Category Archives: Airbnb Host Stories

These are real, uncensored stories from Airbnb Hosts.  We encourage our site visitors to read and share their Airbnb Host Stories to help warn others of the dangers of using Airbnb, and consider using alternative options in the sharing economy.

Frustrating Lack of Response from Airbnb

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I have really liked the Airbnb platform and had a great response so far with them. However, I now have a problem, finding it a little the opposite. I am getting quite frustrated with the lack of help from the Airbnb team in relation to a booking during the festive season that I feel needs to be cancelled.

A booking was made before March 4, but travel is for later in the year between Dec. 20 – Jan. 21. I have a family who have booked our home for four weeks over the Christmas period and are travelling from the U.K. to Australia. Our government currently has Australia in lockdown from overseas holiday travellers unless they are returning citizens or permanent residents. No tourists are permitted.

Our government has stated that they can not see any overseas travel allowed until the end of the year or until next year as of Sept. 3. I have been in touch with the guests and they do not want to cancel as they will be charged over half of the booking by Airbnb. If I cancel, the dates are blocked and I also get a cancellation review and get charged a cancellation fee. It defeats the purpose of cancelling as I want to have the dates open for local guests to book or I will ultimately miss out both ways.

I’m feeling very disappointed with Airbnb response to this matter. I have messaged through their portal and had very limited if any response: all generic and have asked for documentation. What documentation? Is there anyone else feeling this frustration and does anyone have any other way of contacting Airbnb? They really are not very helpful at this time. I feel they should be extending their extenuating circumstances cancellation policy. Any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Damage Deposit and Support Ambassadors

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Support ambassadors are a joke. The only people they “support” is Airbnb, by inventing creative excuses for avoiding paying out money to aggrieved customers.

We had guests from hell. Four couples arrived when our villa was booked for two. They hosted a pool party for 20 and checked out on time but remained by the pool and then moved back in after our cleaner had finished cleaning. They damaged the furniture and forced her to return the following day to clean again.

After constant communication with Airbnb to elicit their support, none was forthcoming. They gave no compensation whatsoever for the extra nights, extra cleaning, extra guests, and damage to the property. The ambassadors are trained to feign concern but do absolutely nothing to help. How did they become such a global powerhouse? It’s quite unbelievable.

Five-Star Airbnb Host, Zero-Star Service

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I discovered in July that I was not getting paid for my reservations. I also discovered that Airbnb was paying some of my funds to a bonus bank account which listed my information. I had no knowledge of this and did not authorize it.

It has been two months of almost weekly emails demanding to know what Airbnb is going to do to resolve this. I am now owed approximately $12,000. No one seems to understand or want to deal with the problem. I am now forced to file a superior court breach of contract and fraud case to attempt to get resolved.

My home is rented almost 90% of the time and now I can’t pay the taxes or the property managers. If you have any comments which would assist me, please feel free to make them. I have even suffered a stroke trying to get Airbnb to do something.

Airbnb Denied My Claim With No Explanation

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I am a Superhost who has provided Airbnb with dozens of stays since January. A recent guest completely trashed our place. I have photos of destroyed blankets, towels, electric mattress pad, and cigars. Our house reeked of cigar smoke despite our clear and strict no smoking policy. Our carpets and mattresses required additional professional cleaning and many items needed to be replaced.

After immediately filing a complaint the day she checked out, I never heard from the guest or Airbnb. Many phone calls later, I finally received a message from Airbnb stating my claim was denied and that their decision was final, with no further explanation. What is the point of clearly establishing house rules and taking a damage deposit if Airbnb has no intention of protecting the hosts from damage?

Higher Rates on Airbnb Than Other Sites

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Airbnb isn’t the first company in this industry to believe they can treat owners with arrogance. Most readers know who I’m referring to and that company has had an amazing attitude adjustment after seeing both owners and guests flee from their site.

Booking agents are totally irrelevant without owners, who take most of the risks in this industry. But since most owners are small operators and booking agents tend to be huge companies run by overpaid CEOs, they start believing they can enforce outrageous policies and treat customer service as a cost they want to get rid of.

Ever try to call Airbnb? Good luck. Question one of their policies? You get a ChatBot responding to you.

We own many properties and knowing full well how badly they need us, our response to their arrogance is simple: you can rent any of our properties anywhere else, for less. We list on several sites, and Airbnb is useful to us — some guests only look there and they book from the site. Others shop around and we get a hit for the same property on several sites. I’ve yet to see one choose to pay more just for the privilege of booking on their site.

I doubt anyone at Airbnb cares at the moment. After all, they are so much bigger than us. But I’ve seen this before, from their once-arrogant competition. Sales will falter, the C-Club will demand answers (only when they don’t get that fat bonus, forget the obligations to the actual owners of the stock) and people will be sent out to kiss ass and “try to understand how they can be a better partner.” Then we will set terms for them to get equal billing, just as will did with those other guys.

Ultimately, they will listen… money is common language. So from one CEO to another: a storm is coming your way. Enjoy the sunshine while you can.

Three Weeks: No Advice, No Refund, No Help

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To start, I want to say how helpful I found this page to be. After trying to get advice and assistance from Airbnb for three weeks, I got nothing. I found the email address for the head of housekeeping at Airbnb on Airbnb Hell and within four hours had a phone call from an Airbnb representative.

I am a host of a cottage and unfortunately we discovered the boiler had packed it in within two days of my first guest’s arrival — the first since March. I contacted Airbnb to let them know there was a problem and despite offering the guests alternative dates for their holiday, an alternative shower or to just remain while the plumber replaced the boiler, they chose to go home. I offered them a full refund for the inconvenience and I thought that would be that .

