Tag Archives: airbnb no contact

Awful and Stressful Experience Contacting Airbnb

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The host was unreachable. I booked this reservation for my 21-year-old son. The host did not leave a building key and promised to let my son in by buzzing him in through his cell phone. My son was left out in the freezing cold a few days in a row because the host would not respond. He could not get into the building. We wrote to the host on Airbnb and barely got responses. He promised to leave us the building key but never did. He then claimed my son lost the key and was going to charge us for it; he never left it. This was an awful and very stressful experience. My son left the premises after just a few days because he did not have easy access to the apartment.

I am disputing the charge with my credit card company but it seems that I will have to eat this cost because Airbnb is completely unreachable. There is no email address to contact them. Their help on the site has questions and answers but no phone number. You can never speak to anyone. I used Google to search for a contact number, was on hold for over a half hour, and then hung up. No one answered if that was even the right number. Do not use Airbnb. You will be throwing away your money.

Left out in the Rain with no Customer Service

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I was going to Houston for a wedding. Because the official wedding hotel was the uber fancy St. Regis, I figured I would book an Airbnb across the street instead to save some money. What a mistake that was…

There were bad omens from the start. Just checking in required me to get the keys from the front desk of a building that did not actually allow Airbnb hosting, so I had to pretend to be a friend staying the weekend. The front desk seemed to have all sorts of problems copying the electronic key fob for me to use for the weekend, so it took thirty minutes just to get the keys. It also turned out the building was massive with hallways that sprawled for what seemed like a mile (everything really is bigger in Texas), so just finding the right apartment was a challenge. I briefly pondered how hard this would be later that night coming back after a few glasses of wine and decided I better try and keep it together.

Finally stepping inside, the apartment was nice enough, but the delay meant I was running late for the rehearsal dinner. What a lovely dinner it was; the food, wine, and atmosphere were splendid. After a great night, the group decided to cap it off at the St. Regis bar. I met a girl. No, she was not a prostitute (as my friends speculated), but she did make things pretty easy for me. She eventually asked if I had a room in the hotel. I couldn’t believe my luck, but had to be honest and said: “No, but I do have an Airbnb just across the street!” She went home. I guess I can’t blame that on Airbnb, but it was a painful reminder of how your cheapness can come back around to bite you.

After that, I decided it was probably time to call it a night. And so I began my two-minute journey across the street to my place, trying to remember again where in the labyrinth of a building I was actually staying. I thought to myself how ridiculous it would have been had I brought the girl back and we couldn’t find it. It immediately started to rain. Hard. Thank God I was only across the street, because I was in my suit. After the two-minute trek, I hit the key fob against the sensor. Nothing. I tried again – nothing. One more time. I start to panic. The front door staff was long gone. Clearly the problems they had activating my key fob were worse that I thought. I called the emergency number. I reached someone on the phone who explained they could not send anyone to help me until the following morning. I asked what the point of the “emergency” number was then.

I called my host. She explained she couldn’t help me because she wasn’t in Texas, and with the staff gone there was nothing she could do. I called Airbnb to see if they could find me a place. The estimated wait was over 45 minutes. I stayed as long as I could, but my phone’s battery wouldn’t have lasted that long. It was raining, I was in my suit, and it was almost 2:00 AM. I had nowhere to stay, with all my luggage in a room in a building I couldn’t access. I considered waiting around until someone walked in or out for me to follow, but realized that would only get me to the apartment door which I still would not be able to open.

Remembering that someone said the St. Regis was booked, I started to look for other hotels on my iPhone. 17% battery. It was about to go. Then it was gone. I had no other choice but to run back to the St. Regis, hoping people were still at the bar. It was empty. I explained my situation to the sympathetic people at the front desk. Fortunately there was, contrary to belief, still a room available. The kind folks gave me the wedding rate, which at that point seemed beyond worth it. They also gave me an iPhone charger. I walked into my beautiful hotel room and instantly realized why hotels are far superior: when you travel, whether you like it or not, you are not a resident but a customer. Customers frequently require customer service, which Airbnb just does not offer.

Disgusting Airbnb Stay in Florida, Still no Refund

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My fiancé and I had booked a home hosted by Huafeng in Kissimmee, Florida. We booked the property for February 27th to March 6th, 2017. We had a total of seven guests staying there. Four of our guests showed one day early on Monday, February 27th, 2017 to check in the day before my fiancé and I arrived on Tuesday, February 28th, 2017. Upon the arrival of our first four guests on the Monday, our guests contacted the host with concerns about cleanliness, unsanitary conditions, and the lack of towels. The host refused to listen to their complaints and proceeded to hang up the phone. This went on for a few calls and more hang ups. Our four guests advised Huafeng they were not going to stay in these unsanitary conditions if they weren’t taken care of and did not stay there for the duration.

