You don't care in the least about your hosts or your superhosts.
I have been an AirBnB Host for about 10 years. I have been doing it at full time properties for the past 4 years. I've been a superhost that entire time. I have around 800 reviews (I think) over the years.
I always read horror stories from hosts who say that AirBnb has locked their accounts and that they have done nothing. In my head, I thought these people were just bad hosts. I assumed that they had done something and they were just not admitting their own issues. Unfortunately, that assumption was incorrect.
I had a guest last week who had never used AirBnB. A husband and wife with a dog and a baby. They had a four night reservation. I sent them the check in info. They never responded. I sent them welcome message the day before. They never responded. That's fine. Some people just want to do their own thing. All good. I never heard from them at all.
On that Friday after their reservation ended, I received an email at 3:36am from AirBnB stating that my account was being locked because of a guest safety concern and that I would be able to discuss this with the representative on Monday at 6pm when she got back into the office. MONDAY at 6PM??? They really planed to leave my account locked for 3 days because a guest with no reservation history and no reviews reported a safety concern despite the hundreds, if not thousands, of past guests who had never reported anything similar. AirBnB never contacted me. The guest never contacted me. The guest stayed in my house through the entire reservation, left on the last day and then made a "safety complaint" which triggered my account lockout without even a discussion (at 3:36am). Not even an attempt by AirBnB to reach me. That is SO disappointing.
I called and spent about five hours on the phone Saturday morning with various AirBnB reps trying to get it escalated and resolved. All of them told me the same thing. We can escalate this, but no one will look at it until this support rep returns and they were right. I have yet to receive a call back from anyone despite replying to the case and uploading pictures and evidence against this guest's claim. I am locked out of messaging. I am locked out of reservations. My calendars shows as blocked out on all properties, not just the property that was reported. The house in question is our highest rated at 4.95 and has back to back reservations. It has had 3 vacant days in the past six months. I have had three new guests check in since they locked it. I have had to track back through past communications to find their phone numbers and reach out to them directly. It's worked out okay. Not ideal, but it's worked.
To top this off, when I went to the house after I received the email, it was trashed. The king size mattress and comforter were covered dog urine and the tub looked like they had bathed their dog multiple times. It was covered in hair and scratches. It was obvious they left their dog in the house unattended while they went out for the day. However, I can't file a damage claim because my account is locked. When I called support about it, they told me they also couldn't file one on my behalf for the same reason. This guest reported me. He did so to get out of paying for the obvious damages and bad review he would receive. I believe he knew that if he was first to complain, they would take his side. No questions asked. That's a problem. AirBnB did absolutely no due diligence. They didn't look at my positive host history or the fantastic reviews of this house. They didn't contact me to discuss the situation. They didn't even give me the opportunity to call in to speak to anyone because my rep was "out for the weekend". They just made a judgement and shut my account down. I am having to spend extra time working on resolving this, and I cannot even make a claim to recover the damages this guest did before they called in to get my account shut down. Why would AirBnB side with someone who has a brand new account over a person with ten years of history before even looking into the situation or speaking with me? Why? Because they just don't care about their hosts.
This will get resolved, hopefully today. I don't plan to stop using AirBnB, though I do plan to re list it on other sites and see how that experience is. I love AirBnB. I love using AriBnB. I travel with AirBnB. I am rethinking all of that. This experience has been awful and this policy of making one sided judgements is beyond unreasonable. What is the point of building a solid hosting history and maintaining superhost status if something like this can happen?
I've always done right by AirBnB. Unfortunately, they haven't reciprocate with a mutual level of respect.
Look, AirBnB asked me to be a local host ambassador a couple of months ago, and I would have done it if I had time. I run a large host alliance group that covers the front range of Colorado. I worked with the City of Colorado Springs on regulations and fought to keep AirBnB legal in Colorado. I have been invested and spent years promoting the benefits fo AirBnB.
Why?
