Because they never really came right out and SAID that the Trust and Safety department didn’t take calls. Instead, they wasted hours of my time by putting me on hold and saying they would get someone on the phone for me, but after waiting in hold for a while I was told that everyone in the T-S department was swamped (maybe reading magazines or something because God knows they weren’t actually doing any research) and they would get back to me in an hour or so. But, surprise surprise, now one ever got back to me. So after waiting three or four hours for that call back in “an hour or so” I’d call back and try again. I eventually figured out that to Airbnb “an hour or so” means never.
Jackie, I’m sorry if I appeared to be disrespectful to Ken or any other hosts on this forum. That certainly was not my attention. Actually, I was agreeing too everything Ken said in his reply. Basically AirBnB doesn’t care about any of it’s stakeholders (hosts, guests, etc) it only cares about it’s SHAREholders and has been running the business in a way that maximizes its profits IN THE SHORT TERM for it’s shareholders. But in the long run they are going to bring about their own demise. Since I have been bitching about AirBnB to everyone that will listen for a month now, and you all know I have, I have heard from so many other people both hosts and guests who are just fed up with being treated so poorly by AirBnB and have vowed to never use Airbnb again. They, like I, have found other sites and platforms to advertise their listings or to book travel accommodations. And these other platforms are growing. My concern is if they will grow fast enough and if I can use these other friendlier sites in the short running late to makeup the losses from losing the current market dominating Airbnb. Obviously, in the long run I will have to be able to operate without AirBnb since I predict that they are going to self-implode if they don’t get their customer service under control
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And Jackie, at what point did I say I thought I “did everything right”. Clearly I didn’t. If I was doing it all again, I would do what some awful people I’ve heard bragging about their hosting accomolishments: I CHEAT! I would have only friends and family book my listing until I was a super host. And then I would have these friends and family book with competing hosts in my neighborhood and either not show up at all and write a horribly review giving the competing host all 1 of 5 in every category or show up and then call Airbnb and lie through their teeth about how horrible the host is and how he or she was inappropriate in some way - sexually, or spy cam, or drunk or using drugs. And that way my competitors would be suspended temporarily or even permanently so I would win!! YES! I HAVE LITERALLY HEARD OTHER HOSTS (some of whom used to be my friends) PROUDLY BRAG about such unethically business practices. For those of you reading this and not understanding my sarcastic nature - I WOULD NEVER DO SUCH HORRIBLE THINGS! But for those of you who are naive as I was about hosting on airBnb PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO THAT KIND OF STUFF!!!
Other people have been complaining for YEARS and also predicting their demise. Just take a look at the past posts going back almost 5 years. You, and others might be right eventually.
I keep re-posting this one guys statement: After he had been reinstated he said “I learned if an Airbnb guest wants to make a hole in the wall, give them a hammer because my business was one fourth without Airbnb.” (paraphrased)
Yes, but you haven’t heard from all the people who have no problems with Airbnb and they are 90%.
VRBO and Booking dot com existed before Airbnb and yet Airbnb still grew so quickly. I wonder why? And there are dozens of other platforms, many of them are well capitalized with thousands of employees and yet we’ve never heard of most of them.
KKC, I’m sorry I am appearing to be mad or mean, but please believe me, it’s not directed to the other hosts on this forum. If it’s appears that way, then it is my fault for just posting without editing. Actually, on the contrary, I am turning to you, other AirBnB hosts out of respect to those of you who have done this longer and more successful than I in the hope that you might share some of your hard gained wisdom with me. I don’t know how my rant got interpreted as me think ANYONE on this forum “owes” me anything. I never said that, I never thought that and if something I said was interpreted as implying I thought any of you “owed” me something, then let me correct and extinguish that now. I dont. I greatly appreciate any help you can offer me based on your experience. So here is a very specific question that Airbnb would not answer for me. I have been personally banned for life from AirBnb. Is that ban personally to me? Or does it include a ban on the property as well? Stated another way, can I hire someone to manage the Bed and Breakfast portion of my business using his or her own account and then just focus my time and effort on the retail side of my operation. The (form)letter from AirBnB so unspecific and vague that I have no idea. Do any of you have any experiences with AirBnb that would enable you to give me some guidance in this. And to answer the inevitable question WTF would you want to continue to work with AirBnb give what you think about them. My answer is this: short-term strategy.
I really don’t understand you at all. We know all this. We’ve read it here. And though some of the unethical posts have been deleted, not all of them and not always. It’s like you are saying the sun rises to the west. It’s nothing new.
