In July 2015 I found a large Victorian in a small foothill town for an upcoming girls weekend in October. It looked great, and I contacted the host. She wrote me back and said she’d love to have us if we were ready to book. I told her it was 5 women and a small dog–under 50 lbs and asked if that was okay? She wrote back and said she had a “pet approval policy.” I wrote back asking for details of her pet policy and waited for her reply which never came. Foolishly, I went ahead and requested to book. Later that evening we were approved and I got a text from the host saying she would need a $1200 pet deposit — in cash or check — upon arrival. This sent up a huge red flag for me and my friends. We then discovered the hostess has a “Strict” cancellation policy, which meant that if we wanted to cancel we would lose 50% of our money– $616. We had no intention of handing over $1200 for any length of time to someone we didn’t know and who was acting out of the normal protocol of Airbnb. I called an Airbnb agent and reached someone by the name of Jacob who promised me that he would have a trip specialist contact me and that the company would cancel our reservation if we wanted that, and no fees would apply. I waited 24 hours, then called again. I got another very nice agent who said she would expedite our call and have someone call us back regarding the refund. Long story short, I had to call EVERY DAY for 6 days, and every time I called a very nice customer service agent would tell me “I’m sorry for the delay” and “your case has been elevated to ‘urgent’ status.” My friend had put the a $616 deposit down on this booking and I wanted her to get her money back. But it appeared that no one from Airbnb considered our case urgent enough. Apparently “urgent” with Airbnb means you may hear from a specialist within 2-3 weeks. We were finally contacted via email by someone named Charlotte who apologized and said “It was all a misunderstanding and Elizabeth would love to host you that weekend.” Again, our request for a cancellation was ignored!! I then wrote her back and explained that at this point, we no longer felt comfortable staying with this hostess and wanted to cancel this booking and receive a FULL refund as was promised by Jacob. She finally wrote back, 3 days later (now a total of 2 weeks later from our original request) and said she would credit us in full — that we would get $249 back from the host and $341 back from Airbnb, who was covering the remaining balance since the host would be getting paid in full. She told us to allow 10 days. 15 days later, only half the refund is here. We emailed Charlotte this morning and got an email back saying she had processed the refund but there was an error and it would be another 10 days before it posts. We are now at 6 weeks past our original complaint date! We have contacted the credit card company to cancel the charges. Thanks for having our back, Airbnb! You are re-writing the book on ‘customer service’.
Tag Archives: airbnb customer service
Airbnb – YOU SUCK
I’ve spent the last day and a half watching a friend deal with Airbnb’s inept customer support team after her AirBnb host backed out of her month long rental 45 minutes after she was supposed to meet him. I’ve listened to misinformation and baldface lies from the Airbnb CS team. Their solution was to charge her twice for two alternative rentals. The hosts were non responsive and $3,000 later ($1400 overdrawn) they pretty much washed their hands of the situation and left my friend homeless and broke for the next month. I’m curious as to who designed their Customer Service policy? Satan? Ebenezer Scrooge? Leaving people broke with no place to stay is bullshit. Lying to your customers and telling them that “you don’t have a manager” is absurd. What do they put in the water at their office? Every CS rep has the same apathetic monotone and a propensity for telling insane lies. I’ve personally never had any issues with my past stays, but watching my friend go through this has disgusted me. Airbnb is an international company with deep pockets. Websites like this wouldn’t exist if they showed some empathy and provided reasonable solutions and prompt resolutions to their guests. Dicks.
worst accommodation in 4 week holiday
We feel fortunate in that we did not lose any money. However, the apartment we booked in Kensington UK was disappointing. It was dirty and the appliances were all in poor condition (especially the washer and dryer). The bathrooms needed some maintenance and a good scrub. The towels were very poor. Unbeknown to us the apartment backed on to busy Brompton Road. Our bed proved to be metres away from the traffic, making sleep very difficult. Eventually we had to abandon the bedroom and sleep on a lounge in the living room. We couldn’t get the TVs to work. I feel the host, Patrick Lopez misrepresented himself as a “Londoner”. I have a strong suspicion that he lives in Thailand and he is unaware of the true condition of his property. I sent three messages to Airbnb but none were responded to. We contemplated just walking out and going to a hotel, but we chose to stay because we couldn’t communicate with Airbnb and didn’t want to lose $750 per night. It is a shame when you have to count down the nights before you can leave. All other accommodation (independently booked B and Bs, hotels and an apartment) was outstanding.
