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Recently one of my guests contacted Airbnb and reported about some unwanted sexual advance from a friend she invited to the house. Long story short, Airbnb barely listen to me and barely reviewed my facts and after a few days I got a message that they’ve deactivated my account.
I tried to tell them this guy is not a host and not related to the house, just lives in the neighborhood and I also sent them their whatsapp communication showing that she invited him over. I don’t know what happened exactly in her room but surely I cannot control of it.
What do you suggest? is there any way to convince them to reactivate the account? Is there any one to speak with over the phone?
That’s strange. To be clear, she reported you for something someone else, who had no connection with you or the listing, and who she invited over, did in your home? Could you post what Airbnb wrote about this?
Side comment - I recommend not allowing non-registered guests in your listing. It’s inherently problematic. You can always make case by case exceptions.
Yes, 2 years with lots of good reviews and a 4.6 score. I went to speak with the guy and he showed me and sent me their whatsapp history. It’s clear the she invited him over a few times. I assume (from her) in the last time he was a bit aggressive, but she wasn’t alone in the house and she just went to the bathroom and he left. Ofcourse he told me nothing happened but it doesn’t really matter now I guess. Airbnb is super aggressive when it comes to sexual offense.
Does anyone had the same issue? got it resolved somehow?
I am really sorry to hear so. You had no control over the situation and I think the only think you could do is to show some CCTV recording where she let him in - maybe whatsapp messages can be made up, but CCTV recs no. Maybe you could claim that she broke house rule (inviting an unregistered guest over) and asking if the filed a complaint with the police.
It’s difficult to try to help without knowing the correspondence. Is Air saying they deactivated you because they think this neighbor is going to be dangerously approaching future guests?
Air is like this unfortunately. They will rarely revisit any decisions made and now all you’re going to get is stonewalling.
You might try creating a new listing but I don’t know if you will get away with trying to circumvent their decision. No the decision isn’t fair; but Airbnb don’t profess to be fair - their decisions are based on what will least harm their business (for obvious reasons).
I’d already come to the conclusion that Airbnb cares so little about hosts that a psycho guest could basically make up anything if he/she wanted to shut down your listing. In fact, I think I may have said as much to someone recently. But it’s worrying to have this confirmed.
Let’s say I got on the wrong side of a female guest for some reason. Let’s say I wouldn’t let her leave her luggage after checkout. I’ve already had a couple of people upset with me over this, so it’s not a random example. She could accuse me of inappropriate conduct (or something), and Airbnb would disappear my listing before I could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Yes, maybe I’m paranoid, but it’s not a happy thought.
@janalopa It might help if you offered more details. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got much to lose at this point, and you have little reason to protect the confidentiality of any of the parties in this. But I think it’s possible to create a private thread if you do want to keep it confidential.
@faheem sadly I’m in agreement. I think there was a time when I would have disagreed with you but recent experiences with air have confirmed what you’ve suspected and I didn’t think could be possible.
WOW! I’m just stunned that they will delete your account over a guy your guest invited over. That should alarm all of us because it could happen to any of us.
I highly recommend having a camera. Check out Amcrest.com. We’ve had one for years and it has really saved us a couple of times.
Which simply means we all need to have additional guests banned from our listings. My guess is this host didn’t ban additional guests in the house rules
There really isn’t much to add, I got only 2 messages from Air, first one was please share more details. Second one was your account is deactivated. I really doubt I could do anything in the first messages to convey them otherwise.
Yes @janalopa there’s no appealing - air shut things down pretty quickly and there’s no attempting to have a further conversation. It’s hugely frustrating.
For something this bad, it might be possible to escalate somehow. I’ve heard rumors of people posting to Airbnb’s Facebook page, for example. Is there an option to tweet publicly? And/or create a blog post about this, and then share it. And/or try to get a journalist interested. Airbnb’s behavior towards hosts is increasingly high-handed, and increasingly at variance with their public image, imo.
I don’t agree with this, I have been very pleasantly surprised with Airbnb support. I had an extremely difficult guest who made a list of things she was unhappy about and made a claim for $1000.
I contacted Airbnb, we agreed she had a point over one issue and they decided she should receive $200 in compensation and…they said they would pay $100 and I would refund the other $100.
Could you expect anything more reasonable? They supported me and finally assisted me with a guest from hell.
I was super impressed with their assistance.
Poppy, my experience with Air has been just like yours. They’ve been fantastic with me.
But these stories of instant deactivation with no appeal are very alarming.
I don’t understand why the OP’s guest reported the situation to Airbnb though. If you were staying at a hotel and invited someone in who ended up being too aggressive… would you report it to the hotel staff? No! Because they didn’t have anything to do with it. It sounds like something you’d more likely report to the police.
How did she hope to cause any punishment for the aggressive neighbor by reporting the host to Airbnb!? It just doesn’t make any sense. And for Airbnb to delete his account over it makes even less sense. I wonder if there’s more to the story?
@JonYork. Actually, these type of situations were reported to me when I was the “face” of a hotel all the time. I would then help contact the police, and often signed the police report. At that point, it was up to the guest to decide if they wanted to pursue the matter further.
Just a reminder that anyone can post anything on this forum. We have this poster’s side of the story, nothing more. It doesn’t seem particularly credible to me. Also maybe the account is deactivated while they investigate and will reactivate if the host’s story is confirmed.[quote=“Zandra, post:13, topic:11962”]
hich simply means we all need to have additional guests banned from our listings.
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We can ban them in our rules but unless we physically block them from entering this can still happen. I wonder what ABB would do in this case if “no unregistered guests” was a rule.
