Can’t contact Airbnb Support, can’t contact our guests

[Jeffrey662]

I've been a Superhost for two years on two listings, with hundreds of five-star reviews. Recently, we had a guest who stayed four nights, made no complaints, then wanted a full refund after he left. When we didn't give him his money back, he started inventing allegations against us. That triggered a safety review. Support Ambassador Sarah suspended our account and asked for our side of the story.

Unfortunately, Airbnb seems to have introduced a bug which prevents suspended accounts from replying to messages, even ones from Airbnb Support. We've been trying for four days to reply to Sarah. When we try, Airbnb says "Message not sent. Try again".

So we're in a loop: We can't reply to Sarah because our account is suspended, and we can't remove the suspension without replying to Sarah. The only way we can send a message at all is to open a new ticket through the "Contact us" link. We've done that over and over, saying that we can't reply to Sarah. Each time, someone writes back that we have a ticket open with Sarah, and should reply to Sarah, and they close the ticket.

It's been annoying for us, but now it's affecting our guests, too: We have a couple arriving today, and we have no way to contact them. The message thread between us and them is empty. We can't read our previous conversation, and we have no way to give them the door code. They have no way to speak to us until they arrive at the property. I hope they can still see the address, at least.

What are we supposed to do?

Thanks very much,
Jeff Covey

[Shelley159]

Hi @Jeffrey662 

While you should try to keep communication with your guests inside the app, today's arrival is quite an exception. In such an urgent situation I would message the arriving guests on Whatsapp, Telegram or similar. If you click on the booking, the phone number is in small print under the "message" and "call" buttons.

[Jeffrey662]

Wonderful, @Shelley159, thank you so much! I found their phone number and texted them. Hope the rest is resolved soon and we can get back to normal.

Sincerely,

Jeff

[Shelley159]

Fantastic @Jeffrey662 

You should quickly make a note of all the phone numbers for upcoming reservations, in case they disappear due to the problem with your listing as @Joan2709 has said. 

I've noticed that phone numbers are automatically deleted from past bookings. For example, at the moment I can still see a phone number on a booking starting 8 August, but the ones before that are already showing as unavailable. I keep a spreadsheet like @Joan2709 says - one doesn't usually need phone numbers of past guests, but it could be useful in some cases, like if you find something you think they may have left behind.

[Joan2709]

@Jeffrey662

If your account is suspended, I'm not sure you can even access the reservation details to find the guest phone number, unless you kept a record of it outside Airbnb. I usually advise Hosts to create a contact in their phone when the guest books just in case:

"Airbnb Guest Bob - Aug 24 - 27"

That way, you at least have their phone number for situations such as this and also if they contact you, you'll see it is an Airbnb Guest instead of "unknown" in the caller ID. After the guest checks-out, just delete the contact in your phone. Some hosts also print or save to PDF the reservation details on a computer. Many Hosts also keep a spread sheet and include reservation details and phone number on the spread sheet.

Perhaps one of the moderators can forward this to the correct team at Airbnb since this is a time sensitive issue for an incoming guest? 

@Paula , @Rebecca , @Bhumika , @Quincy , @Elisa .

[Paula]

Hello @Joan2709,

Thank you for keeping us in the loop.

We have shared this case with the team that can help, and they should reach out to @Jeffrey662 with further details.

Thanks again.

[Jeffrey662]

@Paula Is Support Ambassador Lulu from that team? She’s been sending us messages daily since Saturday, and we can’t reply to her, like we can’t reply to Sarah. Our listings have been suspended for a week now.

[Jeffrey662]

Is anyone working on the actual problem? I can't be the only host stuck in this limbo.

It turned out that our guest had an old phone number in her Airbnb account, so she never got the door code. It's lucky that I was home when she rang the bell. Otherwise, she would have been sitting on our porch sending me messages through the app that I'd never see.

[Jeffrey662]

We can’t even see our calendar now to see when our next guests are coming.

[Zheng49]

Yes when your account is completely suspended, you don't have access to Airbnb at all. The only thing you might have access to is the community circle. And that is also not guaranteed. 

Hopefully it's a temporary thing for you, while they're actively conducting their investigation. 

[Jeffrey662]

But they’re not actively investigating. The investigation is on hold while they wait to hear from us. So… 

[Mark116]

@Jeffrey662   Maybe this is too simple, but have you tried just calling Airbnb and explaining the situation?  I'm sure you would have to do it more than once, given the status of customer service, but it seems that would be more productive than messaging online.

[Jeffrey662]

@Mark116 Yes, we’ve called. We’re told that safety issues are handled by a special team and we can’t be connected to them directly, we have to wait for them to contact us. And I guess they think they are contacting us by sending a message once a day? I hope we’re not approaching a permanent deletion because we “never responded”.

[Zheng49]

@Sophia @Bhumika @Rebecca 

Can you please provide some assistance to this host since this appears to be a bug of sorts?

If his account is completely suspended, then no communication is possible. At the same time, if the safety team is expecting a response, that response is not possible due to the complete lockdown.