My hope is that this piece of writing will be shared between people that currently is in the same kind of frustrating merry go round which is Airbnbยดs customer service. I have exited the circus, now that the last part of my payment finally has hit my bank account. A roller coaster of a nightmare that started on the 4th of April and has now ended on the 13th of June. When I tried to search for help online through various sites such as Reddit, YouTube or other sites of relevance to my inquiry, very little help was possible to find. You are welcome, and soldier on...
First and foremost: Donโt give up. For me it was never an option because I had so much money at stake from five different bookings, but I can imagine that if I had just one booking eg. two nights I would probably had tossed in the towel, because it would have been to time consuming compared to the earnings.
Concerning the merry go round I mentioned before, one could be tempted to think that Airbnbโs customer service is designed this way to wear out their hosts. You are being sent from one supportperson to the next, and so on, until you fold. What I realized being from Denmark talking to a person in another country is that we both are speaking a language that is not ours. This will definitely only add to the bonfire of frustration. When I called their customer service the first time I spend twenty minutes spelling out my name before continuing to the problem I was facing.
At the epicenter of this adventure with Airbnb`s customer service house of horror was my new phone number not being updated while my old number was still in use. I am not sure that anyone in the history of Airbnb has ever done that, but in case I am wrong I applaud their foresight and incredible brain capacity. The safety questions I had added did not work when I couldnโt log in with the old phone number not in use anymore. I will try not to tire you with the endless conversations with different support persons telling me to do the same things in order to get my account up on running. It was first when an Airbnb support person asked for my new number, and thereby took me by the hand, and asked me to send pictures of what I did concerning the 2 step verification. Also, quite important that everything was done by laptop/pc, not phone. Great success.
Next up was getting my money to the right account. I had an old bank account set up with my old phone number, so Airbnb was sending money to the wrong bank account. I tried to tell the support team that they were wiring money to a non-existing account and that my old bank told me that this money always will bounce back to the sender. Airbnb is a big company, I get that, but not once did they go into how their system works. It was as if this had never happenened in the history of Airbnb. They always contested that the problem was in my end, because they could see that the money had been transferred, to the non-existing bank account that is. This seems fishy to and in my opinion a way of getting people to give up. In this case where do the money wired end up, floating around in cyberspace or just generating revenue on an account connected to Airbnb.
I off course changed my old bank account to my new now that I could access it with my new phone number. I was very to the point mentioning all the booking codes and persisting that the money owed me was still in Airbnbยดs end. Note that Airbnb will try to get you to do something to solve the problem adhering to their device before they do anything adhering to their device. Little by little I was wired the money and finally all my payments were added to my account on the 13th of June 2022.
I hope that this piece of writing can help you on your quest to slay the giant that is big corporation T-Rex, and their horrendous way of treating their bread and butter.
