My account got deactivated by Airbnb for violating terms

You couldn’t be held responsible is my guess but who knows…

It’s entirely credible. Similar stories have been posted on Airbnb forums before. There is also the story of the super host Kelly something who had his account terminated out of nowhere.

What’s credible about a forum post? Maybe your posts whose listing is known to members of the forum. You’re someone we might have met at the LA open. Some random anonymous poster? I need evidence before I believe something or a source I consider credible.

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Ever heard the saying there’s no smoke without fire? I have heard similar stories from a number of sources including on Airbnb own forums. I see no reason why people would make up random stories about no longer being able to list …

I’m up there with the most cynical but even so … I see no reason for making it up. Yes take things with a pinch of salt but this is probably the 5th or 6th time I have seen this reported.

I’m with @Zandra on this. I’ve been on the receiving end of Airbnb’s treatment of hosts, and I find it believable. This could be a combination of an Airbnb customer service rep seeing words like “sexual harassment” in a report and overreacting, and Airbnb’s well-known policy of ignoring host attempts to followup. You know the sort of thing - “we have made our final decision and will now disengage from further discussion on this topic”.

Having said that, I’d be interested in more details about this particular case. E.g. the Whatsapp messages. Perhaps @janalopa can post it to a private thread? Though, @janalopa, I am now wondering how you found out where this guy lived, and why he gave you the Whatsapp messages. Very cooperative for a total stranger.

And the story about Kelly Kampen that Zandra referred to is here, in his own words:

I’m not really doubting that people have had their account deactivated without an explanation. Neither am I definitively stating that I don’t believe janalopa. I was commenting on Jon York’s “WOW” and alarm over a new poster posting a story we have no way of independently verifying.

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That was probably the wrong way to go about this. If the guest is complaing about sexual harassment, and you know the person who is acused well enough to make him show you the WhatsApp chat history, Air will simply add 1 and 1 together and assume that you are, after all, in some way involved.

If you had simply stated “I don’t know the person who was acused” you would have been in a better position. Sorry for being blunt.

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Thanks for the response. I agree, I think there were lots of other ways to tackle this. Yes, I know the guy, he lives nearby and visits often but I can’t consider him as a close friend. I just acted naturally and first thing after she told me about it is to go and speak with him. She told Air we know the guy already and he’s our friend so there’s nothing I could do about it.

Just to make it more clear, this is a big house with 5 rooms rented on Airbnb and 4 rooms rented long term, there are a lot of guests and visitors in the house and it’s part of the vibe here, in 2 years we never had any issues with this, no one got hurt and nothing got stolen.

Another perspective I may add, she’s about 40 years old, definitely not a young girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing. They met and made out a couple of times during her stay, I still not sure what happen in the last night but my friend insist that he’s in shock and nothing happened. Maybe he was a bit aggressive or demanding but who knows…

Anyways, I’ll just drop Air for now, maybe it’s for the better and maybe come back later…

So what information does Air have? In your original post you said that he was a guy in the neighborhood that a guest invited over.

But now you saying that he also visits often? If your guest knows that the neighbor frequently comes over anyway…then she likely shared that with Air and said he was dangerous to all future guests.

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This is sounding less like a random stranger was in your house and more like you have an acquaintance who you sometimes have over which is how these two met. And may I add you just said ‘my friend insists nothing happened and he’s in shock…’. That doesn’t sound like a guy you don’t know.

you’re more culpable than I first thought.

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I’m not doubting people either, I just think sometimes people post on this forum about horror stories and don’t give us the “whole” enchilada.

Hi @janalopa,

So your guest invited a “friend” over and this just happens to be someone who know, who “visits often”? That’s quite a coincidence. It’s a small world, isn’t it?

I agree with @konacoconutz, I think we’re missing part of the story.

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I’m wondering if the Kelly Kampen story has more than meets the eye. Wondering if the guy was leveraging ABB somehow in his other business interests (seems like he’s a bit of an entrepreneur) and maybe ABB caught wind of it. You just never know about these things. I take most blog stories, and even postings here, with a grain of salt.

It is a good reminder, though, to not put all our STR eggs in one basket when one can be shut down without recourse.

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Well I wish they would because how much time do we waste trying to get the to the bottom of it. Then find out more details and no wonder (I.e., the guy with 72 listings now crying because he got shut down suddenly without notice. ) But then fails to mention that small fact that might have had something to do with him getting shut down. Yah think?

That’s certainly possible. But in that case I can’t think of any good reason why Airbnb would not provide an explanation to him why this was done. This isn’t a matter of national security or something. And in my (admittedly limited) experience, people who do things without explanation and try to hide stuff are not generally good people.

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Agree. Just tell him why he can’t list anymore and then at least he can move on. Kelly Kampen was very clearly all about Airbnb and devasted when the plug was pulled …

Being an entrepreneur I’m sure he just went onto other platforms but the thing that’s meant to be unique about Airbnb is the feeling of being part of a large hosting family.

My dealings with Airbnb recently have made me realise that ‘family’ doesn’t exist and I feel slightly stupid I ever bought into it.

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In fairness, it’s possible that Airbnb, when it originally started, and was much smaller, was a somewhat different company. I wasn’t around then, of course. And the people here who were around at the time don’t talk much about it. But I do get the feeling they maybe they weren’t all about the corporate BS back then.

And we don’t know who is in charge now. Is it the founders? Is it someone else? Remember, a corporation represents “unaccountable private power”, a la Noam Chomsky.

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It was and it was. It’s morphing into something that happens to most successful businesses … the very thing that people loved about them becomes watered down. It’s not their fault but it’s a shame. For example in Paris all the founders mingled with hosts and and were very accessible … move forward one year and the closest I ever got was watching them on stage.

Hi @Zandra,

Interesting. You’ve been to the Airbnb Opens? How were they? Someone who goes to these things should report on it for us. We haven’t heard much.

I’m not sure who the “they” is, in this context. :slight_smile:

Yes I have been to two of three. I didn’t make it to San Fran.

Paris was more personal. LA felt very high profile but not in anyway intimate. And you could see just how much they have grown by the sheer volume of people. Paris was small in comparison to LA.

PS Chomsky. End of History.

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