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Write to the CEO of State Farm Insurance. Mr. Michael Tipsord, Chief Executive Officer, State Farm Insurance, One State Farm Plaza, Bloomington, IL 61710. Probably won’t do any good, but ya never know.
"Dear Mr. Tipsord:
We are Airbnb short term rental property owners who were contracted by your third party vendor, ALE, to provide accommodation for your insured customer, [name], due to damage and insurance repairs at their home for [dates], and were not paid.
We bent over backwards to accommodate ALE’s request and your client as we sympathized with their situation, extending the stay as requested by ALE, and providing a discounted rate. ALE then abruptly withheld payment. Not only did this leave your client in difficulty, it left us without contracted-for income in the amount of [$] in a market where longer term rentals are booked in advance and short notice rebooking is impossible.
I would appreciate partial compensation of [$ some amount] from State Farm due to the failure of your agent to pay for the contracted rental.
If no compensation is forthcoming, we intend to advise networks of short term rental hosts with whom we interact on social media that it is best to decline bookings for State Farm insurance accommodations due to the risk of nonpayment. I have also provided Airbnb with documentation of your agent’s failure to pay."
It could have been the insurance company’s fault for not letting ALE know if there was a cap on how much they were willing to pay for accommodation, or ALE’s fault for not getting approval first.
But ALE is definitely to blame for leaving both the host and guest in the lurch and being less than honest about it.
Opps I took too long writing. You’ve done all of the following except try the B2B email.
Just thinking
Do you have any texts or emails from State Farm aAdditional Living Expenses (ALE) about the booking extension & payment?
I wonder if Airbnb Customer service can consider Air community posts as part of a dispute settlement process.
I’m not a lawyer but this feels small claims court worthy for breach
I think you’ve already done parts or all of the following. It may be worth doing again in a consolidated fashion vs piecemeal as events occurred.
It would be worth crafting the story with documentation of State Farm ALEs coverage breach of Airbnb terms of service.
The summary would be:
Ms xxx originally booked a business rental ### from mm/dd/you to mm/dd/yy. She requested an extension to mm/dd/yy through the Airbnb platform. She violated Airbnb’s terms of service and the cancellation policy by removing credit card payment.
Ask Airbnb Customer Service to unblock the unpaid for dates so you may rebook. State you do not want any other host to go through this nightmare so you want to see her account cancelled.
Then contact State Farm with your story & documentation. State their representative breached the agreement thus causing you loss of income and demand reimbursement. You want to know when restate Farm will process payment to you.
Turns out ALE is an insurance acronym for Additional Living Expenses coverage. State Farm dropped the ball. Although they sub-contract out provision of those services it is still State Farm’s legal respond to provide the service.
None of us know, though, what went down between this 3rd party sub-contractor and State Farm. They very well might have had a limit on how much they will pay for accommodation that the booking party ignored.
I suppose it’s too late to leave ALE a 1-star review stating that they cancelled a booking and violated cancelaltion ToS by not paying to 30 days beyond the cancellation date.
Thanks for all of your input. I like the idea of the letter to State Farm. I also agree that this is on ALE because it was their underwriter who had to approve it. At least that’s what they told me. The reason I spoke with them was because I had a few requests while they were deciding if they could extend the stay. Airbnb is telling me to hang on until the collections department contacts me. I am not able to leave a review for ALE because it’s booked under the very kind guest’s name. All of the messages is for Airbnb to see on the message board and they know that we went above and beyond to extend the stay and even turned people away. ALE owes us about $15000.
Well that’s an interesting twist. I’ve always been under the impression that when a business booked for an employee (or in this case a guy whose own home was damaged), the booking is still under the booker’s account, not the guest’s.
If ALE did the booking, with their payment info, I don’t even understand how it could appear under the guest’s account.
In fact that’s one of the issues I’ve seen hosts report- that they had no way to communicate with the actual guest, and the booking entity didn’t convey house rules, or anything else of importance to know, to the guest.
It shows like this on the side of the page and the guest and I are able to communicate with each other. The third party booker was also able to communicate on the message board. He will get a five star review from me. I think we may try small claims court. I have never had to do it before but there is always a first time.
Yes, we had a short term tenant through ALE. Direct booking, with full contract and big security deposit. A big premium for monthly rates and no issues. Initially a 2 month for us, then extended a 3rd. We would never have any tenant through Air or any other OTA.
Demand that Air clear your calendar right now. You don’t have a guest/tenant anymore. In your shoes, we would immediately post on Air’s Facebook and Twitter pages - that’ll get their attention. Squeaky wheel gets the oil!
I have to admit that I have never used Twitter before. Too busy making my Airbnb so pretty! I did sign up just now so I can post about this. I feel silly asking, but do I go to their page and make a post? Do you suggest I cut and paste my OP? I wrote to them privately but should I also post it publicly?
Thank you!!
Just got this message from them, so I’m glad I sent privately. I’ll see how much progress I get before I post publicly as I don’t want bad press for Airbnb. Thank you!!
We’re here to help and want to check this further. Can you please send us the email address associated with your account so we can take a closer look and follow-up? We look forward to your reply and assisting you further. Thank you.
Just letting you know that what you got is the standard reply.
You need to refresh the post every day and point out that you haven’t had an answer yet…
EVERY DAY!
Yes, unless you prefer that your stay remains locked and you lose revenue.
.
Air DOES NOT CARE - unless you force them to take notice. They will very very happily let this sit for days or weeks while you lose money.
