RIDICULOUS!!!!Airbnb suspended my account saying I discriminated against a guest with service animal

[Nanxing0]

Story is this. I received a booking request (instant booking off) with a message saying "Visiting for work". The guest has 3 reviews on profile total rating of 4.0 so I almost immediately started the decline process and left the note in the decline telling the guest that her review rating does not meet our requirement (I don't accept anyone with rating lower than 4.5 I think that's a reasonable requirement). At the same time the guest sent me a 2nd message saying she has a service animal with her. I actually didn't see the 2nd message while I hit the decline button but nevertheless, I declined the guest NOT because of the service animal, but because of the review rating.

Then yesterday I received an email from Airbnb saying my account was suspended because I discriminated against this guest !! This is BEYOND RIDICULOUS! Does Airbnb not review the situation before punishing hosts? 

Here's the message history.

Taylor11:32 PM

Visiting for work!

Message from Airbnb Service

Request received · 1 guest, Jun 23 - Jun 24

Taylor11:33 PM

2 guests, and I will be with a service dog.

Message from Airbnb Service

Unfortunately, this Host isn't able to welcome you at this time. Any of your charges or authorizations will be refunded. Explore other places to stay

Biao11:34 PM

I'm sorry your review rating does not meet our requirement

[Robin4]

@Nanxing0 

I am almost ashamed to say that I ever worked in Airbnb customer support. Customer support appears to be at its lowest ebb since the company started.

Prior to the pandemic support was not 'wonderful', but it was reasonably effective, due process was followed and although there has always been a guest centric emphasis, at least user complaints were handle in a relatively even handed and efficient way.

When Covid-19 hit Airbnb laid of 1,900 company staff......25% of it's entire workforce, almost all of them in support, and they have since been replaced with outsourced staff from 2 companies.....Arise Virtual Solutions and Zendesk. These personnel work from home and their training appears to be minimal.......every enquiry is now met with, "I will pass this on to the appropriate team/member, someone will get back to you".....and rarely does. Problem solving is not done at the coal face any more. And if what we are seeing here is typical across the board, the emphasis now is, closing tickets, not effective problem resolving. 

The last two times I have had to contact support they were ineffective, I knew far more about my issue than they did. 

A/......How can I send a special offer to a guest who has previously stayed here, before booking?

B/.......Why has a mysterious $736.52 payout showed up in my transaction history and my bank account?

These people are supposed to have this sort of information at their finger tips......these are the sort of issue we hosts need competent help with, not just links to community help guides for goodness sake. 

I don't know how to advise you @Nanxing0.......It defies logic that the company would suspend  a 1,500 + review Superhost with 15 listings on the say-so of one guest who claims discrimination, but there you go,  it's hard to fight someone who keeps on changing the rules but I hope you get your listings back public quickly......all the best!

Cheers.........Rob

[Nanxing0]

@Robin4 Thank you so much! What makes me angry is that it's SO OBVIOUS that the guest's accusation is completely groundless. If it's something I did then sure I would take any punishment applicable but I didn't give a sht about the service animal while what the ambassador said in the email sounds like they are doing this because of something I never did and didn't give me ANY chance to defend or explain. 

And another funny thing is that they also mentioned in the email that I have received such warning before, while I have absolutely no idea. Honestly this is really the first time I declined a guest with service animal although the actual reason has nothing to do with it. I have communicated with several guests with service animal before. Every time if a guest tells me he/she has a service animal, I do communicate with the guest about potential risks (other guests in the same building might be allergic we have no control of, and if the animal causes damage, etc), and guests' responsibilities (be with the animal at all time and not leave the animal alone in our property, leash/tether/hold the animal while in common hallway, keep the animal under control). If this is considered discrimination I have nothing to say.

[Nanxing0]

Update: My account has been restored. The ambassador only asked me to confirm read and acknowledge the non-discriminatory policy of Airbnb and told me as soon as I confirm read and acknowledge the account would be restored -- at least for this part they are being sort of reasonable.

And then a funny thing is that the ambassador said this in the email "If something like this happens again, we do have the right to review your account for further action.". And I replied to the email asking the ambassador this "I want to clarify, by saying "something like this happens again", are you saying I cannot decline a guest if he/she has a service animal, even if his/her reviews are very bad?" And the ambassador has since never replied to this message not sure why. Am I being an **bleep** by asking this?

[Fred13]

Nowadays even the mere mention of the word 'discrimination' causes a glaze over the eyes as if entering the Twilight Zone of make believe.

[Nanxing0]

@Fred13 Absolutely. And this has drastically boosted the victim mentality of some people -- they try their best to attribute every denial they receive to be related to discrimination.

There have been several times I declined booking requests with nothing in the message, and then those guests immediately turned into cursing mode saying I was discriminating against them -- while I had no idea about what to discriminate as Airbnb hides their photos and names. So funny.

[Helen744]

@Fred13 I IB Nanxing so I am not ever likely to decline a booking for being a 4.5. Unless there is a remark in the reviews of some disagreeable or questionable nature .I do think without actual comment from other hosts that may be a form of discrimination without the service animal component but maybe ITS not .I do not accept animals either but I believe that the service animal is compulsory so that only leaves the 4.5 review as a form of discrimination so I really do not understand what may or may not have occurred here I believe the review system needs to be fixed and does in itself discriminate against hosts . IF you are getting all high reviews then you must be going over and above for them.Review ping pong is a deadly game. You must be spoilt for choice. Unlike many of us recently All the best H

[Nanxing0]

@Helen744 4.5 is fine to me -- I'm not expecting everyone to have 5.0 but a guest with only 4.0 after 3 reviews rings alarm to me, even if the previous hosts didn't say anything. As far as I know Airbnb does help guests remove reviews they don't quite like but the ratings get kept.

