regardless of the specific legalities of different countries: ain’t if funny that they hung up on him.
Well it’s not a civil right, you have the choice to take your business elsewhere.
I also don’t appreciate your tone. Helsi is a long time member of the forum, and often is the first person to jump in and answer a variety of questions from new members. So I would advise you to not jump on her. Also, you don’t get to tell people here who to reply to.
Honestly, I don’t know why this recording is such a big deal to you. What’s the point anyway? All companies say this when you call them. Just put it on speaker and record it yourself. Who cares.
I suspect you were as rude to the Airbnb agent as you’ve been here. But that’s just a suspicion.
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This was exactly my reaction! Maybe just trying to stir up the forum.
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I’m going to focus on the the part of the followup post in which @dconsta clearly shows that he thinks this is an airbnb forum. So he’s mad at Airbnb and then posts here thinking he’s directing his ire at Airbnb and their employees.
Could be but I suspect it’s all just a big misunderstanding.
As for the OP, I agree with others that recording the conversations is SOP and not worth getting worked up about. But if he was actually hung up on by an Airbnb CSR, that’s why he’s mad.
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I think it would be perfectly reasonable to record conversations with customer support. Whether or not it would make any difference to the end result is unclear. In most cases companies go to a great deal of trouble to make sure you don’t have a feasible route to take legal action against them. And often that’s the only real option available against a company. Often they don’t care about individual customers/clients.
Where or not it is legal to record them might or might not matter. It seems very unlikely to matter, since as the company is unlikely to take action against you. It might mean the difference wrt admissability in a court, but as I said above, companies are making it increasingly difficult for consumers to get there. I’m not sure if the EU, for example, is doing anything about this.
Oh, and if you can record customer service (or anyone else for that matter) I can see no reason to mention it, and obvious reasons not to. Few are going to respond positively to that disclosure. Certainly not employees of billion dollar corporations. It would be nice if companies were concerned with being fair. Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.
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Ah Faheem, your usual words of wisdom. I think the forum has a crush on you 
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I am simply disappointed with the poor service from a company whose only product is service. If you disagree, then I have a challenge for you. Tell me where on the owners home page is the customer service number. Where? Why is it not prominently displayed?
Combine poor service with the arrogance of their phone policy, and yes I have a problem.
Remember, I have seen this done much better. VRBO, before the were sold.
I didn’t tell the rep that I was recording anyone. Airbnb was doing the recording.
It’s buried for a reason. They don’t really welcome a lot of calls. Each one costs the company money.
This is not VRBO, any more than this is a hotel. If you don’t like Airbnb, there are plenty of other platforms out there.
There’s a lot we don’t like about them but we have to live with it if we want their money. 
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Hi! Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you host, for how long, what kind of listing you have?
I would be surprised if Airbnb was recording customer service calls without warning the callers in the U. S. at least. There are a handful of states where it is illegal to record calls without both parties consent. As the customer service representative doesn’t know what state the caller is in they could be violating the law by recording the call.
(I’m assuming here that you are addressing me rather than the forum in general. If that is not the case, I apologize.)
Oh, I think most of us agree that Airbnb has terrible customer service (if you are talking about Airbnb). And I think it was a shock for all of us when we first ran into it. I’m surprised you are disappointed, though. For Airbnb, the guests are the clients, and we, the hosts, are the product.
Think a supermarket selling turkeys. Would you expect the supermarket to be nice to the turkeys?
They don’t show their phone number because they don’t want hosts calling them. Or at any rate, they want to make it difficult for hosts. Though that’s just speculative
I’m also surprised that there was another platform that was much better.
One of my guests remarked in passing that Airbnb was now under the control of VCs, and their behavior was typical of how VCs operate. I.e. get a return on investment as fast as possible. I’m not personally familiar with how VCs work, but maybe there are people here who are, and can comment. It sounds plausible, at any rate.
And, on a more general note, if you would like a better explanation of how corporations work, there are many people out there who can explain it. I personally have found Chomsky very educational, though he can be depressing.
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Lol 
I really did!
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When we became superhosts we got an email with a dedicated phone number which I have used a few times and got excellent customer service. Since the OP doesn’t disclose anything about himself I wonder in what capacity he called into Airbnb
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Hi @Maggieroni,
Ok, wow. Tell me what that phone number is, please. But maybe it’s only for the US? I never received any such email.
I suppose I could call the US superhost number and hope they don’t hang up on me once they realise I’m in India…
They still haven’t fixed my SMS issue.
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Are you speaking of what seems to be a global change to the SMS feature they used to have? Now they just tell you to text the cell phone of the guest/host.
I have that number programmed into my phone.
I think you are correct. Two nights ago a guest misbooked a date and I told him to call Airbnb as we couldn’t change it online. I don’t know where he found the number but within 8-10 minutes an Airbnb rep was calling me to see if we could get it fixed. They weren’t able to fix it and I had to come up with a workaround but it wasn’t a customer service issue, it was a tech issue.
I sent you a PM.
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I’ll pm you the number
Hi @faheem
There is a UK one too. My understanding is there a dedicated number for Superhosts in every country where they have customers services. But I am not completely sure.
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