AIRBNB Refuses to disclose reason for termination
In the past year I had signed up for using airbnb and had done a very large amount of business with them. ALL transactions were handled in less than 24 hrs, all fees and money handled according to policies and every request airbnb made for any verification, etc was completed in 1-2 business days. ALL feedback was extremely positive from guests. There was no reason for concern whatsoever. Suddenly I noticed that even though my listing was the only one in town my listing would not come up when that town was searched for. Instead the listings from all surrounding towns would show up and my listing would finally come up on about the 3rd or 4th page. I continued to get business so I did not try to address this. Then about a week ago I received an email that I needed to verify my account. So in less than two business days I uploaded my information… They wanted passport or ID and I received a response than my verification was complete. However that same day my account was froze and $4000 of bookings all received cancellation notices from airbnb. They were also told that if they booked with someone else on airbnb they would get an extra 10% refund for staying with airbnb. I can still to this day sign into my account and even message the people that were cancelled however the messages do not get delivered and my listing no longer shows online. After tons of calls to a terrible customer service department one person said Samantha was our airbnb agent and she quit that afternoon. Eventually we were referred to another so called division and Mark and Noah were supposedly working on it and that there were internal troubles that were getting worked out and we would get a response in 24-48 hrs. The 48hrs lapsed and not one contact was made to me. So I started calling again. This time I was told my account was terminated and was given false dates of emails that were supposedly sent but they do not line up chronologically with the sequence of events. I insisted that I be given a reason for termination and airbnb refused to give any explanation. They kept saying you have been terminated and we are no longer going to talk to you. I demanded to talk to a supervisor and was again told “no, your account has been terminated”. I was also given the game of if getting too pushy they put you on hold for a few minutes and then come back, and if you get pushy again they do it again… This is a new trick all customer service departments are turning to. Gone are the days of a company giving any credence to good customer service. I have one guest who stayed the weekend while things were transpiring and airbnb is holding their money and will not release it to me because they say they terminated my account… which according to them did not happen until 5 days later… I have managed to contact some of my cancelled bookings and they are extremely grateful for my efforts and they will never use airbnb again. Some of them use other sites and will not use airbnb again. Ironically a fellow host had an independent review agent who reviews several of these sites stay at their property and is disgusted with what happened. That person is going to try to at least get to the bottom of things. Hopefully that will help get the word out. This has apparently been happening for years with airbnb and one may wonder, with the other legal troubles they are having, what is really going on. My advice is RUN FROM AIRBNB AND TELL EVERYONE!!! This needs to be made known. If there are any efforts to pull together support to do something about this PLEASE let me know. I had a very upstanding cleanly ran relationship going and was terminated with no reason given. Dont think for a minute it had anything to do with the “video verification” they are pushing. Are they steering business? Was I too successful and they shut me down to play favortism? I have no idea, but I know other host accounts that are getting extremely uncomfortable with airbnb and will soon be leaving. That is one way to resolve this… Air their dirty laundry HEAVILY and leave them squandering in their legal issues they are already struggling with.
do not host with AirBnB – security deposit means nothing!
I put my house on AirBnB. One of the first bookings I had was for a family of 4 visiting to have a quiet weekend. I was not able to meet the guest when he checked in and left a key. This person threw a massive college keg party/crawfish broil for 100+ guests according to neighbors. There was close to $2000 worth of damage from a $700 booking. I opened a case with Airbnb’s resolution center, submitted the invoices and was reimbursed $300 out of the $1000 security deposit. I have been trying to call Airbnb and speak to a supervisor for over a week and cannot get anyone to return my call.
Careful with unsuccessful bookings!!!
Be very careful booking with Airbnb since it happened already multiple times in my case that the owner didn’t respond within 24h and in the end three bookings later hundreds of dollars were frozen on your bank account for several days…without a single successful booking! This is ridiculous, you will pay even before any confirmation. I would never go with them again. Horrible customer service as well, no chance to really contact them!!! Plenty of other opportunities to get cheap accommodations and they will only charge you after a successful booking!
Airbnb stole my money!
I tried to make a first booking on Airbnb and had my reservation in Kent accepted and confirmed. Without telling me, Airbnb cancelled my booking and told the host that I was a fraudulent account and not to accept me as a guest. The host then rented out the room for my dates and it wasn’t until a couple of days before arriving when I called the host for instructions on how to get there, that they told me this.
