Appalling service from Airbnb representative

[Pedro1613]

Hi fellow hosts

I've just had the most appalling unprofessional customer service from an Airbnb customer service representative called Kurt. 

I called the Super Host help service at 10.01pm to talk about a guest who has turned out to be quite a nightmare. Not her as a person, but has been breaking all the house rules and apologising either saying she had forgotten or she had misread them. To cut the story short, she decided to go out tonight and sent me a message at 9.23pm saying, "Hi Pedro, just to let you know I’m out tonight. See you later". Problem is my house rules say no entry after 12 midnight. I spoke with her about the house rules and then she apologised again saying she had not read this particular one. She then sent me the following message on WhatsApp:

"I’m sorry but the midnight rule doesn’t work for me"

"Is it possible to get a refund and cancel so I can find something else"

I then called Airbnb to ask for help not knowing that I was going to have exactly the opposite. I had no support whatsoever. Kurt was highly unprofessional and kept trying to annoy me by repeating himself several times as if he was reading some sort of scripting. 32 minutes of him talking and he still had not offered me a solution.

I told him the guest was asking for a refund and I had no problem  giving her a refund. He said that I had no evidence the guest was unhappy about the house rules and had asked for a refund. I told him the communication had happened via WhatsApp and the n he started giving me a whole sermon about WhatsApp messages. He then said if I wished I could share the written evidence. I told him I was not trying to prove anything, that the guest wants to leave and I'm about refunding her. He then goes on to repeat himself. I then say that I'm more than happy to share the WhatsApp messages if they are needed. He doesn't say he needs them, but then starts repeating himself again but trying to make a point that I could share them if I "wished". I don't him I didn't have an issue about sharing them if he needed them. However, he was not having that. He was determined to have some sort of unprofessional inappropriate type of competition with me on the phone.

He then started threatening accusing me of being difficult and saying that he was here to help but I was not letting him. He asked me if he could send a message for me to send the WhatsApp messages and I said yes. He then tells me that he needs me to put me on hold and I answer "that I do not have a choice". He then says that he cannot help me anymore. The call is cut. Then he calls me again and then I'm not joking he starts robotically repeating to me everything that he had said in the previous call. Forcing me to listen to everything  again. This second call lasted 28 minutes. At some point I asked him what we should do. He said I was interrupting him and threatened to hang up. He then forced me to say that I "wished" to share the WhatsApp messages with him. I had to submit to his bullying in order to try to get some help.

I sent him 4 WhatsApp  messages. He then went on a long sermon saying that the messages may not be valid evidence (evidence of what??) because they showed the name of the guest but not her number. He spent about 5 minutes speaking in a very passive aggressive manner clearly trying to diminish me.  In the mean time I erase the guest as a contact so that her number (not her name) would show on the messages and sent everything to him again showing the guest's number.

While he was talking non-stop forcing me to listen to him without offering me any help whatsoever, I also sent the gust a message on WhatsApp asking her if she could come back to the house at 11am to do her check out. I then also sent her a booking alteration.

I have never had such an appalling experience with Airbnb before. In fact, everyone I've spoken with on Airbnb have been helpful and professional. I called Airbnb when I most needed help and I am unlucky enough to come across such an unprofessional,  horrible person. You don't call Airbnb at 10pm on a Friday night if we don't need help. I called for help, not to be bullied, attacked and diminished.

I've decided to post this here to express how disappointed, appalled and angry I am to be bullied for over an hour by an Airbnb customer service assistant. I also intend to report this horrible experience to the appropriate team at Airbnb.

[Anonymous]

@Pedro1613  That does sound like a hassle, but on the other hand a guest is entitled by default to access their rented space at all hours between their check in and check out. I've never seen a host on Airbnb before that felt entitled to dictate how late their adult guests are allowed to stay out at night.

[Pedro1613]

Hi Andrew

I don't think it's a matter of "feeling entitled to dictate how late their adult guests are allowed to stay out at night". People stay out for as long as they want. I am entitled to have control of my own home.

Booking a private room in someone's house is very different from booking an apartment or a hotel. If I book a private room in someone's home, I have to bear in mind that person's house rules, which can be quite unique to their context.

I'm a home owner and in my house I make the rules, and they're not random, they're clearly listed on the Airbnb website, and I always ask guests to make sure they are happy with them. In my listing, I refer to the house rules in several locations. One of my house rules is:

"No entry after midnight - for security reasons I lock the front door at 12 midnight. If you need to come in the house after midnight, please let me know at the time of booking so that we can agree in advance."

