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Today, they cancelled most of my reservations including one who was about to board a plane in Alaska for arrival tomorrow. They wrote these guests to the effect that the host has cancelled your reservation and offered refunds. Also posted about eight messages on my review page that host had cancelled reservation. Also, posted fines of $500 to our account.
I phoned CS following an email from a guest asking why I had cancelled, and had a good 1/2 hr on hold and rep apologized for delay, saying they had an unusual volume of calls. I explained what happened and he said it was a glitch in the system and they are working on it. I asked if this was a reprisal because I had complained the day before about them blocking calendar for pending payment bookings, and he told me it was not, and that there were a lot of people with the same problem and that they were in process of contacting all affected people. While I was talking to him I had another message from Airbnb telling me my account was cancelled but no mention that all reservations had been cancelled. At the bottom was a button marked reinstate my account. I read this to the rep and he told me not to respond to that as he would take care of it as it was a glitch.
About 2 hrs later I had a message from an account manager informing me that I had not agreed to new terms and conditions when I was on their website earlier. This was absolute BS as I had indeed gone to airbnb site in order to message guest with arrival info but for some reason I reached the travel page asking where i wanted to stay. I clicked onto the logo to look for hosting but a message came up stating there has been an error and page froze. I then exited and logged on with another browser as I had been having problems with a blank screen for the last few days. This seemed to work but the next thing I knew was a an email from a guest saying “OMG why have you cancelled me”. It was at that point I called the first CS.
For the past six hours I have been contacting those guests thru Airb webmail informing them that I never cancelled and that i would honor their reservation. Only two of these had been contacted by Airbnb with a re booking offer. Some of the others I think I have saved but others booked elsewhere.
Airbnb’s case manger is inferring that it is my fault as I they allege that I had not agreed to Airbnb new terms. Whatever they were, I had not read them so had not disagreed. I had agreed when I joined so would probably have agreed to whatever was new. I don’t recall getting an email from them with the terms but it was possible I missed it in which case they should have phoned/emailed telling me if I did not agree that all my bookings would be cancelled. I feel that at least 24 hrs notice should have been given me. At the time I went to the site I was in a hurry to message guest among lots of other things and obviously did not read the site as I wanted hosting section.
This is very unfair not only to myself as host but to all the guests. Also by putting out a statement in my reviews that I had cancelled the booking, along with emailing guests, that is a complete lie, but who are the guests going to believe, a multi billion co or a host like ourselves.
If it was a glitch, as I was told, then they should notify guests of the truth, and compensate us for the lost income which here is a very short season.
Update- Some guests booked elsewhere after Airbnb told the we had cancelled.One of the guests was offered a fullrefund together with a coupon worth $100 to book elsewhere. Some guests received an apology saying is was a mistake on the website and were told that there reservation would be allowed to remain, but these still showed as cancelled and at this time were not offered a refund, so are in the air (literally) as to whether they even have a valid booking. Meanwhile I have messaged a case manager but my questions remain unanswered. Cannot believe that we are the only hosts with this problem as CSD had told me that they had many people in same situation and it was nothing personal.
Ouch, that’s awful, Rigsby.
I got stuck the other day in the endless whirling dot when trying to confirm that I agreed with an Airbnb pop up that discrimination is not a nice thing. (Rather hilarious that they also had a don’t agree button.)
The whirling never ended, so I exited. In order to get back to a guest with a question, had to go in as a traveler, go to the site map, and from there sneak into the host section. I did have a niggling fear that Airbnb’s stellar, outstanding tech interface would interpret the computer hang up as my disagreeing that discrimination isn’t nice, with some sort of dreadful repercussions, but I seemed to have escaped that fate.
Concur with JohnF’s eggs in one basket warning.
I also was frozen on the popup about discrimination - never thought that it might lead to problems later. I was able to get into the site later. Hope it took my “I agree” and avois problems later. One more thing sigh
Rigsby problem is really scary - esp. for the guest about to board a plane!
All I remembner was that I wanted to find contact info for a guest and entered airbnb in my browser, either chrome or firefoxi, it opened up to a “travel” page with pictures of different places with a section asking where I wanted to stay and, I think, there was a date section. I clicked on the little airbnb logo thinking I would get the menu where hosting comes up but instead I got a “error on page” message so I tried, unsuccessfully, x ing out of the whole site. I then switched to the other browser on which I found the info I was looking for and thought no more about it. I then get a message from a guest informing me that their booking had been cancelled and it was at that point I called Airbnb CS when I was on hold for over 30 min, even as a superhost callin. CS rep apologised for delay and told me they had website issues. As we were talkin a message popped up telling me my account had been cancelled, or words to that effect, and do I wish to recativate if so click on oval button below. I asked CS should I click and he told me no, as he was taking care of it
Here qwe are 30 hours later and it still has not been resolved in spite of 3 separate emails to the “case manager”. Some guests who want to keep their reservation still do not know where they stand and are complaining of the wayt Airbnb are treating them and others were told that there reservation still stands but still shows as cancelled on site.
