Update of my 'Anatomy of the Airbnb Guest Hustle'

[Fred13]

This is really an update to my recent "Anatomy of the Airbnb Guest Hustle" post concerning how scammers & hustlers are gaming Airbnb's well-intentioned refund & review system.  I am also bringing this to Airbnb's attention direct, maybe it will prove helpful and make them aware how careful they must always be with guest claims.

Last month, for the first time in 7 years, we had a guest file a claim for a refund (50%).

1. The guest (who made the reservation) stayed the whole time, all smiles. The other 5 companions appearing to having a great time.

2. The leader didn't utter a word about any issues. Upon pick up the leader was quiet, the others laughing and even tipped the boat captain handsomely.

3. The leader within 1 hour files for a 50% refund (of course citing the classics: mold & cockroaches), and received silently a 20% refund at the end. In essence she stayed for free.

The guest however followed those tricky moves with a scathing 1* star review for good measure, which was taken down after 5 days after I took up the issue with Airbnb. My point with was Airbnb -  what is the likelihood that a guest (with a mere recent 3 reviews)  making the most absurd claims are remotely true against a place run by a host in his 7th year and after hosting 700 Airbnb groups all leaving smashing reviews? Mathematically that is 1/700 or .001, logically that is zero (0). It was taken down based on irrelevancy.

Now for the real kicker: The other companions just became aware of the leader's clandestine refund moves and are writing to us wanting to see her review.  They all have e-mailed us that none of the leader's moves makes any sense and that under no circumstances any of them are part of these moves and that they had indeed a fabulous stay.

In the scheme of things this barely hurts us, but I can well imagine how these guest scams are so damaging to others. Airbnb needs to remind whomever they use for their CS department to be absolutely fair towards hosts and to not encourage fraud of their well-intentioned system by being too flippant with refunds, otherwise they are encouraging an abuse of it.

[Elaine701]

@Fred13 

It's interesting that whenever you read about some wrongdoing in an Airbnb, it's almost always a host who scammed a guest. You rarely hear about guests scamming hosts. 

Given that hosts get clobbered if an ant shows up in the kitchen or a bedsheet has a crease in it, it seems to me that scamming by hosts would be a short lived endeavour (and should be). 

Here on the forum, we hear mostly about hosts getting scammed or unreasonably treated by guests AND Airbnb. Yet you rarely, if ever hear about it in the media. It's always the hosts doing wrong to a guest. 

?? 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

Luckly @Fred13  and @Huma0 you speak fluent English. Someone who doesn't speak any of main languages would hardly be able to explain the mistake and get his money back. 

Before Corona I was lucky once and my call was automatically redirected from CS Ireland to a Croatian speaker in CS Berlin. I was really surprised but it was just that one time, never before or after.

Once I asked if they could redirect me to someone who speaks Croatian and was redirected to the Russian 😄 😄 We ended up speaking English .... with slavic accent

[Fred13]

An interesting point. It is quite difficult to convey a point or sentiment accurately not in one's native language. My first two learned language where German and Spanish, then English (late teens); the hardest for me was English (so many exceptions in its pronunciation).

[Huma0]

@Fred13 

I've often heard people from other countries comment that they found English easy to learn, but I think that's just because they were perhaps more exposed to it growing up (from TV, movies and music etc.) than other languages.

English, being a miss-mash of so many languages, has so many words for the same thing and so many meanings for the same word, and don't even get started on pronunciation... The UK is such a small island and yet has such differing accents and dialects. Even I, having lived here since the age of two, sometimes struggle to understand a drunken Glaswegian. 

[Fred13]

@Huma0I will never forget the time I asked a Bobby in London how to get to Trafalgar Square, he gave a long direction how to do so - I didn't understand a word he said! LoL In the Cotswold and countryside was even tougher to follow (Tewkesbury & Chipping Campden).

Of course then there is Scotland, my son who was going to St Andrews at the time had to interpret everything everyone said. 

I am a serious student of English history and law but understanding the English is beyond my capabilities. 🙂

[Huma0]

Yes, the accents in Gloucestershire (and Somerset as well) can be very thick indeed. Not sure if you've ever seen the movie Hot Fuzz?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc

I dated a guy who was from Wells, Somerset, where it was filmed and he told me that this was no exaggeration.

[Gillian166]

@Huma0   
 I don't think English is easy to learn because we don't have a simple sentence structure, or spelling, or pronunciation. But, we English speakers are also so forgiving of accents and strange pronunciation, we let anything slide.  try this one (and I had to listen about 4 times before i could get every word). This is satire of course, (or is it?)
https://www.tiktok.com/@swag.on.the.beat/video/7126398675185585410?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

haha, just watched your link, SOOOO good. 

[Huma0]

@Gillian166 

Lol, I also could not understand a word of that and I used to live with a lot of Aussies. 

[Joseph1761]

Airbnb CS is a horrible to deal with.  As a Host I recently experienced an event that clearly qualified as Extenuating Circumstances pursuant to company policy. My claim was initially accepted in writing by the company, however when I questioned why my Guest would receive a refund but I would not receive my payout as outlined by their policy I was told the event did not qualify and therefore the Guests refund would need to be made at my discretion and cost as a host.   