But for 90% of hosts everything is going well which is why they are dominating the industry.
There are literally dozens of posts on this forum about closed accounts and people unhappy about Airbnb customer service. Here are just a few of them. I would suggest you read and see if you can learn from any of them.
https://airhostsforum.com/t/what-i-do-now-my-airbnb-account-is-blocked/34723
https://airhostsforum.com/t/how-to-put-pressure-on-airbnb/33137
https://airhostsforum.com/t/air-suspended-us-for-being-4-stars/7388
https://airhostsforum.com/t/declined-6-requests-in-a-row-suspended-for-5-days/21988
https://airhostsforum.com/t/case-manager-problems/35739
https://airhostsforum.com/t/feeling-hung-out-to-dry-by-airbnb/33504
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I’m not a redneck at all. Very far from it. My friends are extremely diverse. My issue is NOT that the CS rep didn’t speak English as a first language or that his grammar wasn’t correct. If we met on a train I could carry on a long conversation with such a person. But that was not the case here. I COULDN’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING HE WAS SAYING! It was extremely frustrating to have to ask him over and over to repeat himself because I had no idea what he was saying. His English simply was not good enough to be in the position of Customer Service rep for English speaking customers. But, like I said, if we were sharing a seat on a train across Europe, I would have gotten past the language barrier and in fact would respect the fact that he spoke English at all! But then my seat mate would not be in a position to cost me thousands of dollars of revenue without a specific justifying explanation. That DOES NOT MAKE ME A REDNECK OR AGAINST DIVERSITY. Just like the Steelers don’t have the Olsen twins as linebackers and Jerome Bettis should really be employed as an actor playing a 3 year old girl on Family Matters, not everyone is qualified for every job. The first time I said I couldn’t understand Sebastian, he should have transfered me to a different rep. And yes. I understand that it is MY FAULT that I couldn’t understand him. But we don’t need to place blame. I should have been transfered to someone who’s questions I could understand and answer.
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Jim, JJD’s post is a reply to Ken, not to you.
I suggest sitting back with your laptop and reading through your entire thread again. Maybe take some deep breaths and have a nice whisky or foot rub. Nothing is going to change tonight anyway. Do more reading than writing and maybe you will have an epiphany.
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If you were using language like this to refer to your guest when discussing this with Airbnb I’m not surprised they found against you.
It is generally considered poor form to give out personally identifying information about your guests on a public internet forum. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is also against Airbnb’s TOS.
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He’s upset. There’s always whispers it’s the host that caused himself or herself to be thrown off Airbnb. Until they come for you. There Tos is fierce. You have 0 rights. They don’t need to give you a reason. Just refund your reservations and block you. Company has gotten so big. They advertise “over 1 million people on any given night stay in a Airbnb across the globe. Well if average after costs is $20 a person. That translates into 600 million dollars a month. There a monopoly and government really should step in to not allow that tos. Some countries already do this. With that said I don’t know why you didn’t call Airbnb and then the police and removed her from your home she’s to unstable to host. Cheers and happy thanksgiving.
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@jwfrance - I am sorry that you are experiencing this situation. I had issues with ABB early on, and ended up being transferred to Trust and Safety bc of things the guest did. I ended up with the same caseworker each time I had contact with ABB for that instance, so it may be that they try to route you to the same person for continuity. He wasn’t the greatest and I was mad at first, but then I got “humbler” and he got nicer.
It only a situation I’ve been in once so I’m (thankfully) not an expert, but I have learned a few good things from this forum that might help here:
(1) Different times end up with different call centers so if you called at 3 and got the non-helpful guy, maybe try 6 or.9 etc (just example numbers)
(2) Keep asking for a case manager (if that guy would give you a different guy, call back, try again). Different time to hope he’s off-shift or you’re routed to a different call center. I’ve heard said on here that the Irish call center is helpful?
(3) A calm and we’ll reasoned out Twitter post and/or Facebook post on ABB’s feeds will get help - from my experience, as well. They don’t like bad press, have been getting it lately, and with their public offering coming up, they might be even more receptive.
Good luck to you.
@jwfrance
I’m sorry you had this situation, but I can’t for the life of me understand why this guest was raging around all night long and it seems you did nothing, you just let her do it. Another poster asked about this and you didn’t answer that.
If I had a guest like this, I would have phoned the police and had her removed, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed her to do $2300 worth of damage and wait for her booking to be over.
