For the first time, I played the Superhost card to ask for help from Airbnb. The process for confirming I was me via text while on hold was a bit buggy, but they got to me quickly. The CS rep couldn’t immediately answer my question, but went off in search of the (elusive, at least to us!) supervisor and responded in good time.
Problem was, the response merely confirmed limitations I had already figured out, and didn’t relieve them. I have a future guest in a motorized wheelchair and wanted to send them additional pics of toilet and shower, location of bed, width of doorways showing tape measure, etc. They didn’t want to book understandably without more info and I wasn’t allowed to paste or attach pics prior to booking
, so stalemate. I’m flex cancellation, so I encouraged them to book with the understanding they could simply cancel. The other option was to temporarily add pics to my listing (close up photo of toilet??!!) then remove them. The CS rep simply confirmed I was correct.
Afterwards I got a survey that asked lots o’ questions about how my issue was resolved. Poorly written too (oh dear, are the interns at it again?), the first question being would I recommend Airbnb to friends and family based on my host CS experience (huh?) on a scale of 1-10, and then some non-sequitur multiple choice options about why I picked the rating I did. It did have a comment box at least where I could whinge about my inability to get photo info to my prospective disabled guest.
Followed by many questions about poor Brittany R. and how well she resolved my issue, would I like her to handle future issues, etc. Obviously this is going to be used to rate Brittany, so I said she was excellent on all question responses. Didn’t help with my issue, but that wasn’t her fault for sure, so I didn’t want to endanger her performance review. I wanted to reach through the wireless modem and yell, “Wrong questions! Listen to me, you are making it harder for me to provide a reasonably-priced alternative for disabled travelers!! Is that what you want?”
That questionnaire is designed not to give any results because then they might have to do something.
I called in about a tax question they passed to Tax & Legal; over one year and counting since I was due a callback. 
Perhaps they realize they’d have to de-list themselves if they operated on the same metrics they hold their hosts to. 
I’ve had similar issue with their surveys and have rarely been as frustrated as when I tried to find a simple phone number to “reach out” to them. Most companies list their 1-800 number at the bottom of each page, but I could only find Airbnb’s through a Google search.
It’s possible that’s how I found this forum!
Point being that Airbnb itself makes it incredibly hard for hosts or guests to contact them. Most companies have a phone number listed if you click “Contact Us”, but Airbnb’s doesn’t. Rather they send you through pages of redirects to community forums and help pages…essentially anything they could do to ensure we go away.
It makes me think of this demotivational poster
