Has anyone experienced this? I had a guest book for a couple of weeks through ALE, their insurance company’s broker, as there was damage to their house and they needed a place to stay while repairs were being made. This was my first time having a long term guest of more than 10 days. Initially it was only the two weeks, then extended to one month with a large discount. Then ALE asked to extend the stay until April 30th and had to have their underwriter approve the alteration. Again we applied the generous discount as total time was to be 91 days. It took a lot of phone calls and time to sort it out, but we made it work for them. Airbnb collected the first two payments and the third one is due. Now ALE is saying they never agreed to this, it was “a mistake”, and pulled their card! The guests have been relocated into an apartment. Airbnb has not been able to collect payment. The house cannot be booked now unless I make the cancellation myself. I feel that Airbnb should have our back and be responsible for the payment as the house is designed for large groups that make arrangements in advance, and not so much for last minute bookings. It is high season here and we have no bookings for the next month. Every time I call Airbnb they say they have their collections team looking into it but can’t give me any information. They won’t have a supervisor speak with us and are giving us the runaround. Apparently they have sent the request to collections but don’t know about squeezing money out of a turnip. Any insight appreciated.
Tell Airbnb to open up your calendar. Don’t take no for an answer.
Thanks for responding. So you’re saying have Airbnb do it and give up the idea of it going to collections? Airbnb customer service just wrote and said this:
For long term reservation, we collect a month in advance. IF payment fails, Host have the option to cancel the reservation penalty free to clear the calendar or we can keep on trying to collect payment from both ALE and guest.
Oddly enough, I read a post on the Airbnb community forum from what is pretty obviously your guest, that was posted about a week ago. Your guest was just as upset by the scenario, couldn’t figure out why his booking was cancelled, and expressed sympathy for the host (you, I believe) who was also getting shafted.
Tell Airbnb to separate the payment issue from the blocked calendar issue and open up your calendar now. You may or may not ever get paid for this, but that shouldn’t be a factor in being able to hopefully rebook those dates.
Either tell Airbnb to open the calendar as @Brian_R170 says or, as they haven’t paid, get new guests in using social media or networking.
The chances are that Airbnb will forget about you unless you pester but you might consider spending the time (and you’ve already spent a lot of time with these guests) to get cracking and find your own guests to cover the dates.
I bet it was my guest! He was very upset and sympathetic to us. I’m glad for him that they found a house for him as a tree fell on his and it’s unlivable at this time! If you have his link I would love to see it. Thanks.
Yep, that’s the guy- he said a tree fell on his house.
I was one of the posters who replied to him. He was confused about why Airbnb was telling him the booking would be cancelled unless he rebooked it and paid for it himself, because it seems that the accommodation locator who made the booking wasn’t admitting that they had reneged on the payment.
I told him he was probably being lied to- that the booker had most likely cancelled the payment.
I’ll try to hunt that thread down later tonite or tomorrow and post the link.
Was this a 3rd party booking or was it a case where the guest booked with his/her own account but used a credit card from a 3rd party?
I’m guessing they used a temporary card number. Yet another reason not to use Airbnb for long-term rentals.
It was an accomodation locator used by the guest’s insurance company, which was standard procedure as the insurance company was paying for the housing.
But the insurance company had issue with the price of the accommodation, I think, and told the broker they wouldn’t reimburse them, so the broker pulled the card. I would think it was a business account booking.
I’m not really sure what that means. Is it a 3rd party booking or not? Did it use an Airbnb business account (i.e. “Airbnb for Work”). Something’s a bit off.
I was editing while you were posting. Maybe clearer now?
This was a disagreement between the ins. co. and the broker, where both the guest and host got shafted.
Seems like the broker is at fault for allowing the booking to proceed without payment authorization. They should have their Airbnb account pulled.
It was a company called ALE, which works with State Farm insurance. The person with ALE uses her account, with her private photo, and books for the guest. She had an underwriter sign to allow the booking to go until April 30th. Airbnb says this was not authorized, which we all know is virtually impossible.
Dani
Trip Planner
Dani is booking a trip on behalf of an employee. Dani’s company is part of the Airbnb for Work travel program.
Yeah, fuck that! They should be booted from the Airbnb for Work program.
Thanks! I appreciate it. I think the tree was 700 pounds. Because of the backlog due to the recent fires, they have not even begun work on his house!!
Agreed! I just wrote this to customer service:
Will there be repercussions for ALE? Will you allow to them to continue to use this platform?? I am appalled that Airbnb is allowing this. They tricked us into giving a discounted price during prime season with the agreement that they were staying until the end of April.
I want to talk to a supervisor immediately.
But that wasn’t even true. The guest wasn’t her employee booking for work, just a guy whose house was uninhabitable. Dani should get her account pulled.
Talking to a supervisor isn’t likely. Look for where “Dani” violate the terms of service and point that out in your communication with Airbnb.
After reading that thread, it’s clear that ALE made the mistake and is now screwing everybody over. AirBnB should literally deactivate that account, but I imagine they get a lot of booking through ALE, so there’s probably some politics involved, and AirBnB is probably being less upfront about the situation than they should be.