Community Defense

Because my listing has disappeared from the map, I’ve been phoning the Airbnb service center repeatedly for a week. Did you know that their tech support dept is called “Community Defense”? Does anyone know why? And does anyone know if it is a dept within the Airbnb offices or if it is an outsourced service? As a customer, I cannot call them or write to them. Even the supervisors of the service reps cannot phone “Community Defense” (so they claim) – which means no one at the service center has any idea what’s going on with my listing’s persistent problem. All they can do is email them and request that they respond… but so far, there has never been a response offered from “Community Defense” about the problem that has left my listing completely useless. Does anyone know of a way to reach a person at the Help Center who is in communication with “Community Defense”?


Where do you host?

It is a group within Trust and Safety.

Did you get some complaints against your property?

Are you going through something similar to what I am…did you get a notice from your local government regarding your listing? I did…i was informed i am “operating a business in a residential zone” and I need to apply for a variance…so I am fighting it. It’s not clear how I was reported…whether a neighbor complained or someone from the township monitoring using some sort of software.

No, I haven’t had any complaints from neighbors, no notifications from local government. Sorry this is happening to you, kasage00. I haven’t ever had a complaint from a guest either. The only reason I can imagine that my case has ended up in a department dealing with Trust & Safety is that maybe someone has tried to clone my listing –just a guess, but why else would my case be assigned to a Community Defense department?

My property is in Dallas, Tx.

Can you post the link to your listing/former listing?

She posted on another thread as well. Her listing has now reappeared in search.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9415835

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We can all see it now. Although last night, I was the only one who could see it. Odd. Do they run on different servers in Hawaii?

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@konacoconutz @faheem @Kirsty_Jane @KKC @felixcat ::
Sorry it took so long to reply, but when I tried to post here, I kept getting a prompt saying “You’ve reached the maximum number of replies a new user can create on their first day. Please wait 12 hours before trying again.”

So here’s the update on my dilemma:

I posted on Twitter at 1:30am last night and their reply was “that sounds strange.” They asked for my email address so they could “take a look.” This morning at 7am, after not hearing once from Airbnb during one entire week of daily pleas for their help, I received an email from them saying:

“First of all, I truly apologies for such a delay with the answer to your query. After taking a closer look, it appears your account was suspended in error. I’ve gone ahead and re-activated it for you.”

It is as if I have escaped from incarceration in cyberspace hell. No idea if this was the result of posting on Twitter or if my daily emails to the Airbnb Help Center finally rose to the top of the pile.

Thanks to all of you for your support! What a terrific forum! Did any of you who saw my site’s reappearance this a.m. do a search on the map for it (rather than using my direct link)? Curious about whether I’m showing up in searches now.

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But why the heck could I see it when no one else could?
Airbnb CS has been known for giving BS answers… In error? How? Why? That just doesn’t add up!

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I agree that “it doesn’t add up.” I also agree that Airbnb CS is totally useless.

I’m thinking of writing a hard-copy letter, outlining the nightmares of anti-customer support this past week. I found the name of the “Global Hospitality” director… maybe he would be a good choice of recipient? Possibly send him a certified letter requiring acknowledgement that it was received. Include hard copies of all the correspondence that went nowhere (I asked each Service Rep that I spoke with to send me an email so that I could check in with them if need be). Ask for his advice on a more efficient way to get my problem dealt with next time (if, god forbid, there is a “next time”). What do you think?

I agree. If you do write to a company, send it snail mail to the CEO. But here’s the thing, if you WERE really suspended, then disconnecting you from CS would kind of make sense.

I can bore you silly with the laundry list of nutty things I have heard Air CS say, until one day I realized their CS is farmed out all over the US, (probably freelanced) and some reps were completely and totally full of BS.

To just tell you oops with no explanation is not good enough. What probably happened is they had a server glitch. For some reason Hawaii was not affected. They just don’t like admitting it was a server glitch. Or they really didn’t know and made up an answer that would make you go away.

Agree: a server glitch is the most likely reason my listing was suspended in error. No way CS would (1) know this, or (2) admit it if it was known. I didn’t realize they didn’t have a central call center & that their CS is farmed out hither & yon.

My one hesitation about writing the company: they’re not divulging actual information about how they deal with server problems – and they’re not going to. They seem to have carefully constructed an illusion of support which isn’t actually engineered to provide information… and they KNOW it. Their customer service protocol (especially by phone) is a token presence – smooth talkers not problem solvers… they only direct problems via email to the various departments.

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Hi @Dia,

How many messages did you get from Airbnb via Twitter? And how you post to Twitter, exactly? I’m interested in the details. Glad to hear that your problem got fixed. Of course, it’s terrible you had to wait so long. Airbnb tech seems quite poor - in some ways it’s almost at Third World levels, but with more flim flam.

Oh, and do you have a direct email address for them? One has to go through a bunch of nested menus to send email, and you don’t know what the email address is at the end.

@faheem
I’m totally new to Twitter too, so am not your best reference point for how to use it. As far as I can tell, you just start a new thread on your Twitter front page or find a topic thread that your topic fits into (that’s what I did). I only received one message from Twitter in reply to my dilemma. I have no direct email address – and in fact I do not know if my problem was addressed because all of my requests for help to the Airbnb Help Center had finally reached the top of the pile, or if if was taken care of as a direct result of Airbnb Twitter’s intervention. The reply about my account being restored arrived via the "response@airbnb.com" standard email address to the black hole of the Help Center. Twitter’s Airbnb Help URL is https://twitter.com/AirbnbHelp

Hi @Dia,

Ok, just thought you might know more than I did. And I think I originally pointed you to Twitter (on a different thread), because I had seen it mentioned by other people as a way to contact Airbnb that actually worked.