Cancelled listing

[Martin5644]

Well, goodbye Air BnB and good riddance. 

Initially we engaged an Air BNB Management Company to manage our brand new 5 bedroom 4 bathroom Lake Front property. after 8 months it was clear that they were unable to properly manage such a property and we cancelled the contract and took over the bookings ourselves. 

things were going very well until last night when Air BnB informed us that we had breached their policy of providing duplicate listings. Initially i thought the account was suspended because of one 3 star review but i was told that was not the reason and in any event the policy document clearly states that a listing will not be cancelled because of one bad review. I explained to them that we had no control over the other listing and that we were the owners and that we could provide contracts, onboarding and off boarding information in relation to the previous hosts. 

here is the response:

**

Well, I cannot believe that they did not even have the courtesy to get my side of the story, it seems that Hosts are a second class citizen. It is just nasty that at first they said the suspension had nothing to do with the review, but then implying that the listing should have been cancelled because of the review in any event.

I have tried to reach out to the management company but they have not responded. 

I am disappointed in myself that I thought I could rely on this platform. get out while you can, and if you are in, make sure you don't change a listing, hire a management company or think that you will remain a valued host on this platform. 

 **[Private conversation removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Zheng49]

It's a fairly new policy that duplicates of listings with issues are removed. Prior to this policy, people would just create a new listing whenever they got a bad review. 

In my opinion, if you let a property management manage your account, it's better to add them as a co-host. That way, if you no longer need their services, you can just remove the co-host. 

[Martin5644]

I am afraid it has far greater ramifications for hosts and I am glad I am out. The platform is set up so a host can list multiple properties. Management Companies have also been set up to manage air BnB properties for the owners. 

I have a significant annual turnover in my property  but I cannot sell my property based on income I receive from Air BnB because the property, once sold can no longer be listed with another owner.  You would need to somehow transfer the listing, and all the reviews, etc to the new owner. 

Given my experience Air BnB is not even interested in engaging with a host to resolve this issue. 

I have just received another response to my cancellation where they stated:

"I would like to say that I empathize with your dissatisfaction. I'm sorry that your listing will be removed on August, 19 2024. I understand that you already submitted all the necessary document needed for this. I know how important it is for you to keep on using this listing.

Furthermore, I see on my end that we give you time to appeal to the case If ‘The Ski Shack - Lake Tinaroo’ is a new listing, and you have additional details that we could consider. We apologize on the news that our specialized team have reviewed your appeal and made the decision to remove the listing completely. As it appears that this listing you have is a duplicate of a listing with reported issues goes against our policies with Airbnb. After investigating we also saw that the listing has an issue with cleanliness as well.

I hope that you understand that if there was anything I can do, I would have done it right away without any hesitation since you are our valued user in the community. I truly wish I had an option to not have your listing be removed. It's just that the policies are there and that is something I am obliged to follow."

[Zheng49]

"once sold can no longer be listed with another owner.  You would need to somehow transfer the listing, and all the reviews, etc to the new owner. '

Citation needed because other hosts have reported something else. 

The issue is not that you cannot create duplicate listings. The issue is that you can not create duplicate listings if the original listing has issues. 

As mentioned, this policy was added because people would create a duplicate everytime they got a bad review in order to start from scratch again and with the 'New' Listing boost. 

[Joan2709]

@Martin5644 

So sorry this happened to you. Unfortunately, many of the large management companies have a terrible reputation (and rightly so). They advertise heavily and those who are not familiar with them many times find out the hard way why it's not a good idea to use them. 

As @Zheng49 pointed out, it's always advisable to remain as primary host and only allow a managment company to be listed as co-host. The catch is, most do not allow you to do that; they always want to be listed as primary host. Unsuspecting new hosts don't understand the danger of allowing that.  If you cancel the contract for non-performance, all the reviews stay on the primary host profile. Listings are not transferrable, so if the owner tries to create a new listing, the Airbnb policies kick in preventing this; especially if there are negative reviews on the previous listing.