As a busy host, I have missed several important holidays whe...
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As a busy host, I have missed several important holidays when setting pricing and minimum night stays. My market is a weeken...
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This is new. I called Airbnb Support today, on the special number for Superhosts, for help. It's extremely time sensitive because the guest is trying to book for TODAY, to check in tonight for 5 nights. He is not able to complete the booking. I want to know why, in case there is some problem with my listing.
-- I got a recording which asked me to identify if the call is about an existing reservation -- I said yes, because it's about a current booking, right now. Then, it asked me to select from a list of successful (confirmed) existing bookings. It's not there obviously. Then the recording said that if it's not about a current confirmed booking (w/ checkin within 72 hours) I can only write to Support on the messaging system. In my experience, I pretty much never get any response until weeks or even months later, if ever -- obviously too late to be of ANY help.
Previously, you just had to wait longer, sometimes hours, to get someone when it's not about a confirmed booking. Now, they won't let you wait.
Isn't that like way unacceptable?
If Help is not available, try find alternatives. Like sending the guest the booking yourself via special offer.
Or try to determine from guest why they can not complete the booking (If calender problem: try if you can make same booking yourself in your own listing).
Or have another booking platform available as backup when Airbnb fails.
BTW A attempt to book is NOT an excisting reservation !
Kind regards,
Emiel
Honestly - Airbnb doesn't want people to book off platform and goes to ridiculous heights to prevent it. Then does stuff like this. Can you escalate on social media? They're sensitive about their image because the press are monitoring them in advance of the IPO. Try FB and Twitter?
@S14 Be aware that there is an outside chance that the guest couldn't complete the booking because they don't have the means to pay or they fall into a high risk booking category. It may be this is a booking worth missing.
Alternatively it could be a great guest and just an Airbnb glitch.
Oh, I agree with your assessment about that guest. However, I just think -- in general - that it's way unacceptable that there is no support, literally none, unless someone already booked and their checkin is within 72 hours. There are zillions of other valid queries that warrant support.
I see Airbnb Support spending tons of wasted time on many things (want a list?) -- and then when there is a legitimate question, even from a Superhost, there is literally no one to speak with. Yes, I know they are crazy busy. Well they wouldn't be overloaded IMHO if they stopped the following time wasting practices:
1) Every time I write "please close this thread" I get a lengthy chatty message from support instead of simply closing it.
2) Airbnb actually tells guests that the cancellation fees (for bookings made during the pandemic) are negotiable(!!!) -- And so, obviously, they are deluged with lengthy daily calls from aggressive guests. If they simply stated that the policies are not negotiable (just like a non-refundable plane ticket), I am certain the load on support would decrease dramatically. Since there are so very many cancellations surrounding Covid, this is a never ending nightmare.
3) They keep baby stepping the Covid cancellation policy for stays booked before the pandemic. There is no scientist on the planet (except for a couple of wacko conspiracy theorists) who EVER predict that there will be a vaccine anytime soon. Why not simplify the process and just come out and say that ANY outstanding reservations made pre-Covid for future dates are cancellable - right now. Stop dragging out the agony, the ambiguity, the never-ending flood of calls to support. This process -- of extending the cutoff date every two weeks for just a few weeks in advance -- is causing so very much havoc for everyone.
4) When someone writes to Support, there should be an effort to actually answer the specific questions asked. (Novel approach, eh?) Instead we mostly get non-sequitur canned responses. Maddening.(It's not so hard -- count the question marks in the query and be sure to address each one.)
5) When someone contacts support regarding a problem between a host and a guest, implementing a policy of requiring the support personnel to actually read the message thread between said host and guest would actually -- I'm certain -- shorten the duration of the support investigation. Diving in blindly is not likely to solve anything. And that is the current M.O. Over and over again, it's seriously a policy. (Don't read, just copy some canned response.)
Oh, that's just a few suggestions -- in the off chance they might wind their way to someone at Airbnb who might be in a position to fix systemic problems. I have more suggestions too - but the above would really make a difference iMO.
I would really like to speak with support. It’s hard been three weeks to deal with an unconfirmed guest, during the calendar “not working” issue. I can’t get any help! I message daily and it gets closed! I’m beyond frustrated.
It's unacceptable for support to be unreachable. I don't mind waiting on hold, but this is really bad.
Apparently I'm not the only one for whom support simply closed a thread without responding. Why does Airbnb permit that???