Airbnb Support Service Not Responding to Complaint

[Brittany335]

@Airbnb 

On 31st December I arrived in Javea only to find my airbnb booking did not exist. I instantly rang airbnb support services and they told me that they needed to try to make contact with the host and give them a grace period of one hour to respond, so to sit in a cafe awaiting their response - all costs here would be covered by airbnb themselves. My friend found another room available so I asked the support services if we could book and send them the bill, they said no as they would arrange for us to stay somewhere else if the host didn't reply. After two hours, no updates from Airbnb support and three phone calls from myself - to which I was told I would be contacted shortly and wasn't, it was 7pm and I received a message saying I would receive my refund in 5-15 days and here is a £7 coupon for airbnb and a link to three airbnbs in another city. As we were desperate to find somewhere to stay that late in the day in the middle of winter, I hung up and we found an apartment on Booking.com. When I returned to my home I sent a message to Airbnb support asking for reimbursments for the drinks we had that they told us they would pay for and for the apartment as they had told us they would help us find somewhere to stay. It has now been 3 days and I haven't had a single response. As a customer I have the right to good service and a right to complain when I have been treated as appallingly as I have been. Clearly the complaints procedure isn't working if they think they can just disregard me, so, any ideas?

[Anonymous]

@Brittany335 You're contractually entitled to a full refund for the rental of the Airbnb that you weren't able to check into. Any compensation beyond that is a bonus - nowhere in the guest refund policy does it say that you get comped a round of drinks while you're waiting for a customer service call.

If you want more attention to be paid to your complaint, I guess you could try airing it out on Airbnb's Twitter account. Someone might pretend to care for a minute, if that makes you feel better, but that's about all you can realistically expect. 

[Colleen253]

@Brittany335  “I received a message saying I would receive my refund in 5-15 days”.

You’ve been told you would receive a refund for the place you couldn’t check into, so you now need to wait the time indicated. If your refund doesn’t show up after that time period, then you’ll need to follow up.

You won’t be reimbursed for refreshments. CS was wrong on that.

[Brittany335]

This has been resolved now and I have been refunded and compensated for the trouble (and reimbursed for the drinks - the support services shouldn't have promised something on a recorded call if they had no intention of delivering) it's just a shame I had to kick up a fuss to be acknowledged!

[Lisa723]

@Brittany335 congratulations, you won the lottery.