Last night around 7:30 there was a knock on my door. “Hi, the young woman said. We are here for your rental.” My jaw dropped. I asked her where she had booked the reservation and she responded, airbnb. I responded;”Well, Welcome, let me show you the house.” As I led them to the rental I thought: “Did I I not see the announcement? Did I erase it accidentally?” Yikes. I got them settled in, apologized for not knowing they were coming and hurried back to my computer. I checked my inbox, trash and spam. No notice from airbnb. However, the reservation was in my airbnb host site. The reservation was made on Oct. 26, the night before around 8:00.
I called customer support. I was told that there was some technical difficultly on Oct. 26 and I was not the only host that never got a notification. The agent apologized and thanked me for being such a great host. As I hung up I thought; “Thank goodness we had not started to repaint the bedroom as we had planned this weekend.” Then what a mess this would be. I wondered if we had done this would airbnb penalize me because of their technical error?
I have been a satisfied user of airbnb for many years with 3 properties in the US and 3 in Mexico. I appreciate the ease of use and the system they have created for host and renter. However, lately I have some issues with their punitive policies. For instance: A renter canceled their reservation. I was penalized. Another instance: on an instant booking the date was off by one day so I had to cancel the reservation since I could not host them for the entire time. I was penalized again. I think they need to have a more lenient and comprehensive approach for their long time hosts with 5 star ratings. If airbnb can experience a technical error ( I wonder how many host were affected by their glitch) and just offer an just an apology, then they owe their responsible hosts a little leniency as well.
PS Along this line I would like to question the policy of reviews. After 6 years with 4.5 and 5 star reviews on a property I had an angry renter ( whose payments consistently did not go through as airbnb reported to me) write a scathing 3 paragraph review that airbnb insisted they need to include. This is not fair.
