I own two properties that are being listed on Airbnb in Sydney, Australia. My son manages them for me on his account. We have had a great experience with Airbnb until yesterday when the following incident occurred.

We were asked questions by Airbnb regarding verification of our identity. We were unsure whether Airbnb wanted to verify my son’s details (as the host), or my details for banking purposes. We checked with the Airbnb customer service team who advised that it was definitely myself. Once I provided this information, the Airbnb system chose to cancel every one of our reservation bookings for both properties, totaling approximately $100,000 in forward revenues. We were also locked out of my son’s account.

This occurred despite my son and I having the same last name and having ID that shows us residing at the same address. We also received no prior warning or call from Airbnb to clarify any concerns. They were just all cancelled. We have spent the past 12 hours calling the useless Airbnb help desk, their Trust and Safety team, and also compliance teams multiple times trying to find someone to reinstate the bookings and help allay the concerns of guests.

We have messaged every guest and managed to re-book only about 25% of them. We have lost approximately $75,000 in revenue. As you can imagine, this also resulted in dozens of very angry and confused guests, some of whom were on their way to our property to start their stay. We are unable to get someone from Airbnb (with any authority) to contact us to discuss assistance to fix this and get financial compensation. We have no other option than to consider legal action and to also post this terrible situation on the website Airbnb Hell.