When they booked she wasn’t pregnant. She became pregnant and no longer wanted to fly. Arguably covered under an insurance policy but I had to eat the cancellation and full refund. Dealt with it and moved on. I had another case where a guest was ill with a cold and wanted a full refund; air told them no.
So was the guest in danger of flying for her health or something?
My confusion may be that I am not aware of what is involved with pregnant woman flying. No clue. I heard that when they are far along it may not be safe. Is pregnancy considered an “unexpected illness” or “serious injury”?
How late I can post a guest review isn’t a hypothetical situation. I actually needed to post a guest review. And it’s a very simple question to answer. If they don’t know how their system works, who does?
And the question about IB is similarly straightforward. Though in this case it’s true that it was hypothetical, because I didn’t (and don’t) trust Airbnb enough to turn on IB. To be clear, if I was to switch on IB, I’d be setting a specific criteria for when the IB could happen. My question was simply - would Airbnb change the criteria without telling me? They didn’t seem to understand the question, and I got gibberish responses.
I don’t think that my expectations were unreasonable. If I’m using a service, I’d like to be sure it isn’t being run by irresponsible imbeciles.
Interesting…did Air tell them no after they produced a Dr’s note?
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The guest decided she no longer wanted to fly (very early stages of pregnancy, first child). I told her if she cancelled she’d get a refund in line with my cancellation policy.
She then went to Airbnb and pled extenuating circumstances. Airbnb wrote to me and explained they’d decided to refund the guest in full under the extenuating circumstances policy.
I was annoyed but didn’t get into any further discussion with Airbnb. I’ve only had to deal with three or four cancellations in total, of which one was an extentuating circumstance.
Faheem,
The only time I have received customer support outside of the U.S. was one of the last times I called about not showing up in all searches - and I reached Ireland. My experience is the same as yours when it comes to reps. not being able to answer simple questions. If you don’t understand your companies policies, then you probably should not be answering the phone to assist customers. But yeah…Air doesn’t care at all. They seem to not want to be helpful. And it is clear to me over the past 3.5 years they are increasingly trained to have hosts run around circles and tire out.
I used to brag to others about how friendly their customer service was. No longer!
Lol! Don’t think it went that far. They too had an issue because they used a voucher and got none of it back when they cancelled due to illness. Cue another drama that went round and round with the guest contacting me constantly over something I couldn’t resolve.
I am just taking mental notes of everyone’s experience when Air decides to break their own policies.
So if “sniffles” man may have produced a Dr’s note, then Air may have said it was an extenuating circumstance? But since he didn’t…he didn’t get his full refund?
No idea. What I do know is that for me pregnancy and a cold aren’t the same thing when it comes to acceptable reasons not to travel. One is grey (pregnancy, and if it was my first child I probably wouldn’t want to take any risks either) the other would make no sense. A Dr wouldn’t even write a note for a cold.
So it is risky then to fly at any stage of pregnancy? That’s what I was asking since I am clueless. Oh dear…so now with Air guests any of my fly to guests can claim full refund because someone in the group didn’t plan to get pregnant? Sheesh!
I guess the fact that I’m the only one telling this story suggests it’s not an everyday occurrence. I’m pretty sure you can rest easy @cabinhost
Regarding what stage is risky to fly? I don’t know, I’ve never been pregnant. Still I’m able to empathise and can see why an expectant mother might not want to fly once they got the news. Was I happy with it? No. At the same time I get it.
Yes, I think we’re agreed on that. Though it seems that not everyone agrees.
Have you found any difference in how different Airbnb customer service centers in different places handle things? In terms of competence, friendliness, and any other criteria that come to mind.
I don’t think it really has anything to with if the guest got pregnant, but whether or not her pregnancy caused her to be in danger of flying. If so…then I can see where Air’s extenuating circumstances would apply. But if it was just the fact that she needed to save for baby gear and could no longer afford the trip…then Air is going against their policies.
Maybe the Dr. said she has morning sickness so it is an unexpected illness. I of course can empathise but I need to know what I am empathising with is all…
Well Faheem it was the US side that played hardball with my recent Issue with LA. All he wanted to give me was a 50 dollar credit note and as the host was on strict no refund for any remaining part of the booking. That’s even after going back and saying the guy I’d been speaking to earlier had offered me something different. He actually had the balls to reply: ‘well I’m in charge of the case now and this is what I’ve decided.’
It was the EU (Ireland) team that were then hugely apologetic and tried to put it right.
I’m not saying there aren’t idiots out there, I’m simply saying most of the people I have dealt with at Airbnb have been good people. And that’s despite the difficulties I’ve experienced both as a host and a guest.
It didn’t even cross my mind that she would cancel a trip to save for baby clothes. All my guests are so middle class I would be suprised if that was a motivator.
I’m afraid @cabinhost I can’t answer your question so no point haranguing me for further detail. I’ve told you what I know and what Airbnb’s decision was. End of.
Hi @Zandra,
I see. Interesting. I get the feeling that Airbnb reps operate in semi-autonomous mode. I imagine they get some general directions, but it’s probable they interpret them in different ways. And I think they’re probably understaffed, overwhelmed by dealing with large volumes of stuff, and possibly also undertrained. Some of this is supposition, of course. But if that’s basically right, that’s not a recipe for quality customer service.
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There are many serious medical complications that are possible during early stages of pregnancy. You will never know what this woman’s issue was. None of your business technically based on our health laws. But it is very possible that her pregnancy was high-risk, and either flying would increase that risk, or being away from her own medical team was not smart.
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Hi @cabinhost,
I think fundamentally the extenuating circumstances policy is broken. It’s a terrible way to handle these situations. Period. Everything else is just details. I’m not sure why Airbnb thinks it’s a reasonable way to go.
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I think you summarised the situation with customer services exactly right; my impression is the exact same. And it does lead to inconsistencies.
The final case manager to touch my LA debacle (all in all five had their fingers in the pie) said that the case had highlighted serious training issues with the EU and US teams.
If only you had said you couldn’t answer the question to begin with. But smtucker just did answer my question. You should have said you have no idea to begin with. But you kept saying the guest didn’t “feel like flying anymore” - I was truly trying to understand about pregnancy risks and wanted to know if she just didn’t feel like it, or if she truly qualified for an extenuating circumstance is all!