AirBnB Cancels our traveler Booking mid-stay, and turns off host listings - no explanation

[Brent19]

Hello AirBnB Community,

**All AirBnB messages pasted at bottom**

I’ve been a very active member of the AirBnB platform for the past 5 years. This is my first time posting. However - our situation has become very dire and I'm reaching out to you all before taking further action. A bit of background on me, I‘m an 8-time consecutive super host.  As a host, I have over 170 reviews and a blended average rating of 4.95. I know what it takes to be a great host and a great guest.

17 days ago my wife and I began a 36-night stay as travelers at a home. At the same time, we’re still hosting multiple guests at multiple locations that we manage. Since the beginning of this 36-night stay, we’ve had problems. Many features of the house that we expected to work have not been functional. A lot of items were not provided clean and there was absolutely no documentation during check-in. Whenever we have communicated with the absentee owners, they have been very defensive and reactive. We have since stopped even communicating our concerns and just living with the issues that include no hot water, no filtered water, no dishwasher, no functional spa, etc. This booking cost approximately $9000 so it wasn’t cheap.

Suddenly 2 days ago, we get a message from Airbnb telling us that the reservation has been canceled. “That Airbnb can no longer support this reservation.” No explanation. Keep in mind we are on day 17 of our 36 day stay. AirBnB demands that we check out immediately. Of course, we are in the middle of the highest demand time of the year in Santa Barbara and there’s nowhere to go. Furthermore, my wife is 8 months pregnant and we are concerned about Covid.

It took all day but we finally reached Airbnb. We spoke to someone who barely spoke English. They gave us no explanation and told us we must check out immediately. They said that the booking has been canceled and they were going to conduct an investigation and only until after we check out will they tell us why the booking was canceled. Again I would like to remind my community here that we have been impeccable guests and have followed all of the guidelines even though there were very few provided. Yes, we did let the owners know in the first week about some of these problems but that was our duty as responsible guests and as paying clients.

Airbnb continues to send messages telling us to check out and until we do they can’t tell us what’s going on. On top of that, we discover that they have disabled all our listings we manage as hosts !!!  Our listings are now no longer visible on the platform. We have a few reservations that are still active in the future but no new reservations. We again escalated this to Airbnb sending emails and calling but no one has gotten back to us.

We contacted the host Owners and told them about what’s happening. They told us they contacted Airbnb and requested that the contract be canceled because we broke the house rules. I asked them what House rules are not being followed and they agreed ultimately that that wasn’t exactly true. That it was a “misunderstanding”. We recorded the entire conversation. We let Airbnb know that we have this documented and recorded and that we have not broken any rules and the host simply wanted to cancel the contract.

Still, nothing from Airbnb and our listings are all still inactive. I cannot believe this is happening. I am in such disbelief that there has been no communication and no dispute process whatsoever. The notion that our 36-day booking can be arbitrarily canceled and on top of that our active listings disabled is preposterous. We have done nothing wrong. We have been great users of the platform. I am taking this step communicating with all of you to find out what to do and how to reach someone at Airbnb who can actually address this problem.

Please let me know. We really appreciate your help in advance.

Brent Masters

Here are the messages from AirBnB - curious that they state "there may be a potential breach of our terms of service by your host."

**[Sensitive information removed in line with - Community Center Guidelines]

[Brent19]

Hi @Ann72 - does this work?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kU8tpzqakXLLhCvc9PiP5TsKYuELk6FW/view?usp=drivesdk

[Ann72]

Hi @Brent19 - no - this is what comes up:

[Brent19]

@Ann72 , my apologies, please try the link again...

**[Sensitive information removed in line with - Community Center Guidelines]

[Sarah977]

@Brent19  I listened to the conversation. The host sounds like an idiot and just talks in circles. Kudoes for keeping your cool.

[Lisa723]

@Brent19 I would not post a recording of a private conversation here. Especially if you recorded without the host's permission, which AFAIK would have been illegal.

[Brent19]

Yes of course I asked for permission because the whole situation is so bizarre I really want to have a record of it. Anyway I will take it down I wanted to make sure that the people who were very helpful to me today had a chance to here with their own ears what was happening.

[Ute42]

.

@Brent19  , @Lisa723 , @Helen3 , @Ann72 , @Sarah977

With all due respect to the good advise other people have given in this thread, I think what changed the situation was that I mentioned the word „police“ in my post upthread. I'm sure the airbnb trust and safety people have read this and it made them change their mind.

Picture this: Brents host calls the police and police officer Mark shows up.

