Tag Archives: airbnb verification

Airbnb’s Questionable Verification Process

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I used to love Airbnb, the website that offers me access to nice accommodations for my summer travel. But now I am disappointed and angry at how Airbnb has been treating me.

I used Airbnb for two years and had success. I received 4-5 star ratings from the host families I stayed with. Now Airbnb is refusing me service. Airbnb wants me to send them a copy of my passport or driver’s license. I understand the rationale behind this step; it was designed to increase confidence in both hosts and guests. However, their process of verification made me instantly uneasy.

First, it made no sense to ask me to provide this information when I am already an established and repeat customer. Airbnb has all the necessary information: name, address, sex, birth date, phone number, email address, credit card, past hosts’ reviews and a profile picture. My history should have established me as a trustworthy customer. It appears that being an established customer means nothing to Airbnb.

Airbnb’s verification process is unreasonable. I travel extensively during my summer breaks (I teach) and I am familiar with hotels, motels, resorts, B&B’s, college dorms and other host families’ accommodations. Travelling usually involves reserving accommodation with a credit card. Upon arrival, the facilities perform a quick check of the passport or driver’s license.

The difference here is that I’m uploading sensitive information to Airbnb. These days anything on the Internet is vulnerable. The difference between entering my credit card information and my passport data online is that my credit card has some pretty serious guarantees and fraud detection in place. If someone gets a hold of my passport information and my identity is stolen, this can take years to fix.

Airbnb also asked that I provide them my social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google) connections. A business has no right to ask for social media information. After spending ample time reading reviews and blogs on Airbnb, it appears to me that Airbnb should sticking to established customs and use common sense in business practices. Online there are numerous articles on Airbnb infringement and overcollection of customers’ personal information. Many people are questioning their practices and tuning away from Airbnb.

Virtually no Verification of Airbnb Guests

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I recently hosted a group of overseas teens, who managed to make my home in London a complete mess. I evicted them, and refunded the unused portion of their payment, in conjunction with Airbnb. Now I am trying to be more selective with my guests, but have found out that Airbnb’s way of verifying a guest’s veracity can be as little as getting a phone number.

In the past, there used to be items such as “Government ID verification” which must have had some value. I do not think a phone number counts in any way to establishing identity, as anyone can get one within minutes. The same applies to email addresses.

When I challenged Airbnb on this, they stated that this was their policy, and if I don’t like it I can always cancel a booking. This I did, and received an email stating that my listing may be suspended. Arrogant outfit. As soon as I can get myself off this platform, I will.

Unverified Property Leads to Nearly Ruined Trip

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I have been an Airbnb Host and also a guest so my recent experience took me by surprise. I booked a rental in a resort town in Canada, found a perfect location, had four beds (for four adults) and saw it was reasonably priced. I paid my 50% with my Amex Platinum card rather than using Paypal, which I have used in the past. I also sent a note to the owner.

After the Easter holiday weekend, my husband asked if he should cancel the hotel he had booked and I said that I had booked the Airbnb a few days ago. I went to check and there was no reservation, nothing in our upcoming trips or the like. I couldn’t find any messages either on the site or in my email so I was very puzzled.

I finally decided to call Airbnb and while I was looking for contact info on the “contact us” page, I saw a picture of the property with a message that said “did not pass verification”. What the heck? Why wouldn’t I have seen something online or received a message about this? And what verification?

I called customer support and the agent said she couldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be verified and sometimes “mistakes happen” in their system. She sent my issue to another group and a case manager reached out to me this morning. After several exchanges of messages (after he said it was a system error on their end) he asked how many times I had submitted payment.

Well, only once and it seemed to have gone through; there were no error messages. I explained that my Amex Platinum card would not have rejected anything and have since checked; they did not reject anything.

The case manager said “I am leaving in 15 minutes” and asked me to call back with the number I started with yesterday. After being on hold, the agent said she would transfer me back to have a live conversation in the same department that I had been messaging with and then she disconnected me. I have not received any call back.

Now, the property is booked, we cannot find another one that fits our needs and I am seething. I would have been able to respond and fix the situation if I had been notified, but even the agent was at a loss why we couldn’t see this message except the one buried in in the contact us section. Fortunately, we have found two guest rooms in another place through booking.com but I would like Airbnb to admit to its mistakes (they sometimes make per the agent) and provide some restitution.