Much to my annoyance Airbnb took the money anyway not giving any to the host and as yet haven’t given any of my near £300 back.
Doesn’t matter what country you’re in, this is theft or at the very least fraud. They as a company have obtained my money by deception and are refusing to give it back. The customer service line is useless and there’s no other person I could speak to having been told ‘this isn’t my department and I can’t help you’. Next stop for me I suppose is the police!!
Contacting Airbnb is a waste of time
Contacting Airbnb is a waste of time. I’ve tried to contact Airbnb a lot of times regarding some severe technical issues (I could not receive or send messages to my guests), but there was no way I could speak to the technical department or the managers to get this fixed quickly, all customer service could do was to “submit a ticket”. And obviously my tickets were ignored for weeks and months, because no matter how many times I tried to contact customer service telling them how urgent the situation was, they could not help, just submit another ticket.
So – the Airbnb customer service can not help you, only produce tickets. And if the people behind this wall called “customer service” decides to ignore these tickets, well, then you’re screwed. There is no way you’ll be able to speak with the people responsible for your problems.
After Harassment from Host, AirBnB Sides with the Host
AirBnB customer service does not protect its customers. My story is not the first nor will it be the last.
I stayed in an unacceptable hosting environment (there was no heat in sub-zero temperatures, in one of the coldest nights in history according to weather.com) and while AirBnB kindly refunded me, they also asked me to post a review of the host to “keep AirBnB honest.” I would post the host’s name, but this woman has acted like such a psycho that I’m scared of any retaliation.
I hesitated, as last time I posted a less-than-favorable review, the host retaliated and posted completely false and damaging things on my profile. I was able to get it removed by removing my original review, and I see the host continues to do the same things to anyone who makes any kind of complaint on her property. She writes slanderous and horrible things about ANYONE who writes anything even slightly negative– for example, one woman literally wrote a super nice review and then just said “I didn’t realize there’d be someone sleeping in the living room…” and the girl WENT OFF on her. So AirBnB won’t take any action against a host who does this REPEATEDLY.
Anyway, back to my current situation. The host seemed relatively nice/stable so I posted a fair but honest review of my experience. The host went nuts, calling me (as well as my friend who stayed with me) twice a day, harassing us to take the review down, and when I asked her to stop calling me, she sent me multiple messages via AirBnB, and even after AirBnB asked her to stop calling me, she continued to harass me.
She then went the extra mile and wrote a false, damaging, and defaming review on my profile. I contacted AirBnB and asked them to take action, or at least to remove the review on my page.
A customer service representative named “Frankie G.” responded in a fairly sarcastic way, saying that while they were removing parts of MY review because it referenced some of the actions of the AirBnB staff (such as the fact that they gave me a refund), they would not remove any parts of the host’s review. He even said “It looks like your response clears things up.” Uh, I still don’t want a slanderous review on my profile! Frankie G. informed me they were they taking no further action about the fact that this woman was harassing me– so I’m guessing she will have free reign in the future to harass customers who don’t completely agree with the substandard conditions of her property. They ended the email with a snarky “I’m sure you’ll get great reviews in the future” and basically put the blame on my friend and I.
The fact that I am being harassed because I posted a fair and balanced review outlining the facts of a host that offered an unacceptable hosting situation and AirBnB chooses to protect the host tells you all you need to know. Sure, if you are in a good situation with AirBnB, you’ll be fine, but the minute you need protection, you are screwed. Don’t bother. It is not worth the headache or money saved. I strongly recommend against using this service and will be sure to let everyone I know how unsafe this service is. You are putting yourself at a GREAT risk if you use this service.
Hosts who behave like this should have action taken against them, if they are not removed completely, then they should at least have some kind of suspension period. But no, AirBnB is happy to let erratic and unstable hosts continue to harass and bully anyone who doesn’t toe the line.
Airbnb took $470 from our security deposit!
The host claimed that we made a damage soon after we left their condo. The damage was already there when we were there but the host claims that the maid took pictures of it before we were there and after we left. I contacted airbnb and told them can this host just lie and take money from us like this and airbnb kindly said no, but they will investigate. Few days later, airbnb took $470 from our credit card. I reached out to the supervisor and she hung up on me. She didn’t want to deal with this case. They just want us to pay for the damage we did not even make. Happy host who gets to have free $470 from an honest family stayed in their condo for one night. We went there to show our kids snow and it turned out to be a stressful, deceiving disaster! I feel so bad for airbnb. Never ever using airbnb again!