. I am certainly not a newby or a part timer, I have spent thousands of hours, time and conciencesness setting up my space to share with family holiday makers. To say I am not only out the income, Airbnb has really kicked us while we re down in the worst possible way. If there is any class action I am in. The fact that they can cancel without any notification and distress people like this is dirty and should be a crime.
I have had a similar experience with Airbnb. I had a guest removed recently from my property because they broke multiple property rules. As a result, Airbnb deactivated me after 12 years of hosting and being a guest. They canceled my own family’s reservation at Xmas- time because it was under my account, and they won’t refund the money.
We just had this happen to us. A guest was removed for violating our property terms. A week later and we were shut down. We have been hosting 5 years, over 500 positive reviews. No explanation from Air BnB nothing. We might be taking legal action to see if the account can be reopened. My other half spent 3 months and a lot of money making a quirky funky apartment to host on Airbnb, covid hit and now we can’t even list it. All that design effort for nothing. We are actually so broken-hearted. All because of one guest. People are ruthless and mean. I am outraged and heartbroken.
I was also cancelled as an AirB host over over 6 years with mostly superhost status, the result of an aggressive belligerent guest. AirB refuses to give me any reason, and likewise, this is an extreme loss of income for me. Are there any actions to take? Are there other sources of bookings that anyone can recommend? Is there currently a class action law suit against AirB? Great Appreciation, thank you!!
Hi I am a super host of four years. I had over a thousand reviews. We are a professional bed and breakfast. Ie its not a side gig. We had a complaint over a disclosed camera in the front of the house, by a guest who stayed in the rear of the house, with a separate hallway. We do not get to know who or what the complaint is more than this. We have been terminated with no phone call. No discussion. On our busiest weekend of the year. we have a little cult following, our guests were destroyed. They were googling us and re booking, but others were moved 45 minutes out of Niagara falls, and had to pay more, and are now in a cheap hotel instead of a quirky living museum experience. We have employed a solicitor from Washington who works for the government. Airbnb is in their sights for not operating within the confines of the law. We are suing for loss of earnings. I am devastated as we work so hard to look after our guests.
It just happened to me as well. If there is a class action lawsuit forming count me in!
I want to start a class action lawsuit I have been damaged also.
If anyone starts a class action lawsuit, please let me know. I’m in. My account was cancelled as well and I called several times and the agents can never explain it. They asked me if someone could have gotten my password and cancelled my account. I live alone and nobody even knows that I am listed this property on AirBNB in the SF Bay Area.
All comments and stories show what happens when a company becomes too dominant in a market. They do whatever they please because they think they are irreplacable and number one. They are not interested in resolving issues. They rule like kings. The solace is that this arrogance of power will be their demise in the end and other sites will thrive to become true alternatives to Airbnb. Relying on Airbnb for vacational rentals alone is risky as the stories show. It might be inconvenient to use more than one site but it offers some protection in case Airbnb shuts you down. Once shut down you will not be able to save all upcoming bookings. Guests will be fed with information like ‘the place is not save’, ‘the place does not meet Airbnb standards’, ‘the host commited multiple violations’ and similar kinds of vague accusations. Guests are scared while at the same time offered a booking discount if they book another listing. Airbnb swipes away upcoming bookings worth thousands of dollars and does not care about it. They are convinced that they will make the money anyway. So get away from Airbnb and use other sites and maybe Airbnb as well but not exclusively. The situation will then change in the future. It is only a question of time.
I have a long list of grievances against Airbnb. They are incompetent and cold blooded. Capable of doing unconscionable things with no compunction. I deactivated my NYC properties. While they now agree the situations were not handled correctly, they will do nothing to rectify the situations.
Sounds just like my story except I did not, break in TOS. I just had the misfortune of getting injured at another host’s house and to deal w/ the case worker from hell who decided to delist my own Listing, just because she could.
Please let’s get started w/ lawsuit people! This is easy to win. I have tons of evidence and voice mails. I just need people to join forces w/ me and find a good Class action attorney who will aggressively pursue. They are violating so many Laws by allowing these practices to take place. Time to make them pay!