You Aren’t Going to Believe This One About Airbnb

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So, someone else committed fraud against Airbnb, and they have apparently decided to make me pay for it, although they admitted to me that they know it wasn’t me. I had to stay a couple of days in Boston last month, so I thought I would try Airbnb since Boston is expensive. I had never used Airbnb before.

The day after my visa was charged for the stay, an additional charge for $471.01 to Airbnb appeared on my bank statement. Horrified, I contacted Airbnb and my bank and both opened investigations. Thankfully, both entities agreed that the charges were in fact unauthorized, and I got a nice email from Airbnb on September 17th, notifying me that the entire amount had been refunded to my account.

I went to Boston and had a very nice stay in a lovely brownstone near Harvard Medical School. The host and I both gave each other positive reviews. I figured I would give Airbnb another chance.

This month, I decided to rent an Airbnb in Austin. However, when I went to log in to my account, I was blocked. Even more shocking, I got a pop-up window from Airbnb saying that there were “security issues” associated with my account and that I needed to “upload a government-issued photo ID” in order to access it. What?

I called Airbnb and the rep said that there were actually “technical issues” associated with my account rather than “security Issues” and that Airbnb would get back to me to resolve them, but she wasn’t sure when. I told her I needed a room next week and availability was low, but she still would not give me a timeframe for a response from Airbnb. I demanded to speak to a supervisor, who told me the exact same thing. They both sounded like they were lying, to be honest. Also, why would the website demand I upload a photo ID over a technical issue, anyway?

It looks like somehow I am being punished for what whoever hacked my card did, since Airbnb’s own records indicate that they cleared me, at least according to the email they sent me. I am a 56-year-old woman who has never had a parking ticket, and they are talking to me like I am some criminal. They can’t seem to tell me exactly why. I’m also  locked out of my Airbnb account. This is near unbelievable.

I would love to attach documentation to support all this, but of course it has my personal information on it. I also think it is interesting that my card got hacked after I gave the number to Airbnb, and only after that. Ah, the irony of the fact that whoever hacked my card may have gotten the number from them, on top of everything else.

SOS: Help Airbnb Understand my Birth Year isn’t 2020

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Yesterday I was sent an email from Airbnb in the evening requesting some ID details to be updated. I did this immediately including my birthdate and a verified photo of my driver’s license. You’d have thought it would be easy, but not so. Within 30 seconds 20 emails arrived in my inbox one after another, each one notifying me that a booking had been cancelled. All 20 bookings I had in total.

Some technical glitch at Airbnb had registered my birthdate as 2020. According to Airbnb I was underage (and somehow not even born yet) so without reaching out to me as a long-time Superhost Airbnb automatically cancelled every single booking and refunded every single payment to every single guest.

I called Airbnb immediately only to be put on hold for 20 minutes by one of their operators. I called back and the call was disconnected. There was no return call. I called back again each time explaining over and over the urgency of the situation. By this stage I had frantic guests texting and calling me asking why their booking had been cancelled. One guest rang Airbnb herself only to be told that the problem was at my end because I had cancelled her booking?

It is now the next day and I am still waiting for all bookings to be reinstated. I now have guests who have paid for their original booking confirming that they wish their booking to be reinstated only to be double charged. They have received no refund for the cancelled booking. One guest is out of pocket more than $7,000. I only get to talk to Airbnb at their offshore Philippines call centre, which is useless.

They Cancelled Every One of our Reservations

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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.

In Some Countries, Airbnb Demands you Break the Law

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Airbnb has an artistic interpretation of the law; I guess a lawyer would call it blackmail. Read this exchange for yourself:

“Your company has been warned by the Dutch DPA that it is illegal to demand BSN numbers in your authentication protocol. Your company has agreed to stop doing this, but you are not. The BSN number is in two places on a dutch ID, and you are refusing my payout because I cover up both BSN numbers. Your customer service refuses to help. I now have to send away guests that have payed a lot of money because of your company’s unwillingness to comply with local law an your own terms and conditions and blocking my payout.

It seems like blackmail to block payments from people that do not comply with your illegal demands. I am only emailing you because the customer service is not helpful at all and my bills are running up, and the guests are the victims of this.