I spent a lot of time with Airbnb support staff who clearly are solely in place to reject claims.  Ultimately despite agreeing with me point by point on a recorded line that the facts of my Extenuating Circumstance claim did meet their policy and that their written acceptance of my claim was incorrect I was told the claim was denied.    

Based on my experience, it is clear to me this company has no intention of honoring policies it markets to guests and hosts. 

[Fred13]

One of the points I been making with Airbnb is to beware of ' loose cannons', they make even the Pope very nervous. If a potential 'reservationist' reads a string of reviews, all within a somewhat general consensus (4-5 stars) and then all of a sudden a review encounters one resembling the ramblings of a lunatic (all 1s), of course it is easy to dismiss mathematically; but it may be a poor reflection on the review system itself since it appears to have no standard for fairness.

[Fred13]

(Oops, just realized I posted this in the wrong string. The one explaining how EC works poofed, but @Huma0 cover it.)

[Huma0]

@Joseph1761 

I'm not sure I understand your situation. From what I always understood RE cancelling guests under extenuating circumstances is that the guest does indeed get a full refund, but the host does NOT get the payout. So, even if CS had agreed that your cancellation did qualify for extenuating circumstances, you wouldn't have gotten paid. The advantage of it being EC is that you do not get 'penalised' as a host, i.e. no fine, no ding to your cancellation rate, no mention of it in your reviews. Unless something has changed in the EC policy that I'm not aware of?

I once had to cancel two sets of guests because I was having surgery. This was accepted under EC, guests got refunded, I didn't get any penalties, but I certainly didn't get paid anything either.

[Joseph1761]

Airbnb's policy does not state that a Host does not receive their payout in the event of an EC.  It says "Hosts that are impacted by an event covered by this Policy can cancel "without adverse consequences",  losing a payout as a result of an EC event beyond the Hosts control is an adverse consequence.  

Airbnb's policy defines "Event" as a discrete set of situations that occur after booking, are unforeseen at the time of booking, and prevent or legally prohibit completion of the reservation.  My situation was a large-scale outage of essential utilities where 170,000+ customers within the local utility service territory and another 300,000+ customers in an adjacent territory lost power for multiple days.  This is an event that is explicitly called out within their policy and meet all of the event criteria (i.e. the event occurred after booking, was unforeseen at the time of booking and certainly prevented completion of the reservation.  

Airbnb initially accepted the claim in writing.  Then when I challenged adverse consequences I was told the event did not qualify, this was not my intent at all.  CS claimed that because the event occurred prior to the Guests check-in it did not meet their definition, then I was told the event covered 3 days out of a 7 day reservation so the guest could have completed their reservation.  I don't know about you but I would stay somewhere for 3 days without power.  I was also told the claim was made after the guest canceled their trip so it wasn't a valid claim.  There is no where in the policy that states a claim must be made prior to canceling and in fact the guidebook page states in order that you should cancel, then make a claim and that claims must be made within 14 days after cancellation.  I spoke with another rep. who then stated Airbnb would refund the Guest and I could keep my payout,  I had the rep. repeat it twice since we were on a recorded line and asked for confirmation of our conversation in writing.  What I got back was that the event I keep my payout and the guest does not get a refund unless it is at my expense.  Again, not how I would treat a Guest.  I walked point by point through Airbnb's policy with yet another separate Airbnb rep. refuting each of the points item by item, the rep. agreed with me then said sorry we recognize Airbnb policy has room for improvement, but we won't accept the claim.   

[Huma0]

@Joseph1761 

I have no idea about the details of your extenuating circumstance. My comment was to do with the payout. 

The CS rep who told you that you would still get your payout probably didn't know what he/she was talking about, which wouldn't be unusual with the current state of CS where most reps are outsourced, poorly trained and often not versed in Airbnb policy.

The only situation I can think of where a host can cancel a guest's stay is when the guest has violated house rules and is told to leave, but even then, I wouldn't count on that happening.

If the guest has not done anything wrong, and it is the host who chooses to cancel, they do not get a payout, regardless of whether it's extenuating circumstances or not. The policy might state "without adverse consequences", but that simply means you will not face all the policies that normally come with a host cancellation, i.e. fines, loss of Superhost status, a black mark on your profile and a slap on the wrist. 

If you are unable to provide the accommodation, then you can't expect to still be paid for it. It might be due to a problem that is out of your control, but Airbnb does not insure hosts for that, nor does it claim to. The only 'insurance' it says it offers is in cases of damage caused by guests. 

[Joseph1761]

Policy short fall, it does not say fines, black mark, etc.  You are interpreting words that don't exist in the policy.  It simply says with no adverse consequences.  Not receiving your payout is an adverse consequence.   

Also in this case I did not cancel, the Guest did.  I was actually advocating on behalf of the guest because Airbnb did not want to honor their policy to refund the Guest.  Airbnb's decision was that I as the Host could refund the Guest or not.   

Based on strict read of the actual policy language both parties, Guest and Host, should be protected (or "insured" as you point out) from an unforeseen event beyond your control.  That is how contract law works and also how Airbnb markets their platform.