Airbnb blocked my account as well with zero warning. They did not cancel it or terminate it – but I could not log in and had a message saying to call their support. I had upcoming reservations and it took them over a week to re-instate my account despite there being no issue with my account being hacked or compromised in any way. Of course I lost more bookings in that time because it turned out my account was down for several weeks with me knowing zero about that – I only started to realise it because I seemed to be getting no enquiries. I was personally busy so when I finally had time to check that is when I found out my account was blocked but I was never notified. All of this was of course the same song and dance from customer service as always – never telling you anything and NEVER EVER admitting they’d done anything wrong (of course). If anyone is going to pay, it’s going to be the host for sure. They figure hosts are a dime a dozen. And in the end the reason they’d done that was because 2 months before I’d called to report a scam attempt. So then 2 months AFTER that report and AFTER I’d changed passwords etc. (I was not hacked, but someone sent me a link attempting to obtain my Airbnb login information, which luckily I did not fall for) their stupid under-reactive and yet over reactive “Trust and Safety” (ill named for sure) department decided to shut off my account — but did not tell me. I actually did get an apology in writing because they never notified me of my account being blocked and taken off the website for guests to book. But it did not of course in any way make up for lost income nor did they attempt to give me any sort of gift or incentive or anything – in fact after that my account continued to show I was a “non responsive host” to guest enquiries (which I am not) for several weeks due to what they called a “system glitch”.
I 100% know that when they are in the wrong they do NOT do NOT do NOT admit it ever – they do not want to open themselves up to lawsuits so they deny everything, and when in doubt, they err on the side that will keep them the most out of trouble – if that means terminating your account because it’s easier to do that than to take the time to do the “right thing” – they will. They are nothing other than raw capitalism in action and zero to do with a “sharing economy” – they are a double edged sword so be prepared to use them in the same way they use you and do NOT call the support line unless you are in dire trouble as 9 times out of 10 it causes you more problems than it actually resolves.
This may provide some insight
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35574971
My account has been blocked for no reason for 3 weeks. I don’t understand why. They don’t explain anything to me. I cannot get hold of the case manager. It sounds so bad. I know I did not do anything wrong. But, I think Airbnb knows they are the best site and they don’t care about their good hosts.
After some pondering, I think the account was shut down because one of the units I own in co-owed by another person who also posted the listing on her account since she wanted to be able to check on the ins and outs of the performance on the rental unit since under my account she could not see what was happening with our co-owned unit.
I also own my own personal units without her so therefore did not want her to have access to my account freely as only one of the units had something to do with her and it was not really her business what my income was from my other personal units. She told me she wanted to create her own account for the listing and would give me access to it since she only had the one property she shared with me. We agreed to stop taking new bookings for that unit on my account and just use hers from now on and for future bookings on the property. I still had previous reservations booked through my personal account so could not cancel those bookings and was waiting to remove the listing from my personal profile until after the upcoming bookings were complete. Like I mentioned, were only accepting new reservations on her newly created account. As it turns out, her account got shut down as well within a few days of mine with the same non descript reasoning from Airbnb which I did not know when I originally posted this. I called Airbnb to discuss this and try to explain the situation but they wouldn’t give me a direct answer as to if this was the reason or not and just kept saying that a term was violated and the account would remain shut. However, putting the puzzle pieces together this has to be the reason behind it all as we never had any previous issues and the account was in good standing otherwise. I do not think this is fair and should be an exception to the rule as we are two separate people and do not live together and are not even related by blood. Airbnb needs to create a way for people who co-own property together to have a separate joint account that is different from their other personal privately owned listings. If they cannot accommodate this then at least be open and understanding of situations and make exceptions or allow hosts to rectify the situations especially when there is no ill intent involved.
There is something that is strange here. Either you are not saying something or they are not. Whatever it is, to resolve or to understand this, there should be an explanation. Do you have multiple accounts with Airbnb? Do you think any of your guests complained that affects the safety of future guests. If none of these happened or there is no other reason, they just took away your 15k worth of your booking, you should not stay quiet. I am a host myself and this is my primary income. I have been through issues with guests and Airbnb hosts to very stressful extents. If you think it’s no fault of yours, I can try to help you to fight this.
Hi Ima,
Can you help me too! I have a long list of incompetent and unconscionable things they have done.
WB888
I heard about this happening to other hosts. Airbnb does lots of things without explaining the reason. We’ve had bookings cancelled or payouts held without explanation. They don’t see the need for transparency, and it’s apparent that they handle the same situations differently each time. It’s sad that people don’t see how much of a fraud this company is.
I don’t think so. Airbnb should warn hosts who are breaking the rules first. Then, if it recurs, penalties can be applied, escalating to closure of the account. Well, that’s how it works in a democracy. Keeping good hosts wondering if they may have done/ are doing something wrong and get shunted without explanation, sounds peculiar. People don’t work at their best under those conditions.
I have had a look and I cannot find anything that I could say caused the termination of my account.
If you looked at the terms and conditions can you possibly see which of them you broke? We too are exclusively dedicated Airbnb Superhosts with 3 apartments and would be seriously prejudiced if we ever were removed from Airbnb.