You are breaking multiple laws; you can read up on the problem on this government website. Basically you cannot ask to leave the lower line of the passport/driver’s license visible because it contains the BSN number (which you also ask to cover up in the description) . You can also not ask to show the photo (which I did leave visible for you). You are not allowed to ask for a copy of the ID at all.

I expect a big global company to at least read the laws regarding these things. If the dutch people that already have sent this illegal content to Airbnb find out they can demand it back and demand a IT professional to check the Airbnb system if you really erased this illegal content. If you think otherwise, so did Facebook. I would like to comply with your ID process but not by breaking multiple laws in the process (and I will not make a problem of the photo).

By the way with a BSN number you can put someone in huge debt for the rest of their life, this is the reason it is illegal to demand or even ask for it in the Netherlands. Sure your multi billion company ‘didn’t know’ , but now you do. So please comply with the law and stop blocking my payments. Did I already mention it is illegal for you to ask for a copy of an ID at all?”

I’m with Airbnb Support. I’ll be helping you today. Give me a moment while I look into your case. At this time, you payout is temporarily held until you complete the verification processed that is required by our Terms of Service.

“Your terms of service break multiple laws.”

I understand your concerns, however, you have agreed to our Terms of Services and this is a requirement.

“The law says you can not ask for my BSN number, and you even acknowledge this in your process description. The BSN number is in two places on a Dutch ID, one on the lower line which you demand to stay visible. It has nothing to do with your terms if your terms say to break Dutch law. I am still not permitted by law to comply.”

That is up to you if you do not wish to upload your ID. However, Airbnb will not release any payout until you complete this process.

“I will send a copy of this conversation to the authorities (they say if I cannot work it out with you they will contact you. you are demanding things that are prohibited by law. If your terms say that I should break national and European law and you think your rules apply here I have sincere doubts about your willingness and/or competence to solve the issue. Thank you for the conversation.”

Since I am not sure if your issue is resolved, I am forwarding this ticket to a member of our team who can best assist you. You should hear back from us soon.

“Ok, I will postpone contacting the authorities until further contact (if this doesn’t take too long).”

2.4 User verification on the Internet is difficult and we do not assume any responsibility for the confirmation of any Member’s identity. Notwithstanding the above, for transparency and fraud prevention purposes, and as permitted by applicable laws, we may, but have no obligation to (i) ask Members to provide a form of government identification or other information or undertake additional checks designed to help verify the identities or backgrounds of Members, (ii) screen Members against third party databases or other sources and request reports from service providers, and (iii) where we have sufficient information to identify a Member, obtain reports from public records of criminal convictions or sex offender registrations or an equivalent version of background or registered sex offender checks in your local jurisdiction (if available).

7.2.3 You represent and warrant that any Listing you post and the booking of, or a Guest’s stay at, an Accommodation will (i) not breach any agreements you have entered into with any third parties, such as homeowners association, condominium, or other agreements, and (ii) comply with all applicable laws (such as zoning laws), Tax requirements, and other rules and regulations (including having all required permits, licenses and registrations). As a Host, you are responsible for your own acts and omissions and are also responsible for the acts and omissions of any individuals who reside at or are otherwise present at the Accommodation at your request or invitation, excluding the Guest and any individuals the Guest invites to the Accommodation.

8.3.1 You should carefully review the description of any Experience, Event or other Host Service you intend to book to ensure you (and any additional guests you are booking for) meet any minimum age, proficiency, fitness or other requirements which the Host has specified in their Listing. At your sole discretion you may want to inform the Host of any medical or physical conditions, or other circumstances that may impact your and any additional guest’s ability to participate in any Experience, Event or other Host Service. In addition, certain laws, like the minimum legal drinking age in the location of the Experience, Event or other Host Service, may also apply. You are responsible for identifying, understanding, and complying with all laws, rules and regulations that apply to your participation in an Experience, Event or other Host Service.

14.1 You are solely responsible for compliance with any and all laws, rules, regulations, and Tax obligations that may apply to your use of the Airbnb Platform. In connection with your use of the Airbnb Platform, you will not and will not assist or enable others to: • breach or circumvent any applicable laws or regulations, agreements with third-parties, third-party rights, or our Terms, Policies or Standards.

