Listing suspended

[Georges191]

Hi there. I’m a host in Bath in the UK and one of my listings was suspended because airbnb think it is a duplicate listing. 

The property in question has been a holiday rental for a while. The previous management company created a listing on airbnb for the property. This listing has been deactivated. 

When I took over management of the property I obviously created a new listing for the property. 

I don’t know what else I could have done becuse I don’t own the original listing.

This seems to have resulted in the listing being suspended and then deactivated. 

The previous listing had many reviews and high overall rating.

I’d had around five reviews for my listing… four of which were five star reviews. 

I’ve tried to explain to airbnb that the listing is under new management and that’s why I created a new listing. 

I have nearly 200 reviews on airbnb and superhost status. I’ve been working with airbnb for four years. 

Neither superhost support or support ambassadors have been able to help. 

I keep being told it’s with the specialised team but thus far I haven’t heard back. So far the customer service I have recieved has been really really bad. With no resolution in site. 

I haven’t done anything wrong as far as I’m aware so I’m at my wits end as to why this has happened.  

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Georges191 This is a direct consequence of Airbnb trying to verify all its listings. As with all good intentions it clearly has the chance of going wrong. Perhaps @Quincy could tweak Airbnb to look again at your case.

[DRW-Properties0]

Same thing happened to me today. I just purchased the property that got suspended for being a “duplicate listing” and haven’t gotten anywhere. I have everything I need to prove I just bought it but they haven’t asked they just said it’s suspended for 1 year. 

[Helen3]

I agree with @Mike-And-Jane0 

Airbnb are trying to stamp out the bad and misleading practice certain management companies and hosts with poor reviews have of deleting listings with poor reviews and setting up duplicate new listings so guests booking don't realise they have poorly performing listings. 

unfortunately if you took over a listing from another host who used a management company and therefore had to set up a new listing you have been caught in this process  

have you tried posting across Airbnb's social media publicly to raise this issue? 

[David11945]

Hi George, we have the same problem. Had a property manager who was supposed to be hosting ours but they dropped the ball in so many ways that we have cancelled their contract and listed on our own profile. Then it got really messy, the management company refuses to delete theirs.

Airbnb refuses to delete theirs. In the mean time, we've hosted several guests. One of which gives a nasty & needless review. (We have very high standards so we know the review is not truthful).

It's four months later now and Airbnb has suspended our legitimate listing, which we have proof that we own and proof that the previous contract has ended. Airbnb brushes off all our our request for support messages. Cuts off our phone call when we try to call instead. They say to check our emails & take advice from there. The emails are extremely generic & vague. The "Specialist Team" if it even exists don't further reply or explain or help in any way.

We have generally good reviews/stars, Superhost title for two years now but they will not help, they will not fix the problem.

Our listing in question remains suspended and we haven't actually done anything wrong to cause it. 

We previously respected Airbnb above the other three hosting platforms that we use and now due to this we are considering closing our other listing because it's obvious they have no respect for the work we do. The hours it took to build the listing - which as you know they don't help you with any of it. The many nights our sleep is interrupted by guests messaging or checking in etc.

[John7641]

Welcome to my nightmare . Bought a new house in June 2023 was unhappy w the management so we dropped them and created a new site for our new house and boom duplicate galore 5 months later and we are now stuck in the circle of robot call centers . I get why they have processes in place to assess accounts but how about using some common sense this is absurd . I even said go look at booking.com and check the reviews so you can clearly see it has nothing to do w reviews but all to do with us now managing the property and not that horrid management group …feels hopeless 

[Georges191]

Thanks for all the replies and for sharing your equally frustrating experiences. Their customer service seems completely broken to me. 

Its scary the speed at which they make decisions that affect people business's and livelihoods, seemingly without any recourse. In my own case, I have been working with Airbnb for years. Have hosted hundreds of guests and always go out of my way(as most hosts do) to provide a five star stay. None of that seems to matter and they can just take it away in an instant. 

[Natasha711]

Hi George,

The exact same thing happened to us except we dropped Vacasa as mangers because they were the worst managers conceivable. Everyone in our area dropped them. Also they were skimming off the top so we were being scammed and so were our guests. 

once we took over the management of our own property we had consistently glowing reviews But have been suspended because of duplicate listing. 

Customer service are atrocious, they say sorry a million times but then never call back and can never do anything to help. And the specialist team seem to be a hoax as they apparently have no phone number and no way to be contacted then never respond to our appeal.

We should all cut our losses and boycott Airbnb as give no consideration as to how they effect our livelihoods on a whim.

There is now answer and Airbnb do now care about their honest hosts.

[Natasha711]

I appealed this by email as I was instructed to do by Airbnb but now the appeal link says I do not have permission to access the resource. 

I never received a phone call, text or email response to my appeal which was lodged within the specified time.

Customer service say they cannot help and they have ‘escalated’ my request but no one ever responds and finally after an hour on chat Airbnb close the session so I have to start over again.

[Jesse617]

Wow!  So discouraging 😞  Nobody has gotten a resolution?

Same here. "Permanently suspended"!

After 9 months, I left Vacasa as STR and started managing my own property with Airbnb as MTR.  

7 months later with only 14 days vacant and hosting my second 6-month MTR...now I'm suspended because of "duplicate listing"

From what everyone in here is replying I can see that my listing with Airbnb is over.  I just had new photoshoot last week, including drone pictures.  I even did a lot of cleaning up, repairing, and upgrading myself for a week straight!  SMH!

And absolutely no help from their customer support

[Pete28]

Whoever created the Airbnb policy clearly didn’t consider how it would unwind. How does anyone prove any relationship between a previous host / property and new host with same property.

I get divorced - wife becomes host, property blocked ?

I let my kids inherit - property blocked ?

I switch to management company or leave one - property blocked ?
I sell property - blocked ?

All Airbnb does is cache every address and picture of every property ever listed, and if any occur twice as a match then they shut them down. They the lack an appeals process, or even maybe should consider if such a policy is really scalable / workable with so many listings and churn in Airbnb.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Pete28 I think duplicates only get flagged if the original property has poor reviews. So long as the original listing has good reviews you should be fine.

[Pete28]

No, their policy applies to all listings. You can read it in the T&C which someone else pointed out when I suggested restarting a listing. Otherwise it would be a good idea to have several listing running at all times to dump one of it starts to go down.