airbnb help line Archives

I’ve used Airbnb around 40 times as a guest since 2013, and have never had too many bad experiences. Sometimes rooms aren’t as nice as described, and amenities are limited to the letter of what was promised (watch out for rooms that don’t come with “essentials” – I’m pretty sure you can get away with not having a shower curtain). Sometimes you make arrangements with hosts and then they don’t answer their phones when you want to pick up the keys. Some hosts think they can charge seriously premium prices based on their location, and then not do the slightest bit of upkeep. When you stay at Airbnbs as much as I do, you’re bound to have a few disappointments. Basically, it’s let the buyer beware, and for the most part hosts have been fantastic.

So overall, you could say I’ve been a very satisfied Airbnb user for almost four years. After my last Airbnb stay, I logged into my account to discover that I was locked out. Airbnb offered only a message:

“To help protect your information, we’ve temporarily disabled your account. Please email us at account.access@airbnb.com to continue.”

There was no explanation of why the account was disabled, what “temporarily” means, or how to get it unlocked. I emailed that email address a few times, but never got a response. A week later the account remained disabled. One note about Airbnb customer service: if you’re familiar with this site, you can probably see it coming. Airbnb does everything it can to push the resolution of customer service issues to its online help system. But if your account is locked out, you can’t use the online help. Even the “contact us” page says “please log in to your account to access help.”

Fortunately, Googling for Airbnb’s phone number turned up a help desk number: 1-855-424-7262. You can call that number, but the help desk staff can’t actually do anything to help you. I’ve called multiple times already, and obviously my account is still disabled. If you do call, they’ll ask you for your name, email address, phone number, and associated payment information. But all they can do is put your issue in a queue sent to a technical support group (which “doesn’t take phone calls in or out”). And as you’d by now expect, that group is completely unresponsive and ineffectual.

Some lessons from this experience:

Your Airbnb account is the property of Airbnb, and they may take it from you at any time with essentially no recourse.
Do you need access to message your guests/hosts, upcoming reservations, billing receipts, or even Airbnb’s online help? Without access to the Airbnb website or mobile app, you’re essentially out of luck.
If you do get locked out of your Airbnb account, take action immediately. The “temporary” lockout will not go away on its own. Call Airbnb (1-855-424-7262) as soon as you discover your account is locked out. Tell them you are trying to make a new booking for an upcoming stay in the near future. This will flag your issue as high priority. Which may or may not help, but it can’t hurt. I’ll keep this post updated if I make any progress.

My wife used Airbnb to rent what was advertised as “a charming fisherman’s cottage” in La Caleta near Salobrena, Spain. There were some nice photos of the view, but no reviews posted. First lesson learned: if there are no reviews, pass on by. The photo showed an uphill path to reach the cottage, but there was no mention of the fact that there were actually over 250 steps, most of the time steeply uphill, to get to the cottage. The renter mentioned the place was “not for [the] disabled” but my wife and I, in our 60s, are both active people; this climb to the cottage was really hard, especially carrying something in the August heat.

A few days after we left the cottage, my wife suffered a complete hamstring rupture in Granada. I am not claiming there was a cause and effect relationship, but a week of doing that climb (and coming back down was also challenging) couldn’t have helped. The information on the cottage should have stated “uphill climb of over 250 steps to reach the front door may be challenging for older renters or anyone with potential leg problems.” That’s all I would ask. Unfortunately, I was too busy tending to my wife’s accident and the aftermath to even think about posting a review on the site before the deadline ran out and there does not seem to be any way to contact Airbnb directly with a problem like this.

I would never, never consider this “service” again. There is no real accountability other than a bad review, but in our case there was no review at the beginning. We missed the two-week window in which to add one. Hopefully, the next renter will be young and athletic. There were a couple of other issues with the cottage, like the fact that the sun shade over the terrace got ripped to pieces by the wind and even after informing the owner, nothing was ever done, making the terrace unusable during much of the midday. But the accessibility was by far the worst part of this story.

Tag Archives: airbnb help line

Airbnb: You Can’t get Help if you Can’t Log in

Strenuous Hike to Airbnb Cottage: Unable to Warn Others