“If you carefully read the above parts of your own terms, you will see you are violating your own terms and conditions. If you read point 14.1, it states that if I comply with your illegal request for my BSN I am breaching your terms so I have to abide by local laws by all means (according to you) and by doing that you will not pay out anything. So please stop violating local laws, European laws, and your own terms and conditions.”

My last message to the help center was closed without a reply, so I am copying it over to this conversation.

“You (Airbnb, Inc.) are breaking term 2.4, and you are demanding I break 7.2.3, 8.3.1 and 14.1 of the Airbnb terms and conditions. If you think this is not the case a two-minute phone call to the Dutch authorities will clear this up for you. Therefore I once again politely ask you to stop blocking my payments and resolve the issue. For further details you can read my previous conversation with the help center. I already know my previous conversation is forwarded to someone who is ‘supposed to know’ what to do with it. I do not feel its my responsibility to teach you the law and that I should wait for an x amount of time before you make a two-minute phone call and then (if the stars and moon are correctly aligned) unblock my payments. I am following the Airbnb terms and conditions and I expect the same from Airbnb.

I have no decent response from your side. I have guests running up costs at the moment and you are blocking payment for their costs. Are you going to arrange other accommodations for these guests? I can not let them stay for free. I will forward our correspondence to the Dutch DPA tomorrow morning (because you are forcing me to send my BSN, which is prohibited by law). I would rather resolve the problem with Airbnb but I am a mere mortal who has bills to pay. I hope to hear from you (soon).”

Again, customer service closed the conversation without a reply.

“You (Airbnb, Inc) are breaking the terms and conditions (and the local laws) and refusing to pay me. My previous conversations about this have been forwarded to someone that apparently can help me. However, if I don’t get a reply, I am going to send away my guests tomorrow because of your total lack of cooperation. I will inform them this evening about this.”

Thanks for your message — Airbnb Support will reply as soon as a specialist becomes available.

“So Airbnb support will reply? Please don’t close this conversation without a reply like you did last time.”

Validation Required by Airbnb – National ID Card not Accepted

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All of a sudden, in the middle of the busy tourist season, Airbnb decided to force me to validate myself, again, by asking me several personal questions, again, and submitting a form of ID. I tried to comply, by submitting high quality, high resolution color scans of my national ID card, the only form of ID I have. I do not have a passport, and I do not have a driver’s license.

However, the automated system on Airbnb does not seem to accept my government-issued, national ID card. Their automated system keeps rejecting both my scans or the Airbnb app scans of the ID they asked me to provide. Today I went to my local police station and obtained a newer version of my ID that includes all information printed in both Greek and English, as well as a brand new photo of myself. I tried again submitting my new ID this time, but the automated Airbnb system keeps rejecting that one as well.

Airbnb has suspended my payments because I have not validated myself using their automated system, and all the representatives I’ve talked to keep telling me there is nothing they can do. I have more guests coming in the next few days to stay at my properties and know I won’t receive any funds owned to me by Airbnb for these reservations. I am at my wit’s end, and don’t know what to do.

Technical Problems Keep me Signed out of Airbnb

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My problems started with my first attempt to set up an account with Airbnb a year or so ago. I started with the email I normally use. They somehow got it misspelled and started setting it up. I don’t remember why now but I was not able to complete the setup either under my correct email or the email they had on record.

Eventually I got them on the phone and tried all their suggestions. They could not make it work so I asked them to delete everything, email address and all, and I would start over. They said they had done so but anytime I entered my email it went to the incorrect address but wouldn’t let me set up under either account, as it had done before. I got a new email address and eventually got set up.

Now I want to get back into it and it says my password is wrong. I tried options to reset the password but it just keeps rejecting it or saying: “Something went wrong. Try again”. I made contact with Airbnb help via chat. They asked me to wait a moment. Before they came back it timed me out. They emailed and asked if I still needed help with a link to get back to them but it required my password to get in. Again, the reason I was trying to contact them was my password would not work.

I got in the first time through a link that said something about signing in instantly. I have not gotten that to work since. I had given Airbnb my phone number and said I would prefer to talk but they did not call me or make any attempt to get back with me, other than the one email link. I have two reservations set up through Airbnb but wanted to get back and get a phone number to confirm them and will soon want to make another if I can sign in.

From all the other complaints I see, it looks like they may have a poorly functioning website and are not trying to do anything about it. I have probably spent 20 or more hours altogether trying to deal with Airbnb. Total frustration.