One example. If a guest leaves our listing incredibly messy/dirty and our cleaning crew spends a lot of time cleaning, I might not necessarily mention too much in the review text as I think that's a minor thing, but the guest certainly won't get a 5 star from me. Most likely I will put a 3 in the cleanliness and the overall would be a 4.

That's similar to when we do long term rentals we require a certain credit score. I always ask for at least 650 score but I know other hosts might be OK with 600 or even 550. I don't think that's a discrimination at all.

As of I'm spoiled for choice, probably but I think that has more to do with my philosophy. I would choose to have my room vacant rather than to deal with a problematic guest. During the year of 2020 I also had most of the reservations cancelled and I started to try to lower my standard a little bit to make more revenue, but that ended up being more disastrous. 

[Helen744]

@Nanxing0 Interesting comments Nanxing ,as a simple Airbnb host I would never see or have access to a guests credit card.This is something I always tell guests who are baulking at photo Id requirements and somehow believe I set up an Airbnb to steal their identity..  as Airbnb is the booking agent .I hesitate to be definite here but if a review is removed for a guest or by a guest its all removed. I have been told that it is not possible simply to change it. It is wise to follow the rules ,to make our own and mark accordingly. My worst guests went on leaving a  trail of destruction and destroying hosts reputations by leaving very low stars and destructive remarks in reviews although barely communicating with me the host despite my efforts.these people do exist and will slip thru but as a 'hands on ' host we have opportunities to turn this around which maybe you do not,but no bookings is a disaster for all of us . H

[Nanxing0]

@Helen744 If you take a look on this forum it's not difficult to find other hosts reported that their review against a specific guest has been removed by Airbnb. I had one like this. It is a known fact that Airbnb always sides with guest on literally everything.

As for guest review, I don't really give a sht about a small number of guests leaving unreasonable reviews. This is the norm of the hospitality industry that there are always some people leaving bs reviews -- if you check booking agents like hotels.com you can always find such even with a very great hotel. I do check reviews to find the aspects that we can possibly improve to make a better experience for guests though.

We are hands on hosts as well. This is the main reason we don't like those hassles. I guess hands-off hosts would probably only view this as a business model and don't care about the guest behavior, which is why these days neighbors are not quite happy about us running Airbnbs in the community -- mainly due to some poor-behavior guests. We are very cautious on screening guests just don't want to make our neighbors unhappy.

[Huma0]

@Nanxing0 

I remember once declining a guest, and explaining the reasons why, but she immediately accused me of being "racist against Asians". I told her that, not only have I hosted hundreds of Asian guests (please check my reviews), that my current guests are Asian and I am also Asian and maybe she should re-read the reason I had given her before jumping to conclusions, to which she replied something like, "Oh, okay. Thanks."

But, what if she had contacted CS instead and accused me of discrimination? Would they have bothered to check anything with me or just have suspended me?

[Nanxing0]

@Huma0 I have the same feeling and have also experienced similar things except for that the guest was African American. I guess this should not lead to any suspension now as Airbnb has blocked hosts from seeing the guests' photo so presumably hosts don't know guests' appearance before booking is confirmed, unless you mentioned such things in the conversation or guests tells you in the initial message about their race.

[Huma0]

@Nanxing0 

For sure, blocking guest photos prior to booking should help prevent discrimination in some cases. I doubt that many guests would tell you about their race or colour in the messages.

In this instance, the guest thought I was being racist against Asians not because of her profile photo but nationality (which I could see on the profile). I guess people could also be discriminatory based on the guest's name if that name was particular or common to certain nationalities or races or religions. For example, if a guest is called Mohammed, I would assume that he was a muslim, but that doesn't tell me if he is a practising muslim or not, or much else really. He could be an atheist who just happens to come from a muslim background. Still, some people would still discriminate based on that.

It's funny because, in my case, it was actually the guest making assumption about race. It didn't occur to her that I, being a Londoner, could also be Asian!

[Nanxing0]

@Huma0 This is the so-called "victim mentality". Some people, when being declined, like to attribute the rejection to problems of the other person/party (e.g. discrimination) rather than problems within themselves. I usually screen guests based on only a few things: 1 past review, 2 profile information complete,  3 communication. These are all things guests can easily improve if they want to. 

Regarding the names, I agree that the name can be an indication of guest origin but I don't usually pay too much attention to it. I have noticed that some requests have the name also hidden as only the first letter. Not sure if Airbnb is doing some kind of experiment on this matter.

[Huma0]

@Nanxing0 

It's my understanding that the username doesn't have to be someone's real name. They can choose anything they want really and change it as many times as they like. I've had potential guests change their username in the middle of their correspondence with me.

I'm not saying that you or I would make any discriminatory judgements based on that username, but I do prefer when guests use a real first name. I like to be able to address people by name, rather than by 'N' or 'cute girl 1992' or whatever. I think it's the least we can expect from someone we are potentially going to invite into our homes. Still, I know some people don't feel comfortable about using their name or a clear profile photo on a public facing website.

Most guests aren't aware that you can't see their photo before they book, so I am not surprised that some assume that a host might be declining them due to the colour of their skin or the race that they appear to be. However, people do also need to calm down sometimes and think before they immediately make that assumption. I would never assume that unless someone had specifically said something that indicated their actions were motivated by some sort of prejudice.