I lock my front door at 12 midnight. I'm not happy or feel comfortable to have people in and out of my house in the middle of the night while I am sleeping. Sometimes, if the guest lets me know at the time of booking and explain why, I'm happy to make an exception.

If a guest intends to be out late at night, they shouldn't book my place. 

Hosting on Airbnb doesn't mean I should let guests do as they want while under my roof. This is my home so I am entitled to ensure my well-being, comfort, security and safety , and I try to do this by setting clear rules.

Pedro

[Emiel1]

@Pedro1613 

I am totally confused about your issue. If a guest wants to leave and have a refund (and you agree on that), just shorten the reservation and the guest will be refunded for the unused nights. 

Why have this conversation with Airbnb CS anyway ?

[Pedro1613]

Hi Emiel

Yes, you're totally right. I can see that now. I didn’t have to call Airbnb. I just had to send the guest a request to alter the check-out date. I learned that yesterday.

I had a similar issue in the past when I called Airbnb and the agent was super helpful and objective - within 5 minutes all was sorted with me and the guest, so I suppose I was expecting the same assistance from the agent yesterday. Also, I am always trying to be careful not to lose my super host status, so I thought it would be a good idea to explain things to Airbnb so that they could see that it was not just a matter of me asking the guest to leave, but that the guest actually wanted to leave.

The agent yesterday could have helped me in a 5-minute conversation, but I actually can’t understand what happened. I really want both of those calls to have been recorded because I’d like Airbnb to listen to them and take some appropriate action. We hosts cannot call Airbnb at 10pm on a Friday seeking support but instead be faced with unprofessionalism and passive-aggressiveness from a member of staff.

For an hour I was forced to listen to the agent. Any time I tried to interrupt him I was accused of being difficult and he threatened  not helping. He kept repeating “I’m here to help you”, but would not provide me with any clear solution or suggestion. Sometimes it felt like he was reading from a script. At times he would thank and congratulate me for being a super host, perhaps to fill in gaps because he didn’t know what to say or perhaps just as a malicious attempt to annoy me so that he could accuse me of not being helpful. During that time he even insinuated I might be lying about the guest having asked for a refund. The two calls (34 and 28 minutes) were a nightmare.

However, not all was in vain. While under all the harassment I was able to work out what to do. The experience taught me to be more independent and patient. I could have waited until the next day to read relevant information on the airbnb website and try to deal with the matter myself, but to be honest I think I’d still have contacted Airbnb directly to explain why I was curtailing the guest’s staying.

It’s all a learning experience, but I have to be honest, yesterday after being so disrespected and devalued during that call, I just felt like cancelling all the future bookings and leaving Airbnb.

[Huma0]

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@Pedro1613 wrote:

I had a similar issue in the past when I called Airbnb and the agent was super helpful and objective - within 5 minutes all was sorted with me and the guest, so I suppose I was expecting the same assistance from the agent yesterday. 

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Some would say asking Airbnb CS for help is like playing the lottery, because the result will entirely depend on the agent you get on the end of the line/on the message thread. I would say it's more like Russian roulette in that it can do more harm than good. Sometimes the rep will totally misunderstand what is going on and actually turn a simple problem into a huge nightmare. I could give you plenty of examples.

Sometimes you can't avoid getting them involved, but it's well worth versing yourself on Airbnb policies as best you can. It could save you a whole lot of pain. It's not always easy to navigate the help pages and find the info you're looking for. I have found this community to actually be the most helpful resource. There is some misinformation here of course, but there is a lot of sound advice. There are also some official 'community help guides' that you might find informative. 

Not only would that mean you would know how to deal with a lot of situations yourself without needing to involve Airbnb but, when you do need to involve them, it's important to know what you are talking about. I know that sounds counter intuitive as they are supposedly there to help you, but the majority of reps are outsourced, poorly trained and have very basic knowledge of policy. They get stuff wrong so often, you need to be able to quote Airbnb policy back to them in order to get a satisfactory result. I mean, literally quote it back word for word.

[Pedro1613]

Hi @Huma0 

Thanks very much for the helpful message. You're totally right. I should start familiarising myself with all the information on the website so that I can be more independent, and not get stressed when something comes up. 

[Huma0]

@Pedro1613 

Also, there is no such thing as the Superhost helpline. I don't know why so many hosts believe there is.

All this means is that, as a Superhost, you will be put through to the 'first available representative', which at best means you will have shorter waiting times. It does not mean you get a higher level of service, better trained reps, or any kind of preferential treatment. You might get told, "Thank you for being such a great host. We really appreciate everything you do for your guests, blah, blah, blah..." but this is meaningless. They are just reading from a script.