My fiancé and I arrived at the property the next day, on Tuesday. We noticed that the phone did not work. We contacted our host via email (only way of communication). He told us to contact the front desk at the Runaway Clubhouse. Huafeng did not know that this resort hadn’t had a front desk aide in over six months, so we were unable to use the phone our whole stay, for 5+ days. My fiancé and I are the only two out of our group of seven that stayed the full time of our booking. We felt that there wasn’t an option to cancel our stay there within 24 hours due to our host hanging up on our guests when they initially complained.

The unsanitary conditions included: bed bug carcasses along the trim of bed mattresses in two rooms, blood smears on doors, over 30 stains on both couches, and over ten pasta or blood spots on carpets and stains on pillow cases and blankets. This was literally the most disturbing Airbnb experience we had ever had. I think that we deserve our money back since the first of our guests advised the host that they weren’t staying verbally within the 24-hour time frame the company allows. Since the host hung the phone up on them there were no options to take care of this issue. I have taken pictures of the filth that was present at this room and all that I have mentioned.

Impossible to Speak to an Airbnb Decision-maker

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Airbnb has insufficient customer service: everything is automated, and the staff has changed from the US to an overseas call centre where nobody has any authority to handle anything but straightforward cases. There is no email address, no complaints department, and no phone numbers a robot company with incompetent employees. There are two issues with this system:

1) My previous guest did not check out, left half of his stuff in the room, and took the house key to my home where I live with my family. This is a major security issue because a stranger is somewhere out there with the key to my home in his pocket and nothing has been done from the Airbnb side. I spent the whole evening on this speaking to four people. Now it is 10:00 PM; I started to ring them at 6:00 PM. To change a door lock in Australia costs $350. That’s not enough cover for damage done by guests.

2) Photographers. After I moved houses, it took nine months to finally get someone to take an accurate photo of my single room. Because I have no fish eye lens I was not able to take a decent photo of the room from an angle where everything is visible. After the photographer finally arrived (three hours late) he took photos and downloaded them to the wrong listing. This was four weeks ago. In the meantime I got bad reviews of guests who thought rightly, that the advertised photo (room in the old house) is inaccurate, even though the same furniture is in the room. I called Airbnb four times where I was left waiting for hours. Despite this, nothing has happened. Airbnb threatened to cancel my listing because I do not have five-star reviews due to the inaccuracy issue.

In addition, the expectations that hosts have to provide five-star accommodation and service is unrealistic. A hotel room in my area starts from $180 per night and I charge $26. I provide low cost accommodation in an almost brand new, meticulously clean home in a beautiful area. 98% of all my guests were very happy with my service and facility. Surely one cannot expect butler service and five-star accommodation for $26 per room per night in an expensive tourist area in a western country like Australia.

Not even a Response from Airbnb Customer Service

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Don’t trust the information on the Airbnb website. I have had three good experiences with Airbnb in Australia so I thought I would use it for a recent overseas trip. Two of the four were terrible. The Dublin accommodation did not mention it was a very old building with no lift and the room was on the third floor; not even a mention of the unit being an apartment, just ‘self contained accommodation’. My travel partner was unable to use the stairs so we had to cancel. We cancelled before the cut off date for a 50% refund but the host refused to process the refund. We contacted Airbnb with absolutely no response.

The second experience was in Edinburgh. The room was uncomfortable and the host rarely spoke. When he did, he was very rude. We paid top dollar for this property as it was central, but we were very glad to get out of there. We contacted Airbnb and once again, there was no response. Absolutely no response to disputes and concerns is extremely poor customer service. I will never use Airbnb again. I would rather pay extra and feel confident in my choice of accommodation.

The Tables have Turned: Hosts Rating Airbnb

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On March 10th 2017, I happened to check my account on Airbnb and found that my response rating had been reduced from 100% to 50%. No prior warning was provided. It appears that I had not responded to Airbnb inquiries, but I had not received any. I set about trying to make contact with Airbnb, but that proved to be impossible. There is no contact point and no way of raising a support ticket. There is a feedback form I found on their website but after trying to write in my complaint, I got a response saying that the feedback form will not receive individual responses and it s not a support ticket. So where is the method or means to raise an individual support ticket request? It appears there is none. Airbnb is happy to take our money and dish out severe ratings but certainly does not want to hear about any problems that they may have created themselves. I tried to post the following to their feedback form, but I think this will not get any response:

Complaints about Airbnb as follows:

1. Unable to make any form of direct contact with Airbnb, almost suggesting the company is not interested in any contact from its customers.

