Disappointing Customer Service Experience

[Riccardo455]

I have never had problems with Airbnb customer service before and the experience I had yesterday quite truly shocked me.

I am accustomed to asking for help from many other tech companies and the experience is always great but not this time. 

I had booked accommodation for 2 nights in Crete with a Flexible Cancellation Policy. Since I was unsure if I could catch my flight I decided to cancel the accommodation booking and receive a full refund. In the cancellation policy, the details below appeared:

Cancellation policy

Free cancellation before 3:00 PM on Jul 21

So I proceeded to cancel at 1:59 PM on Jul 21. 

I fill in Step 1: Select a reason.

On the right hand side of the screen I am shown the price breakdown with a full refund. So I click continue to Step 2 at 2:00 local time.

This is something similar to what I was seeing on the right-hand side of the screen (in my case the Total refund and Paid to date were showing the same amount). The cancellation policy was still showing Full Refund

I proceed to Step 2: Send a message.

I send a message to the host explaining my circumstances and tell him that in case I manage to catch my flight I will rebook the accommodation. I am still shown the price breakdown with a Full Refund on the right hand side. 

So I officially send the message and request the refund, by that time it is 2:01 PM and I am still shown the price breakdown with a full refund. 

When I receive the confirmation email the details in the email show I am refunded a quarter of the total refund that I was indicated. 

At this point, I was quite sure it was just a server mistake. So I contact the customer service at  2:06 PM local time. Their average reply time is 1hr, so I spend the entire day on my laptop. Their replies are unclear and accusatory. I am told that I was 1 minute late because I had to read the terms and conditions that specifies that 3:00 PM was referring to the time in Crete not my local time. 

I ask them why it is not specified what time zone 3:00 PM refers to (it can just be indicated +2 GTM but it is not).

In addition, explain that the price breakdown was indicating a full refund. They tell me "if you do not have proof of that we are just going to close the case". This was after 7 hours of trying to get in touch with them and the assistant almost hung up on me. In the end I did not receive any refund, and spemt the entire day liaising with people, who instead of helping me were pointing fingers at me.  

I am quite saddened by this experience and hope Airbnb can improve the customer interaction in the future.

[Emiel1]

@Riccardo455 

IMO the time refers to the first check-in time on the listing and is ofcourse local time at the location of the listing. The screen shows full refund, but it was displayed to you before the deadline. The actual submission of the cancellation seems to be done after the deadline. If you would have refreshed the page, you would have seen different refunding results 

[Riccardo455]

Hi @Emiel1 , thanks for your assistance. It is not possible to refresh the page in the midst of a cancellation as the server kicks you out when you refresh and have to start the cancellation process again.

Perhaps a way to improve this is if Airbnb were to automatically update the cancellation page whenever a cancellation deadline passes.   

[Emiel1]

@Riccardo455 

OK.

Then you just had bad luck passing the deadline while in the cancellation process, not aware of passing the deadline.

You can sent feedback to improve the platform to : Airbnb Feedback