Guest can't access account - I'm supposed to call her?

1

I got the strangest message from Air today. Asking me to call a phone number of an upcoming guest. Apparently she no longer has access to her old email and lost her account password. Can I call and give her our address and her receipt?

I genuinely thought this was spam, even though I got the message through the app. I have now had two conversations with them where I suggested they help her recover her password another way (and then she can change her email) OR that they cancel the reservation and she create a new account and reserve the home again for the same weekend (we only require renters be verified, so having no history won’t matter). We don’t charge a cancelation fee until 7 days prior, so we don’t make money on this cancelation. Also, our rates don’t move, so she will pay the same. They are resisting pretty hard on this issue.

They don’t seem to understand when I point out that if we had a dispute, she can’t even access the resolution center. They said we could text through that and send them copies of the texts?!? Also, I can’t give her receipt, I don’t see the entire transaction in my portal (taxes, Air fees?).

What am I missing here? Has anyone had Air push them to work outside the platform with (supposedly) an upcoming guest?

2

That is so weird.

No idea, but affirming that this seems needlessly complex and like CS is not giving you good advice.

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3

Something is off on this. I would ask to have this escalated to a supervisor and stay on the phone until you get one.

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4

They also set up a temporary email address for the guest so you don’t see their actual email. I always assumed that email traffic was able to be monitored by Air. Have you tried contacting the guest that way?

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5

It sounds SO dodgy.

To me no guest is worth the hassle. Let Airbnb sort it out. They want their fees so let them earn it. Not one part of this scenario is caused by you so is not your problem. If it’s genuine (which I doubt) then it’s certainly not your responsibility. If the guest cancels, you’ll get another. So I’d ignore it and not worry about it.

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6

Agreed with you all. My husband call last night and told them he would use the app to tell the user with a reservation how to access our home and the address. If Air wanted to help her get her password restored (so she can see such communication), great. If Air wants to cancel the reservation so she can reserve under her ‘new’ account, great. But no, we are declining to call her and work outside the app.

The rep apologized that we were uncomfortable with their request and said they would call the user.

I did message the renter through the app last night asking if she was aware of this issue. If she responds via the app, I’ll know for sure this is some sort of scammer. We have a few weeks until the stay to sort this out.

7

Never work outside the platform, RED FLAG, this has bogus written all over it.
Check the incoming address carefully…once I got a request similar to this, the address kept re-routing to another address. I do not have the technical savvy to sort this stuff out, sadly 10 years ago I was subject ID fraud and it still haunts me today.
No amount of money is worth getting hacked or something of the like.

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8

Whenever something feels “not right”, it usually is not right. Stay within the platform and let the guest resolve it. The guest doesn’t need to have access to their account to find information of how to contact Airbnb Help center.

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