poor customer service

[Lisa6009]

A couple of weeks ago there was a major power outage affecting a big section of my neighborhood.  The power company notified the neighborhood that the power would be back on by noon the next day, the day my next guests were due to check in.  The power was not restored and I contacted the guest (who was mid-flight) and reserved them a hotel nearby on my credit card.  I then contacted Airbnb and asked them to take off one night of their stay.   The customer service rep I spoke with said this would be impossible and I politely asked to speak with a supervisor.  This is clearly an unusual circumstance and reducing the stay by one night would reduce my payout and Airbnb's fees, bascially covering the cost of the hotel I booked for them.  Airbnb's rep rudely told me that I could wait 24 hours to hear the exact same thing from her supervisor but it was clearly a waste of time-repearing that "it was impossible."  I asked again to speak with a supervisor.  She told me I would be contacted within 24 hours.  I followed up again a few days later on the airbnb message app when no one contacted me.  A few days later, I checked the app messages again, my issue has been closed.  Basically Airbnb got paid fees for an extra day and I had to refund the guest completely out of my payment.  This is not the first time I have had issues with their customer service--last time it was about guests who had a full on party at 2am--I was told that a specialist would get in touch with me ASAP and a week later no one had called me back.   Very frustrating. 

[Emiel1]

@Lisa6009 

I do not understand why you need Airbnb CS for this issue.

You can manage it yourself, for example by making a change request for the reservation and just amend (lower) the price in the changeform.

Then the guest is refunded and Airbnb fees are accordingly recalculated.

[Lisa6009]

you can't do this the day of the reservation.  That is why I needed customer service

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Lisa6009  English is not my primary language so maybe I didn't understand it well.... but why would you reduce their stay by one night, get paid less and cover the cost of the hotel from your pocket=?

I would either reduce their stay by one night so they can pay the hotel themselves or...., I would take this one-night payment and pay the hotel with it.

You can send an alteration/ reservation change request to your guest and your guest should accept it or decline it. You don't need CS to do it

[Lisa6009]

the hotel with taxes and parking was more than reducing by one night.  in the end, my guests paid for the hotel in full (which was guaranteed by my credit card).  I did refund  guest but Airbnb doesn't lower their fees based on the refund.  The reservation could not be altered because this was happening on the day of their reservation.  And Airbnb escalation never even bothered to call me back.  I hope they record their customer service reps because the woman I spoke to was flat out rude

[Colleen253]

@Lisa6009 Airbnb outsources their CS to call center workers who are contractors. They are not employed by Airbnb. These people are hardly even familiar with how Airbnb works. It's pretty much a pointless endeavour trying to get help from Airbnb anymore. 

[Lisa6009]

seems to be the norm with most companies now, outsource customer service to other countries with cheap labor

[Dale711]

Hi @Lisa6009 

Welcome to the community!😊

You have a point. Airbnb staffs lack of working and communication skills as same as other hospitality industry.However, it is always a place to imporve .

Massage from Airbnb co founder

https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky/

Airbnb, way to go! ✌️