We have been hosts for about 5 years. Airbnb support has usually been quite helpful. We just noticed that even though we have a cleaning fee listed, it is not getting paid out to us. I spoke to support by phone and they agreed this is the case, but need to escalate it to “Engineering.” They told me if I didn’t receive an email in “a few weeks” to contact them again. This seems ridiculous. We are already shorted almost $1000. Any suggestions for how to expedite support?
You might try deleting or changing the amount of cleaning fee settings and saving the changes and then add it back. Maybe it will fix the bug and you will only have to recoup what they messed up on.
I’ve noticed that both Airbnb and Booking sometimes “play dumb” just to increase their sales. I also believe they’re going through tough business times nowadays. As a result, they sometimes apply discounts that shouldn’t be applied or forget to add fees that should be included. I think they do this especially with people who have less power to fight back. Depending on your location and how you run your business, there are a few ways to push back against them, but it’s worth considering the cost of such a fight. Where are you located? Do you run as an individual or as a business?
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Thinking of a giant multinational corporation like airbnb telling their hundreds of thousands of employees to figure out ways to “play dumb” and do business as you’re describing is pretty absurd. You really think that they will have a staff meeting and the Customer Service people are told to do any of the things you mentioned in their daily interaction with the millions of hosts that use this giant booking service? Sorry, but imagining that Airbnb does business like a down on their luck auto body repair shop Is pretty funny.
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Did you try what @James333 suggested?
Oh my friend, you’re the one naively ignoring the power of technology and believing it’s difficult to add a condition to your platform, something like “ignore the cleaning fee for hosts flagged as unfriendy in the FarEast area,” for example. Or believing that host interactions with Customer Support are handled by “hundreds of employees” instead of cheap, untrained bots. I can assure you, it’s not nearly as difficult as sending bad weather to a country, or sustaining a far-right candidate in the election process. And it’s for company survival.
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