Over the course of the next three weeks I phoned Airbnb six times and must’ve written to them about ten times, all to no avail. All during lockdown, all reservations were cancelled and given a full refund by Airbnb but despite my requesting them to refund these guests, they did not. One employee wrote back saying it was my fault the boiler broke down because I hadn’t maintained it well.

30 days after the guests left, I found this site and the email address for someone at the head office, wrote to them, and within four hours had a phone call from Airbnb. The guests have now been reimbursed their service charge from Airbnb, and though I am significantly out of pocket, the end result is good. All in all really frustrating though.

Airbnb Guests Get Away with Everything but Murder

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I’ll try and keep this as short as I can. We have been 5-star Superhosts (and guests) for years. We hosted in Truckee, CA and in Grants Pass, OR on the Rogue River. We took a chance, by allowing someone who had no reviews to book our place.

When we arrived home (after they checked themselves out), they left the door wide open, and all of the lights on in the apartment. There was trash and crumbs and dirty dishes everywhere. One of our screens was taken off, so they could burn incense on the window ledge (right over our roof) and they broke our washing machine; it was full of dark brown water, that would not drain. The repair man said it was due to them overfilling the washing machine.

We only charged a $250 deposit on Airbnb, which didn’t cover the cost of the damage they had done. Airbnb makes you resolve the issue yourself, with the guest — “Yes, talk to the guest about it. They will agree that they trashed the place and agree to give you compensation for it, no problem!”

Then the guests denied it (when we had photographic proof of everything, including text messages). The guests did not pay the deposit, and got away with everything. What’s the point of having a deposit, if the guests don’t have to pay it?

I surely did not think that Airbnb would let a person you were in a dispute with write a review about you. VRBO does not allow persons you are in a dispute with, write a review on your profile, because they know that it will be false and biased. But Airbnb allowed them to post a review on our account that was false and disgusting when we have a five-year history on Airbnb of being Superhosts and super guests (with 40 reviews).

We are shutting down our Airbnb account as of today, because of Airbnb’s awful and negligent handling of this entire situation. We have been amazing hosts (and guests) of Airbnb for years and the fact that Airbnb allows and practically invites this type of behavior from guests is outrageous. A guest can come into someone’s home, trash the place, break things, deny it and never pay the deposit (that they should) and leave the host a false and horrible review. We will only use other companies for hosting and traveling from this day forward. We will highly recommend all of our friends, families and guests to use anything but Airbnb. We will never recommend Airbnb to anyone.

Host Agrees to a Refund, but Can’t Contact Anyone

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I can’t travel to Spain from Australia due to COVID-19. I tried to contact the host, to no avail. I left a negative Google review, and the host made contact with us by email and said if we removed the negative review they would refund our money. Since then, no contact.

Airbnb originally sent a request for the host to reply with authorization for us to cancel but the host didn’t respond to them. So we are stuck in the middle with no one to talk to. Airbnb won’t deal with us anymore as their system email to the host ‘timed out’ and so they say our case is closed. I have an email from the host confirming they will refund us and can’t put it in front of anyone at Airbnb because they won’t deal with me.

Airbnb’s Facebook chat tells me my case is closed as the ‘system timed out’ with no response from the host. Airbnb’s resolution centre just says my case is closed. When I try to phone Airbnb the message is that they won’t deal with anyone unless it’s just before your booked stay. I’ve tried emailing the host through other accommodation sites. I’ve tried to contact the host on Twitter and Facebook — no response. What can I do? Nobody will talk to me.

Airbnb is holding our money and their business partner, the host, is blackmailing us over our Google reviews and then not responding to anyone. Airbnb should refund our money and sort out the host who is messing their customers around.

More than $10K in Damages, Airbnb Paid $510

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An Airbnb guest held an unauthorized party during the pandemic lockdown. We never allow parties, even before they became illegal.

This guest said she was coming alone. The police estimated that there were at least 100 people in the two-bedroom home when they arrived. The neighbors told us that there were several fights that spilled into the street before the police arrived. There was a stabbing. The damage to the unit was more than $10,000.

After three weeks of back and forth with Airbnb personnel who changed on a daily basis and would only communicate via email, they paid us $510 for painting and damaged walls and then they went dark. They refused to explain why all the other proof of damage and proof of value of the damages were being declined.

There was no explanation, just an email saying our case was closed and they would not reply again. They were very demanding about proving the value of items damaged and it was so difficult to comply that we did give up on certain items. We still were able to document more than $10,000 and supply the required proof of value. They simply said they would not discuss the reason for the low compensation.

Airbnb Not Allowing Some Guests to Book?

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A guest who is trying to book my listing is getting the following message from Airbnb when she reaches the stage of entering credit card information in the booking process:

“Choose another place to stay. Airbnb prevents reservations for entire homes when a pattern of factors (like location or reservation time) suggests the booking may be unsafe. This restriction is not related to the coronavirus. For resources on coronavirus, see airbnb.com/covid. Please try a hotel room instead.”

My listing is not unsafe. It is perfectly clean and safe. I called Airbnb Support and they told me that this is some issue with the guest’s account. But then, the guest’s co-staying guest tried booking my listing using their Airbnb account and their credit card. The Airbnb system responded with the exact same message.

I’m not sure I really believe that this is a problem with the guest’s account. Is anyone else experiencing this phenomenon? If so, please share any information with me that you can.