2. Airbnb suspended my listing without any notice or threat due to my lack of response to their inquiries. However, none of these enquiries have come through in any of the methods usually deployed by Airbnb including:

a. No email indicating an inquiry was issued by Airbnb.

b. No notification alert from Airbnb.

c. No mobile phone text message from Airbnb.

However, Airbnb threatened to suspend my hosting as well as immediately reduce my response rating from 100% to 50% with no prior notification. This clearly is an Airbnb system fault and not my lack of response. I know this because customers have actually made contact with me since there was no response via Airbnb. This clearly supports the fact that it is your system that has the problem. A Google search on the matter brought up multiple similar occurrences with other Airbnb hosts. While this may be a glitch in Airbnb’s system. There is no way of contacting Airbnb to inform of the problem or get help to rectify this problem. There is no human contact available. Given this lack of response, there is a loss of customer revenue from the host’s point of view, which also translate to a loss of revenue from Airbnb. I would therefore reduce my rating of Airbnb as a hosting site from 100% down to 50%, similar to what they have given me. Unless I hear from Airbnb within the next two days, that satisfaction rating on Airbnb as my hosting site will be reduced further from 50% to 0%.

Scammed Because Airbnb Really Doesn’t Care

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I admit there are numerous statements across the Airbnb website stating do not book outside the site. Being a new user, when faced with a message on a listing to contact the host directly, I did. In all innocence, I actually thought that the listing had been validated by Airbnb prior to uploading and that no changes could be made once live. Therefore if the listing had a request to contact them directly I would assume that Airbnb had approved it. Logical, not stupid. However, we all know that’s not true. Airbnb has no security measures, procedures, responsibility or morals. Apparently you can easily create a bogus host, draft up something pretty, wait for it to go live, and falsify it as much as you like, including adding and amending details. Then if they are unfortunate to be flagged or worse still, have been successful in their scam (as in my case) they take the listing down and Airbnb has no way of tracking them. It’s an absolute playground for scammers.

So how does Airbnb deal with this? Do they install preventative measures to stop this happening? Scrutinize and have more background checks on hosts before uploading? Do they ensure no changes can be made once the listing is live or they are only managed through administrators at Airbnb?

Don’t be silly. That would be taking responsibility and accepting that when you start a business providing a service you do so accepting an obligation to ensure the security and safety of every single user. But wait: I hear you say they have disclaimers, so this excuses them for not taking responsibility for investing in the site. They can continue to scrape as much profit as possible while hiding behind these warnings. Basically Airbnb are giving scammers carte blanche to take advantage of the site, targeting the vulnerable and naïve.

Can you talk to anyone about this? Absolutely not. I did manage to get a lovely superhost representing Airbnb who was understanding, but in his words:

“I do understand that this does happen often and we do have security measures. For these scam listings, they are fine when they set up their listing but then they change the information or add a picture with a number and then remove it quickly or remove the listing before we can get the ID. I can assure you than once we find these listings; we do notify our Trust and Safety Team to remove the listing and the host.”

I am sure that more can be done as well. So come on, Brian Chesky, be a man and face up to your responsibilities; stop hiding behind disclaimers or warnings. Create a site where every user feels safe and secure using it. Limit the possibility of scamming and fraud. Have some human contact – a customer phone line so if there are any issues they can be resolved quickly, professionally, and without the need to find these websites.

Reservation Cancelled, Host Selling the House

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Airbnb has over $1600 of my money. They have had it for three days, but I don’t have a reservation. I spent hours pouring over the rental choices and finally settled on a place. I gave Airbnb my debit card information and immediately received a message that my reservation had been accepted. A few hours later I received an email from the host – not through the Airbnb website, but just through Yahoo mail saying that the house was up for sale and they didn’t think it would be available for our dates. I waited a day and didn’t get a notice from Airbnb. I contacted the host and she said she was in an area with bad wifi reception and her emails to Airbnb kept getting “kicked back” (somehow she was able to communicate with me, though). I contacted Airbnb by phone (had to Google the number because they don’t make it easy to find them on their site). A foreign-sounding customer service representative said he would forward my case up the ladder. There was no word later that day or the next. I called again and they said it would be 48 hours. All this time they were holding my money and I couldn’t rent another place. In the banking business this would be called check kiting and it would be illegal. I’m not sure why Airbnb is allowed to do it. About a year ago we had a rental in the Napa Valley area and the host cancelled without an explanation. I looked around online and saw that the place was in escrow. This has never happened to me with VRBO, HomeAway, or Tripadvisor vacation rentals. I recommend avoiding Airbnb if you can.