Community Support during COVID-19

[Aisling]

Hello everyone,

My name is Aisling and I manage our global Community Support Team. Over the past three months, we have been hit by an unprecedented wave of challenges due to the spread of COVID-19.

My job is to ensure that you and the rest of our community have the support you need, especially at this difficult time and make sure we have the resources in place to do so. However, at a time where support is needed even more than ever, our team has been faced with some of the hardest challenges we’ve ever experienced.

In light of this, I wanted to share some of these experiences with you and most importantly what we’ve been doing about it and what we are currently working on.

Sudden and unprecedented volume of calls

As you may know, we have offices and support centers in locations across the world, but we rely on all of them to help with the volume of support we receive. The challenges we’ve seen here are:

• Our China team was the first to be impacted, dealing with volumes 600% above what we had planned for. The quarantine shut down our China office and one of our Customer Support sites.
• Once the WHO announced COVID-19 as a global pandemic, our global ticket volumes rose 400% above what we planned.

What’ve we done:

• The China team contributed over 100K of working hours during the Lunar New Year to manage the call volumes. We also built a self-solve and chat bot tool to manage the volume in just two weeks
• Our teams rallied and formed a task force, covering operations, engineering, legal and partner management teams, that met multiple times a day to tackle the issue

Office shutdowns

As the virus spread, all of our internal offices were required to shut down quite abruptly and all of our teams had to change to a work from home mode.

• Our partner sites where we manage the majority of tickets were also required to be shut down by the government and local authorities. This meant we temporarily lost almost 80% of our global community support network within days.

What’ve we done:

• We had to get laptops enabled and distributed to 7,000 specialists across 25 sites around the world.
• Within a matter of one week, we had moved around 70% of partner specialists to working from home

Where are we now

We’ve done a lot in a short period of time, but as you can imagine we are still working through our backlog.

• We are currently working through technical and regional constraints to enable all of our teams to connect to the phone lines.
• We are under pressure on our phone lines, in particular English and Portuguese.
• As a result, we have shortened hours of operations temporarily, but are working to get them back to normal hours as soon as possible.

We also launched a new initiative that temporarily redeploys Airbnb staff to the Community Support team to help us more quickly meet your needs. Things are moving rapidly and so we hope you see a difference in response time very shortly.

Finally...

I am incredibly proud of how our teams have rallied together in such a short amount of time to serve our community and we are all working around the clock to continue to support you.

I can’t imagine how difficult it has been for all of you with these unprecedented changes. We are here to listen and support you as much as we can. Please continue to share your feedback here in the Community Center and also through the listening sessions, I've been receiving regular updates from the community team. I will keep you posted with further updates.

Thank you for your support and patience while we get our team back on track and adjust to this new world.

Aisling

[Dina548]

Juan, 

Be careful what you say, beacuse we should treat each other with respect here. Yes, I have agreed to the set policies as all hosts and guests have agreed with some terms of use when they created their accounts, where situations like this are clearly defined.

Once again, I am also the host, but for me ethic is the top priority. I want to protect my guests, and make them feel safe. And for sure they will rebook when the pandemic stops. It is specific situation and I can not be angry at my guests and force them to risk their health just to earn money.

Greetings,

D

[Anthony1092]

Nobody forced you to travel.  You chose to travel.  

[Brenda878]

I am also really frustrated how Airbnb is handling reservations during this worldwide pandemic. I have a reservation for a home in Florida with seven others with a check-in of April 22. We would only get less half our money back if we cancel. One couple already cancelled their flight and the rest of us are waiting to see if we can get a refund or credit to book after this pandemic is over. Our option from the host was to rebook a few dates in Sept/October... three people already took vacation dates from work this year, so going in Oct/Sept is not an option for us.  We are from Wisconsin and are on a Stay at Home order through April 24. Minnesota is also on a Stay at Home order and businesses are closed for 2 weeks so I am off work. The President of the US is telling people to stay home and avoid contact with people. People are DYING from this virus every day. YET, Airbnb seems to be in denial and refuses to extend the refund for those of us checking in after April 14. If this date is not extended, shame on you Airbnb!! We will not book with Airbnb again and I'm sure they will lose other customers as well. Word travels fast!

[Aisling]

Hello @Brenda878 ,

Thank you for your comment here. I know it's a hard situation for all of our community at the moment.

I know you and many other people here in the CC are all anxious to hear whether our Extenuating Circumstances policy will be extended past April 14th bookings and that you are wondering if you will receive a refund. As you can imagine, finding a policy that suits all of our community both hosts and guests isn't an easy thing to achieve. We have a dedicated team working around the clock to ensure we get this right before announcing any changes. We are very conscious that time is moving quickly and so we will aim to have an update this week.