As far as dealing with CS, I’ve been passed to someone from Trust and Safety before, who I was then able to directly communcate with. But I never call Airbnb, I always message them. There are tricks to dealing with them. I am always unfailingly polite, even when letting them know that they aren’t dealing with the issue competently, even if I wish I could reach through the computer screen and wring their necks. I state my case clearly and succinctly in short sentences, in chronological order of what happened, in bullet point form, not paragraphs. I state exactly what help I am looking for. I try to engage them in a personal way, like saying “Hope you have a good rest of your day” or “I don’t envy you your job.” I always thank them for their time, even if the issue hasn’t been resolved yet. My goal is to get them on my side and working for me. I’ve turned CS reps who sent me clueless links to the Help pages which made it evident that they hadn’t even read my message, just picked out key words, like “review”, around to doing a pretty decent job of helping me.While we may find them totally frustrating to deal with, you have to remember that they are dealing with irate hosts and guests all day long, some of them, I’m sure, yelling or cursing at them. I sure wouldn’t want to take that job.
And if you get a CS rep who you can tell is not going to be helpful, or doesn’t understand the issue, you just thank them for their time, and start over, hoping you’ll get a better one next time. you might have to do this a few times until you get a good CS rep.
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You didn’t think the disturbance and damage she was doing was reason enough to call the police to have her evicted?
AND
You didn’t think that you should have the police with you when you opened her door?
AND
You took pictures of her bedroom room while she was in it?
Those seems like three cases of using extremely poor judgment, but the last two: going into her locked bedroom and taking photos of the bedroom while she was in it are probably both reasonable grounds for Airbnb to de-list you.
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We certainly do understand that one of your guests behaved very badly and caused a big disturbance. You were right there. You SHOULD CALLED Airbnb IMMEDIATELY.
You claim to be an “experienced superhost” - so you should know this.
Now, all the rest of this is very much after the fact. You put this dirtbag guest in the drivers seat and this is the result.
You may, or may not, succeed in getting your listings back on airbnb. Airbnb does seem to have SOME sensitivity to being called out on social media. Try that, while calling them and trying to get it resolved.
In the meantime, about all you can do, is rebuild your losses on other platforms and with direct bookings. There are likely any number of digital marketing areas that you can still pursue.
Good luck …
Was her name Michelle by chance? Hehehe…your story is almost to every little detail as mine with crazy Michelle.
The only difference is that she didn’t ask for sex while knocking at other guests doors.
Few days ago my account was suddenly suspended . Considering for past 6 months I rented through Air 3 times I couldn’t understand why. I got same answer from Sebastian ( my Sebastian spoke perfect English) that he doesn’t have to give me any explanation and my account is suspended permanently.
When I wrote to Air on Twitter within 2 hours my account was reenstated with appologies that it was suspended in error.
Just to know that air has its own system and nothing should be taken personally . It’s a huge company that has its own procedures that are cost efficient . Everything is calculated even how much time will be spent in explanations. And explanations are not cost efficient .
I was lucky to have someone explain to me that if a guest complains they must close host account automatically. And in this case you superhost status or other millions of excellent reviews or revenues you generated for company don’t matter. I am sure it has something to do with liabilities and other legal issues we don’t know about .
And about you depending on this platform.
We already discussed here thousands of times that as a business we can’t depend on one client . If this client is out of the game…then we are finished . I knew someone once who built his whole business on only one client. And for years it worked . Then one day this big client never woke up in a morning: heart attack. The guy was destroyed in a matter of couple of weeks . He lost his appartment and his car was repossessed. His family suffered for several years before they got back on their feet.
Same here . There are so many platforms and ways to rent. What a freedom to not depend on one source of income. …if there are so many possibilities out there
We have all.rights as hosts to enter guests room . I am not sure why you think we have to have police with us. What if it’s for cleaning? Or any maintenance issues?
I had just few Incidents when I had to call.police over 5 years. I prefer to deal with guests myself. I only involve police when there is nothing else I can do . By the way police now had enough of Airbnb hosts calls and they were never helpfull with me. Also judgemental and critical of whole Airbnb idea. Once they just never came to the house at all.
I am not sure about taking pictures…but if I can enter room I might as well take picture of damages …
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@jwfrance
So much drama. Just open a new account using some relative’s details or something. List it on booking and VRBO as well.
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Of course no one is saying you need to have the police there for cleaning or maintenance; this was a significant disturbance.
I can just imagine the conversation with the guest and Air CS: “The host unlocked my bedroom door while I was inside, walked in and started taking pictures.” All of which is factual, and looks terrible for the host.
The OP absolutely should have gotten in front of this by calling CS first.