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I have noticed some very concerning things today after the 25% were let go from Airbnb yesterday:
Customer Support Reps have been replaced by people just taking messages and promising a CSR will call you back. After 6 hours waiting, no call back regarding a booking that is happening now.
My most recent reservations are all grayed out for last 10 hours and have “Checkpoint” as their status, which suggests that Airbnb is not verifying IDs of new guests or not validating new credit cards.
Have not received any new booking requests in the last 24 hours, which is unusual.
I am concerned that the platform is imploding or shutting down, anyone else experiencing things not working with Airbnb today?
I’ve not encountered what you have, actually the contrary.
Yesterday I contacted* CS via chat messaging.
I was connected with 5 minutes to a “host” who provided most information but I still had a concern*. I advised it was not urgent but would like an official response within the next week or two, and then closed out the chat session
I had a message reply from CS within the hour that couldn’t have been nicer (see attached).
I was surprised that they were so responsive, let alone so complimentary.
*Reason for contacting CS: I had to cancel an instant booking because it didn’t allow for 24 hours between guests, and as a result it blocked my calendar and I wanted confirmation that my canceling to be compliant with AirBNB cleaning requirements was not going to impact my ratings.
They just laid off 1900 people, supposedly 25% of their staff. They have said that this is in part because they think travel is going to change permanently. Regardless, it makes perfect sense to me that they might also want to reduce the number of listings. We aren’t currently in a “more guests” environment.
Ignoring hosts isn’t new. Google it. I was told my issue would be emailed to Airbnb’ s legal dept marked Urgent. Numerous followup calls get the same response from Airbnb call center employees: " [They] can see my msg is marked urgent and is first in Legal Dept’s inbox. I should get a reply very soon." When i tell them how long I’ve been waiting they say they will send another follow up request marked urgent and someone will call me back. That was over 2 yrs ago. I was a 5 yr Super Host. Last time i called was Oct 2019. There is no legal dept. Airbnb has $250M in government funding because hosts wrote letters to Congress and Senate to get it for them. Know any hosts that even got their 35% cancellation payout? Few if any.
Copy all your wording, yr guest contact information, your best reviews and all financial info you need for taxes. This is more than COVID19 issues. This process of referring calls and ignoring them started over yrs ago. Their financial situation was poor before COVID19. Hosts are easy to replace. Being ignored is better than getting your listing deleted, an email stating you are forever banned from hosting on Airbnb and then completly ignored. That’s how Airbnb has handled situations when they are understaffed or dont want to pay.
Here’s another glitch I noticed yesterday. The photos are showing up for guests that were only inquiries or requests. We had a bunch in April that I didn’t book and now all of a sudden I can see their profile photo instead of “L” or “A”. Even stranger is that it’s not all of them, just a little more than half. I can’t find a pattern. It’s just randomly showing profile photos.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult frustrating time with Airbnb. We are all aware of how they operate, you aren’t telling anything new.
You keep talking about $250 million govt. funding, but you’ve already been corrected here that that isn’t govt. funds, it’s from Airbnb’s coffers. They did get a loan from investors, though.
And there isn’t any 35% payout- it’s 25% and then only 25% of what you would have received if the cancellation policy ad been upheld, so it’s actually 12.5% of the total booking.
And yes, hosts have been reporting getting these refunds.
Airbnb did get some government funding according to Senator Williams. And they got it after Airbnb promoted a letter writing campaign to state representatives. I wrote several letters myself. Im sorry if I mistakenly confused the $250M for government funds. I dont know the exact amount. The 35% was a typo. I know its 25% but Ihave yet to hear of any host who was actually paid. Are you saying you have been paid a lump sum for yr COVID19 cancellation or know someone who has?
It is not my intent to exaggerate or simply complain. What happened to me was financially devastating and could have been greatly mitigated had I not relied solely on Airbnb for bookings or at least kept contact information for repeat guests and tax information. My listing had evolved over 5 yrs and Im still having trouble getting the verbiage back to what it was. But the biggest loss was all my glowing 5 star reviews. With all the scams out there now, its hard to get bookings on other sites when I cant refer to my reviews on Airbnb. Other sites do not handle the money for you. Understandably guests are relunctant to pay in advance to an individual. Other sites require hosts pay annual fees that are often too much for hosts who have been banned from Airbnb. I was shocked to find how many others were in my shoes and none were able to get any response or file for mediation.
Thank you for correcting me. I hope hosts will still take precautions to protect their short term rental income businesses .
I agree. They broadly offered incentives to refer new hosts without targeting that effort to areas that really needed more hosts. It almost broke us but the landscape with be different after this.
I received an email notification that the 25% cancellation payment was on its way on May 1st and then it never arrived. When you call them to ask what happened they say we will get back to you in 48 hours, but then then never get back to you (im in the UK)
