Issues with a duplicate listing

[John7641]

I would like some help dealing with what was apparently a duplicate listing for my listing . Essentially and to make it brief my wife and I bought a house in France from a management company in June 2023. We then continued to use the same management company after the purchase of the house since they already had a listing and were used to running things in the area of France the house is located in. Unfortunately after a few months we realized how terrible they were and we decided to stop using their services . I asked them to take down their airbnb account and I started created ours . This was in late Nov 2023 . My listing went live in Dec 2023 and since we were staying in the house in Dec and Jan Feb was blocked for booking we didn’t think any of it since the prior company had plenty of time to do what they needed to do . Being brand new on airbnb frankly we had no clue . Well fast forward until now and our account is suspended because of the duplicate and it is impossible to get anyone from airbnb to escalate the issue to someone that can constructively look at what happened …I am a bit desperate here and I have no idea what to do next . Airbnb is saying they will not reactivate the listing …why not? There was no double booking the reviews before were good so really can they not throw in a warning and help us forward ?

does anyone know how to escalate something like this outside of a robotic call center?

thanks for all the help 

[Joelle43]

Hello @John7641 

There are a lot of other hosts on the community center - both the English and French one, facing the issue as you, so sorry.  Thought you might like to read a very recent conversation here on the CC so that at least you don't feel like you're the only facing this problem and you might be able to help each other:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Ask-about-your-listing/Listing-suspended/m-p/1921658#M51449

[John7641]

This is so irritating and we seem to have no recourse . Even the airbnb call center agreed with me that some level of common sense would be good but the other “specialized team” had decided and it was against the rules ..ok fair enough but we had no idea the listing form the other company was still active and overall led a bit and did I say there ZERO reservations made on the old platform after we listed our listing so really what is the issue here ?? So frustrating . Is there someone in country that can help ?

[Joelle43]

@John7641 

I'm a host like you but I will tag our community managers to see if they can do something their end but bear in mind that they are not part of Airbnb Customer Service so no promises.

@Bhumika 

@Paula 

@Quincy 

[John7641]

Thank you Joelle much appreciated . We are so disappointed by the way airbnb operates and it seems there isn’t a whole lot of practical analysis being conducted . Since we didn’t even have access to the prior account how in the world could we inactivate it ?? 

[Paula]

Hello @John7641, I am sorry about this situation. As @Joelle43 mentioned, although the Community Managers are not part of the Support Team, we can help by forwarding your case to the Airbnb team for review. They will contact you directly.

I hope this gets resolved very soon, and thank you, @Joelle43, for all your support 🙏

[John7641]

Thank you Paula 

i even pointed Airbnb to the great reviews we have on booking so I am a bit puzzled about the one size fits all approach . I  can’t even get an answer as to the suspension it being 5 days 10 forever etc…thanks for the support 

[Dylan291]

Yup, I'm having the same issue currently. I just recently got a property that was previously listed- so naturally we listed it. It got taken down and it said "pending removal". We submitted our evidence and they still removed it and even mentioned that if we try again we're in grounds of an account suspension which is not fair at all as i'm a superhost of 3 years. 

We dont know what to do, because we recently got another prop that was also listed and we dont wanna get suspended..

[Rebecca]

Hi @Dylan291 👋

I've popped you a direct message with some more information. 😊

[Jacquie-And-Leah0]

Airbnb removed our listing as a duplicate. The property was under new ownership so they old listing was removed and we started a new one. They then flagged it and would not budge on the appeal decision because it was clearly AI and not a real human looking at it. Airbnb support has been terrible and we have been extremely disappointed in them. 

[Pete28]

In theory if they delete the old listing you can create a new one ? Airbnbs attempts at preventing anyone from ever restarting an Airbnb listing in any circumstances will ultimately cost them a lot of business.

It’s also worth noting if you ever get three 3* reviews in a 3-6 month period you will end up in the same situation. If the old company were bad they may have a lot of bad reviews for the property ? 

Also, as the property is in the EU you might consider exercising your data protection rights to be forgotten - if Airbnb holds any data on you after that you can then force them to remove it. Might be worth trying.