A guest has rented my airbnb apartment for 2 months, Feb and March. I received February’s payment on Feb 4 (of course airbnb says they sent it on the 2nd, but that’s par for the course).
Today is March 15, and I haven’t received payment for this month. The website continues to list it under “Pending Payouts”, marked March 2. Not sure what that means… pending as of March 2, I guess. I’m pretty sure they have the guest pay them the entire amount at the time they make the reservation. I phoned airbnb a week ago, and they said some payments were delayed, just be patient.
Has anyone had this experience? Any tips on how to get through to someone who can actually make something happen?
Ummm, “where is my money”, good question.
My online food ordering, hacking buddy says that essentially you’ve bought the young master Chesky around twenty seven pizzas.
Does that make you feel better?
Thought not. Wouldn’t me either.
Tips? Hammer them on social media, and if it was me I’d highlight the ever expanding, pizza filled, waistlines of the three “founders”
Sorry I can’t be any more help…
JF
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That would be you.
I would call them and tell them they need to either pay you or cancel the reservation before you lose the whole month to someone who has not paid you.
Good luck
RR
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Yes, it’s happened to me last summer. It took months before I received payment. I called Airbnb and after numerous calls, had it escalated. Still no payment!
Someone on this forum suggested I switch to pay pal, which I did, and I received payment shortly after. Not sure if it’s because I switched to paypal or if finally the funds were released.
I suspect Airbnb likes holding on to funds so they can earn interest on it.
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The guest does not pay the entire amount at the time of reservation. The guest pays each month as it comes due. Your guest has not paid. You are hosting for free right now.
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This is one of the many reasons not to do long term bookings through Airbnb. They only guarantee the first month’s payment. And once they have been at your place more than a month, they probably fall under landlord/tenant laws.
What scammer wouldn’t like that?
Of course, your guest may be quite innocent and it’s an Airbnb snafu.
In any case, you need to make the guest aware that their second payment hasn’t gone through and they will have to sort it out with Airbnb or leave immediately.
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I’m a bit unsure about why you are using Airbnb for LTR? If you explain further we might be able to help.
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Call Airbnb again. Tell them that you’re going to begin eviction proceedings just like any long-term landlord would do when the rent is late.
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They’re using Airbnb for long term for the same reason others do- they don’t understand how insecure and fraught with issues it is until something like this happens.
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Like many others, the OP will have simply accepted the request through Airbnb, an STR site that is essentially facilitating LTR, without having the necessary legal/payment processes in place.
You could argue that they’ve been put in a landlord/tenant scenario by the the back door.
Their social media team do seem a bit more pro active than the hastily hired, poorly trained south east Asian* (or wherever) based CS staff, so that’s the first route to take. Twitter, Facebook etc. Don’t forget to mention the pizzas 
If you get no response, or it turns out that the guest hasn’t actually paid for the second month, then yes, you’ll need to speak to the guest.
Fortunately, here in Spain the “tenant” issue doesn’t arise, as long as there is a recognised booking via an OTA. That said, we wouldn’t take an LTR in either of our apartments, mainly because I don’t like having the same folks here for more than a week or so!
(*) Going by the jobs listed on the Airbnb site, it looks like they may be (re)expanding the Dublin CS, less then a year after getting rid of so many.
JF
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Thank you everyone for your replies! I was alarmed to hear that the guest might not have paid, but I just called airbnb; I called the SF number and spoke with someone named Samantha, who wouldn’t tell me where she was located (‘not allowed’). She confirmed that they did receive payment from the guest. She said she would ‘escalate the ticket’ and someone would call me back within 48 hours. I said that was not acceptable, I needed to talk with someone sooner, and she said her supervisor would call me back within an hour or two.
Soo frustrated!!! I wonder if I should try what @ Ritz3 did, and switch to PayPal. And yes, I’m sure they hold funds to collect interest. Even when things are working normally, I get an email saying they’ve sent the money to my bank, but it doesn’t show up in the bank for a few days.
Do many folks here use PayPal for this? Interestingly, my account was hacked last month and the hacker changed the payout to their PayPal.
Yes, before Covid I was very careful to never allow a guest to stay for more than 25 days, so they wouldn’t gain tenant’s rights, but in the current situation I decided to take the risk, to fill the apartment and not have to go through the onerous cleaning regimen so often. I’m only keeping the apartment on airbnb because I want to move into it in September.
Fortunately, I’m charging enough that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the people stayed (about twice what airbnb suggests). One thing I have wondered is, if someone asserts their right to stay because they’ve been there more than a month, is the base rent the amount they’ve been paying airbnb, or the amount I’ve been getting?
If someone insists on staying, I’m afraid you’d be lucky to get any rent at all from them. If it’s legal then to evict them, that’s probably what you’d have to do—with all the bother and legal expense.
You would have no contract at all with the “tenant,” so no particular rent would be set and agreed to.
Here in Oakland CA, we have a strong rent control ordinance, which has been interpreted to mean that if a tenant is there more than a month, even if they’re paying through a 3rd party, they have an implied rental agreement, at the price they’ve been paying. So you can’t evict them as long as they pay the rent, don’t have loud parties, etc. Of course during Covid evictions are even harder. I’m just glad that they have paid March’s rent… still waiting to hear back from airbnb. 
I use Square. Paypal does not protect rental services. I have a signed contract and a photo id,
Hello, there’s your problem! Did you tell Customer Disservice this?
This is something that would vary by state and even by city in some places. In my current state, if there is no written lease then it is legally a verbal month to month lease and the established “rent” is whatever has been paid prior. That is the typical law regarding verbal leases in most places, but again, there are variations in some places I am sure. It would be highly unusual for there to be
merely because it’s not written out. Every state has landlord-tenant statues that would apply in the absence of a written agreement.
@jenstermeister I believe that the “rent” established with you would be what you receive as a host from Airbnb. The other part, that Airbnb keeps, is service fees and therefore not “rent” - it’s no different than if you paid a real estate broker or agent to rent out your apartment (or the tenant paid for them to find the apt), either you paid their fee or the tenant paid their fee (sometimes both of you) but it’s not rent.
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OMG, after getting the runaround for almost a MONTH, I called again this morning, determined not to take ‘someone will get back to you’ for an answer, and the 1st person I spoke with pointed out that my payout method was not marked as ‘default’. It was the only payout method I had, so I don’t know why that made a difference, but anyway, I marked it default, and immediately got an email that my payment had been sent, while she was still on the phone.
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Excellent news. It sounds like another case of Airbnb changing settings without rhyme nor reason.
Did you mention the pizzas?
JF
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