• Police officer: Good afternoon, what can I do for You?
  
  

• Host: Can You pls remove these guests from my premises
  
  

• Police officer: What's the problem, didn't they pay You?
  
  

• Host: They payed $9000, no problem there
  
  

• Police officer: So what is the problem, what did Your guests do wrong?
  
  

• Host: I can't tell You what the guests did, I just want You to remove these folks
  
  

• Police officer: If You can't tell me what they did, I'm afraid I can't help You
  
  

• Host: I have a notification from airbnb that they have terminated the reservation
  
  

• Police officer: What was the name of the company You've just mentioned? Say it again
  
  

• Host: airbnb
  
  

• Police officer: Wait a minute (police officer calls his boss, the sheriff)
  
  

• Police officer: Hi boss, I'm in a short term rental and the host want's me to remove his guests despite the fact that they have payed him $9000. He says airbnb has cancelled his reservation but he doesn't tell me why.
  
  

• Sheriff: What was the name of the company You've just mentioned? Say it again
  
  

• Police officer: airbnb
  
  

• Sheriff:   airbnb – yet again airbnb?
  
  This is the company we have to deal with every weekend with their parties, disturbing our neighbourhoods and blocking all streets with the cars parked all over the place. And they want us to work for them again?
  

• Police officer: And remember Orinda.
  

• Sheriff: Take down the hosts and guests data, gather as much information as You can and file a report. Then leave the place and do nothing on site.

The sheriff turns to his secretary Lisa.

• Lisa, Officer Mark will soon be back with a report. Pls send this report to the community and ask them to check if this short term rental is properly registered with the city. Tell them to find a mistake in their paperwork no matter what. Also send a copy of the report to the tax office.

[Ian-And-Anne-Marie0]

@Ute42 

And they want us to work for them again?

😂😂😂

How much service should c20% service fees actually buy? A dedicated customer service department who can make transparent balanced and fair judgements would be the minimum, I reckon..

$9000 = $1800 service charges.. Has @Brent19 or his host received that sort of service level? 

[Ute42]

.

@Ian-And-Anne-Marie0  

For $1800 service fee You could at least expect that airbnb finishes up their investigation first and then decides if they want to throw Brent out and delist his properties. That's just a matter of a few days. Why are these 3 or 4 days so important?

Now he's back to where he was before but he's pi**ed. He will now concentrate to rent his places through booking and vrbo.

What's the benefit for airbnb in this?

[Mark116]

@Ute42  I'm not sure that Airbnb is a rational actor at this point, and I mean that not only from the standpoint of the CS agents but from the CEO and corporate strategy view as well. 

[Lisa723]

@Ute42 you have a quaint notion of how our police operate.

[Brent19]

FYI - for those of you still interested in the audio file of the conversation, here it is.

**[Sensitive information removed in line with - Community Center Guidelines]

I used a friends PC and was logged in on his drive account when uploading it before in case you had any issue accessing.

[Kathy842]

@Brent19  where were you planning to live once your 36 night stay ended? 

[Brent19]

Hello Community,  my update is that as of yesterday, we checked out of the problem property that was canceled without cause from under our feet. We have paid dearly in cost and effort in the last 48 hours. We spent an entire day trying to find anything that might work in this extremely low inventory time with a pregnant lady who cannot do many steps repeatedly. The only options were quite expensive, as in $1500/night. We found something suitable that is costing $13,600 for the remainder of the term that was canceled. This is well above the $9000+ we paid for the prior booking that was canceled. Even though AirBnB has guaranteed a full refund, we don't feel it is fair or enough given the facts. We are hoping AirBnB takes care of the difference in costs for this unfortunate experience. We are so thankful to have found something... there was almost no inventory.

FYI: I have removed the conversation with the host and removed the link as we have exited that bad situation and there's no point in broadcasting or amplifying the poor experience.  

Thank you all for your support. Even though it has been very costly in both financial loss and heartache and time, we are thankful to be in a safe, comfortable place.

Brent

[Helen3]

Sorry to hear you are having difficulty in finding alternative accommodation after your booking was cancelled. 

As I advised yesterday, I thought that would be the likely outcome, despite what your lawyer advised.

Airbnb is highly unlikely to cover that amount of additional cost. They are only liable to provide you with any credit that they agree in this type of situation in their T&Cs or a little more if you push them but not thousands. @Brent19 

Were there not cheaper properties if you moved out of the expensive area you said you were located in. Hopefully you will be able to move back into one of your own listings soon to help reduce your costs.