Hey guys! First of all, sorry for the offensive title, but currently I feel like we living in a idiocracy and it's the first time in over 4 years as a superhost, I think about canceling all my future bookings and totaly switch to booking forever. I would like to know if some of you also had horrible experiences with the mediation center/airbnb host care, like my experience with the following story. Sorry in advance for my bad english, I'm working on that 🙂 I'm gonna write a short story for the quick readers and below the long detailed story, and believe me, there's a lot to tell!
SHORT STORY:
- Group of guests totaly ruining my house
- open a case/request in mediation center the next day after guest left with pictures, guest denys all the guilt
- waiting 3 weeks for Airbnb to answer, promising to call me to fix asap
- even promised, no call in 1 week, so I'm calling them by myself and got another promise to fix the case asap
- Got an email, they ask for more docs, but it's not possible to upload more files to the already open mediation request
- I open a new request, full of info that I only opened the new request, to upload files for the old open request. I've put in the url to the old request everywhere!
- Both requests get closed immediately with reason "you opened a request 14 days after the guest left".
- no more response from support, even though I tried to explain the situation several times. For me only 2 reasons possible: They do not want to understand, or they are just bots responding.
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LONG STORY:
I recently had a guest totaly ruining my house a group of 4 people:
- they smashed and damaged my front door
- they cracked the sunlid
- they broke off a electricity wall plug on the terrace
- stole a lot of smaller stuff bulked in the closet, like toilet paper, coffee, batteries and all that stuff and in the end
- left the water ON on the terrace, so water was running for 24 hours all over the floor on the terrace, into the walls and so on(we still not sure if this will have a even bigger long term damage with trouble of mould etc).
So far so good, I noticed all the problems the next day and directly opened up a case in the resolution center, very optimistic that AirBNB gonna help me in this totaly clear case. I just posted pictures of the damages there and asked for 200€(which is also the same amount as the deposit), even though I was sure this will cost me much more, but I would have been confident with even getting only the deposit.
This was on 24. August(guest left 23. August), the guest rejected my ask immediately and said "he has nothing to do with the damage", which is ridicilous, since the damages where obvious and clear to see. After that, nothing happened for 18 days! I just got a bot response that my case is taken care of by AirBNB. After 18 days I got a message like "Oh we're so sorry we didn't work on your case, we will call you tomorrow to clarify this asap!".
I didn't receive any phone call in 5 days, so I called them by myself and just got choked off by a low level telephone employee, that they will respond by email. Indeed I got an email again with a lot of "sorrys", and that they will call me within the next 3 days.
I need to remember you guys, it was more than 3 weeks now, since I reported the issue!
As you may expect, I didn't got any phone call like anounced in their last email "within the next 3 days", so I called them again!
I then got told by a higher support level employee, that they will now take this case serious and escalate it. I asked why it's taking so long and he blamed me for it. I would have chosen the wrong option while opening the request. I remember having 3 options to choose:
1. Stolen or broken items
2. additional services needed
3. other reasons
I chose option 3. because I had several problems, like my cleaners needed much more time because the house was totaly wasted, I also had my constructors to come to remove the old and place a new sunlid, fix the door frame and so on. I also had to buy a new sunlid and several other stuff, so none of the 2 other options felt right for me to choose. Anyway, in the end the offensive employee on the phone said, the long waiting time was my fault. By the way, did you every notice, that all of these guys talk to you like you're their child?
After some days I got another email from (at least the 6. support employee responsible for my case), that they ask me to send documents/invoices for the jobs that have been done, he posted the link of my open mediation request to upload the documents. I was still waiting to get invoices from my constructors, so I was just ableto send them yesterday, 2 days after I got the last responce. I opened up the mediation center link and realized, it's not possible to add more files to this request, where I already have uploaded files in the past. So the easiest solution for me was, to open up a new request. I did so and posted the link of the old open request from the past in every text box, refering that I just opened that new case, to upload the docs which were asked for, for the old case. Are you curious what happened?
Within a few hours both cases got closed with the reason, that I opened a new request and it was more than 14 days after the guest left. So what these guys trying here is just ridiculous. They first didn't respond in weeks, then they ask for new documents but make it impossible to send them. After opening a new case, they say this is violating our "rules" and because of this, we punish you in closing all cases. After all this is my biggest disappointment in working with AirBNB in years, well knowing from the past, that this company gives nothing about their most important asset: the hosts. For me only 2 reasons for all this mess are possible: They do not want to understand, because they do not want to pay, or there are just bots responding.
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This was my story, I'm happy for every feedback! Thanks a lot in advance for reading my story.
All the best, Carlo