Airbnb should compensate us for the loss of income and the stress and aggravation but the only way for that to happen is through a lawsuit. nIn the meantime guests have been left stranded and their questions ignored. No question that Airbnb are an equal opportunity company as previously I thought they were on the side of guests regardless.
What would you do if this were to happen to you, or like termites in SW USA its not if it will but rather when.
I used to be in IT, so this may or may not help at all. But there could be some kind of weird issue with your PC. It is even possible that some malware on your PC is also related.
There could be some kind of automated security response in airbnb’s system that caused it to do this to you. Standard customer service people would likely not have access to even SEE if this is the case.
Just to be safe, you may wish to consider:
Installing and running Malwarebytes (free) - see if it finds anything
After that, fix any issues it finds
Change your PW on airbnb
Delete your airbnb cookies on all your browsers
Reboot your PC
Log back into airbnb and then keep working with them
A bunch of hosts on Reddit complained of the same thing. Cancelled reservations, lost accounts and reviews. It’s 100% a screw up on Airbnb’s part. People were trying to click the “accept” button, but the site wasn’t accepting it. When they tried dismissing it the Air system went ahead and cancelled their accounts.
All over a stupid virtue signaling pledge for something we already agreed to when creating an account.
Good suggestions, but that would not account for the complete lack of cooperation on the part of Airbnb and their failure to respond. They are also inconsistent, as one of our guests who had contacted them requesting that they still wanted to book as we had confirmed that we were still willing to accept them to accept them were refused with a note that they are refunding $0 (yes, literally) to their account with a list of other accomodations in the area. We had told the guest to give it one last try and if they refused we would book them outside of airbnb, which we are now doing. Another one of the cancelled guests who sent in a similar request was approved and booking confirmation emails have been received by both parties. Another guest was given a $100 coupon and told to book elesewhere, and there are many other unethical instances.
With regard to my computer - I had run Malwarebytes just the night before all this with a clean result, as I had been having frozen screen problems which I later found were caused with a faulty Nvidia driver. Following your suggestion I have cleared the browser cache. I do not believe this was any of our fault, but even if it was, we had called them immediately we had the first cancellation notice. That is no excuse for Airbnb punishing their guests along with us. For the record, we are so called superhosts for the past 4 years and have never once cancelled any guest as we take our comittment seriously and would have expected Airbnb to do the same. This is still very much an ongoing issue and serious enough to warrant a lawsuit. Maybe I should start calling news media in the hope that they can assist in making Airbnb do the right thing?
Thanks for that info, I’ll look for it on Reddit. The first CS rep told me that it was their glitch, but the case mgr infers I’m the only one and its my fault.
Yeah certainly “not your fault” - but one never knows about weird stuff on your PC that can initiate an AUTOMATED security response in their crappy system. And, there’s pretty much no way a level I CS person would have visibility to that.
And there is no way you will ever get to speak with someone at air IT who has access to do serious troubleshooting. It’s easier for them to screw you over and rebook guests and if you leave them they don’t care.
When you cleared your CACHE - did you also clear your COOKIES? I know it may not make sense but sometimes, stuff gets really Fked up on the server side and forcing brand new cookie exchanges sometimes can fix it.
With IT, there’s “troubleshooting” and then sometimes there is “ok well let’s try this, that, and X” and see if any of that actually helps". Sometimes, yes and sometimes not.
We really hope this works out - all you can do is keep calling back and have them re-instate you - and keep telling them that their system never prompted you for X or whatever.
The bookings that they canceled are all gone, except whatever you managed to re-book directly.
From what I have read here, airbnb seems to be somewhat sensitive to resolving situations when social media is involved.
If you look at Airbnb’s community forum, there appear to be dozens of people, both guests and hosts, that have had this same problem in the last couple of days. It is not just you.
As bad as I feel for the hosts, I feel terrible for the guests who had planned long trips and suddenly they have no reservations. Some of them don’t even know where they are staying tonight, and Airbnb has apparently not refunded their money either. What a huge mess.
Yes, I had cleared cookies out at same time.Today when I logged in the site “appeared” to be normal except that my calendar was blocked even for the cancelled guests. Air still wont respond to my emails.
Some guests have been allowed to rebook and I received usual emailed confirmations as iI would have for new bookings. Others have been denied booking and one has a refund but others have not, one was offered a refund of $0.
Good info thanks. I will check that out. In the meantime I have found similar instances on airbnbhell.com where there was also posted airbnb’s terms which basically stated that they had the right to cancel accounts for both hosts and guests without notice and without giving reasons and would not be liable. So yes it just gets worse.
@RIGSBY, I’d be cautious putting much credence into the referred website. There are many fabricated stories posted there. Just be careful how you use any information gleaned from it.