Before I got Superhost status, I used to get through to an Irish call centre because they handled the UK market. They were brilliant. Then I got Superhost and would automatically be directed to the 'first available agent'. That is when my customer experience went seriously down hill... I would even call during UK office hours in the hope that I would get through to the Irish team, but it rarely happened.

Since then (basically at the start of the pandemic) a lot of experienced CS staff were laid off and have been replaced by barely trained outsourced reps. So, even though I have lost Superhost status for now, I never get through to Ireland. I've been told that call centre still exists though. I am tempted to hang up and redial over and over until I hear an Irish accent! 

[Pedro1613]

@Huma0 

Thanks. I thought there was an exclusive line for Super Hosts. Silly me!

Normally it's possible to tell when they're reading a script, but to be honest I don't think that's so bad. It's just not good when the agent keeps reading the same thing over and over to deliberately try to annoy you. They finish reading; you ask them a question, and instead of answering your question directly,  they go on to read the same thing and if you tell them they are not answering your question, they say "I'm here to help you if you let me".

Do you thin they really record the calls? Yesterday I ad the impression that we were not being recorded during the first call and that's why he felt so free to harass me. Then, after 30 minutes he then called me again and stressed the call was being recorded. He then started to act very professionally telling me everything he had already told me during the first call, and i had to be patient and listen to him for another half an hour. I can only think that he was acting maliciously trying to get me upset in order to damage me as a host with Airbnb.

Pedro

[Huma0]

@Pedro1613 

No, you're not silly. A lot of hosts assume that's what the 'super host hotline' means. I initially thought so, but if you read what they actually say about it, it's being put through to the first available representative and that's it.

They have the system set up so that you are greeted with an automated "Hello Superhost!", which gives the host the feeling that they are through to some exclusive line, but it's just programmed to recognise your number, that's all. You then apparently get through to the first available rep, but I haven't noticed that I ever got through quicker than before, and, after that, I don't believe there is any difference, but perhaps I am wrong and someone else will correct me. I've asserted this on other threads and no one has corrected me yet, so I am guessing that I am interpreting this right.

I don't know about the recording of the calls to be honest. There was a very recent thread here though were the host (corresponding via the message system rather than by phone) said that the rep swore at her and was really pretty abusive. Not okay. Still, there doesn't appear to be an official complaints department at Airbnb (is it even legal not to have one?) or, if there is, they keep it very well hidden. I've never seen anyone here be able to answer that question when hosts or guests ask about it. We can report hosts or guests, but how do we report a CS rep?

[Helen744]

@Pedro1613 why on earth did you ring them at all , when you and the guest had it sorted . First rule of fight club, dont talk about fight club. Seriously only ring in an emergency. no one needs that H

[Pedro1613]

Thanks Helen Yes, I know that now. Sometimes we need the experience to learn.

[Gordon0]

Me to guest: Sorry this doesn't work for you, cancel your booking via Airbnb and I'll refund you. 

You chose torture, @Pedro1613, and for no good reason. 

[Pedro1613]

Hi Gordon

Thanks for your message. So are you saying that in that type of situation, it's best to ask the guest to change the check-out date themselves? But I don't think she'd have gotten a refund if she had just sent me a change request. She would have needed to call Airbnb and be honest, i.e. state the reason and say that I have agreed to give her a refund. However, Airbnb would still call me to confirm the refund. I could at that stage, if I had not be honest about refunding her, not authorise the refund.

I was lucky the lady yesterday was very honest, She confirmed not having read my house rules and that my "by-midnight" house rule didn't work for her. I knew I didn't need to give her a refund, but I wanted to. she told me she was broke so she needed the money.

[Huma0]

@Pedro1613 

You are correct that if the guest initiated a cancellation, and she was not entitled to a refund under your cancellation policy, she would not have automatically have gotten one.

However, there is an option for the host to offer an additional refund WITHOUT involving Airbnb. You just have to calculate the correct amount. It's worth noting that you it's better to wait to do this just in case the guest then puts in some other kind of claim. You do not want to refund the guest twice!

A much easier way to do it, which is what I believe you did, is to make an alteration to the dates. Either you or the guest can request the alteration and the other party needs then to approve it. Job done. Again though, you need to be confident that the guest is honest and is not going to then try to put in some erroneous claims for a refund for some 'travel issue'. Remember that even if you have received the payout for the booking, Airbnb can deduct money from your future payouts.

I know it's a lot to take in, but that is why it's best to acquaint yourself as much as possible with the policies, but also the loopholes! This CC has a wealth of information on all of that...