Thank you,

Aisling

[Macrina0]

Hi 👋 They are very busy helping us too and it’s not easy for us to be attended by the assistant of Airbnb. It’s difficult for us to judge at this moment... But hope we have to understand our guests and we really needed  to response them as we are hosting them. We have to communicate with the guests time to time to make them feel they are important. If the guests will not response , that’s the time you can tell them it’s their problem and you can even screenshots the messages you sent to them that you are trying to reach them and that’s the time you can’t agree what the guests got is your 100 percent policy.

If the host, us ,ignored the guests it’s not good ,and if we response late as you don’t have internet and you don’t have guests arrive that day, you have to do something about It, We have to response them in politely and do what you must do and do the agreement. We have so much options at this time. We have to be grateful in anyway as we are lucky to meet people around the world but still, there’s people who don’t like our service it’s OK they are not out lost, they lost us if we are good people. I suffered now as I don’t have another income and no help from the government, still, if the guests cancelled I replied as soon as possible after I noticed my messages from the guests. Some of them they don’t cancel as they want me to adjust the dates by me,as they trusted me. Thanks to them. But of course difficult so much to think to deal right now and hope they can help us ( AIRBNB) God bless us all 🙏❤️ Stay safe everyone !

We can’t blame people around the world, let’s blame COVID 19 If anyone can see that COVID 19 make sure to burn in fire or even throw it in the boiling water ( 😊 ) Spread the love ❤️ 

[Trudi15]

Airbnb has to do more than extending the extenuating circumstances date. This may help guests but not hosts at all. I am a host and have people cancelling in all months up though September. Basically my business and income is dead for the whole high season this year. The response must be for Airbnb to get significant bail out $$ from the feds and pass on to hosts , who can then refund everyone. Until that happens it will be difficult for everyone and each extension of the date is just short term and not solving the large problem

[Wendy187]

Airbnb is not protecting their super-hosts during covid19, and leaving them high and dry. Your lack of protection to superhosts during this pandemic is not acceptable.

You are only protecting your guests under the extenuating circumstances but it should include your super-hosts as well! Superhosts are your crucial essential building blocks to your company!  Any reservation cancelled due to covid19 should be reimbursed to superhosts, period. 

[Emily1160]

A much simpler issue that shouldn't be one: My cancellation fell within the announced refund policy, and I haven't gotten refunded. Support is nonresponsive. What to do?

[Cindy859]

I am in this exact same predicament.  We fell within the extenuating circumstances policy.  Canceled and requested refund on 3/13... Host originally was not going to refund but then the policy changed... haven't heard from host or airbnb after several messages.  

[Lizzie]

Hello @Emily1160, @Cindy859,

Lovely to meet you, my name is Lizzie and I am a Community Manager here. 

As I'm sure you've seen from Aisling's post here, there is a slight delay on some Support tickets, but I'm sure it won't be long before you hear back. 

Emily - Can I ask when you contacted the team and when you check-in date was due to be?

Cindy - I believe once your refund is on it's way to you you should receive a email confirming it, so keep an eye out for that

I'll also drop a note to a colleague of mine to make sure that everything is in order with your cancellations and will let you know.

Thank you,

Lizzie

[Emily1160]

Hi @Lizzie , thanks for the response. My check-in date was March 15. I first messaged the team after cancelling my booking on March 13, then again on March 22, 25, and 27, with no human response.  I received a refund of $0.47 (47 cents) on March 13.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Emily1160,

Just to get back to you, your ticket is still open and so someone will get back to you soon. I'm sorry it's taking a little bit of time, but rest assured it shouldn't be long. 

Do keep me posted. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Cindy859]

Thank you Lizzie!  I'll keep watching. 

[Lizzie]

Hello @Cindy859,

Just to get back to you, I've been updated that your ticket has been resolved now, and message is on it's way to you from our Support Team. : ) 

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Lai-Yuen-Jean0]

hello, is anyone can help me!  my Oaxaca/Mexico booking fell in between 3/19-4/18 and paid in full USD 753.29 in Feb!  i cancelled my booking on 3/22 after US government issue level 4 travel restriction - calling all aboard citizens return home right away and Mexico COVID-19 situation seems unknown!  My host agree to fully refund rest of my stay when i inform her i booked flight to leave on 3/22!  

when i came back US/NY, i requested refund  USD 643  from the host (this is max amount i can request via resolution center, even though 3 nights stay with fees only $91 and i should receive usd 675.  but  i am OK with it!)  my host refuse to pay me thru standard bnb platform and insist to send money to my bank/credit card...  after she asked me very sensitive financial infos to do the transfer!  i flagged bnb help to assist my host to do correctly via platform, but it did not go anywhere!  so my host end up wire money thru Western Union  and paid me only USD 491 and as well have me paid MXN 700 fee for wiring!  

in short, i paid usd 262 for 3 nights instead $91, almost triple fold increase!!  when i asked her is it mistake and she is no longer available....   

To me, this is disheartening as my host did not honor our agreement and being very shaded bypass platform and so she does not risk to penalize from community!  

i wishes airbnb can step up and take some action to stop this kind of practice.

be well and safe!

jean