Australian hosting payouts.

[Robin4]

Here is an sms I am starting to send out to my future iminent reservations. This is for reservations that are to take place over the next 21 days......

Hello ………….. This is Rob your Airbnb host for your up-coming stay on…………. Due to an internal error within the Airbnb organisation, Australian hosts have not received hosting payouts since the end of October. As there has been no communication from Airbnb as to the cause or the expected rectification of this problem I have to inform you, your upcoming stay with us has been compromised to the point where we are not in a position to honour existing Airbnb reservations. I love my hosting and will always continue to provide the great experience that has got us where we are, but, we do need to be paid for the service we provide, we have costs that need to be covered.

I suggest at this point you cancel your existing Airbnb reservation and I will direct you to another hosting platform where the financial transaction will be more secure. I have a flexible cancellation policy which means you will be fully refunded for what I should have been paid by Airbnb and I will undertake to cover some of the loss of any service fees that Airbnb charged on your reservation.

I am sorry to have to bring this news to you but, the total lack of any help or information from Airbnb has forced us into this! Please attend to this urgently and I will help in any way I can.        Cheers……Rob  

I am sending another sms to guest reservations in excess of 21 days to inform them of the situation and to tell them I will keep them informed over the next 14 days of any possible resolution that Airbnb may be able to conjur up but at this point their reservation is secure!

Gee whiz, and to think the payout side of this business was the main thing we could rely on Airbnb for....I have said it before....every day teaches me something!

[Sarah977]

@Robin4  Well, Rob, I'd say a lot of the pressure they're under from many fronts wouldn't be an issue in the first place if they took a different attitude. For instance, many objections to Airbnbs could be avoided if they conducted their business more responsibly. I'd venture to say that when neighbors try to get Airbnbs shut down in their area, it's because they have been disturbed by Airbnb guests being loud, throwing giant parties, blocking neighbors' parking spots, etc. And I'd venture to say that many of those Airbnbs are run by property management companies, absentee hosts that don't keep a close eye on things and are just in it for the money, or tenants who are illegally listing on Airbnb. If Airbnb made it mandatory for all listings to first submit either ownership papers or notarized permission from tenants' landlords to list, a lot of that disturbing nonsense would go away. But not only do they not require this, there have been numerous reports on this forum from distressed homeowners whose tenants are illegally listing the property on Airbnb and even after reporting this, along with documentation, Airbnb still leaves those listings up. Not only that, they even have information for tenants as to how to best convince their landlords to allow them to Airbnb. And they encourage faceless property managers, with tons of listings. A traditional Airbnb host would generally be horrified to have partying guests who disturbed the neighbors, and would usually do everything they could to make it up to the neighbors and tighten up their vetting process- we have posts here all the time from hosts asking how to do exactly that.

And in the case of your recent payout debacle, if Airbnb had immediately sent out info on this to all their Aussie hosts, and sent out a daily update (not at all difficult in this computer age) until it was successfully remedied, they wouldn't have had to field an entire continent's worth of calls and emails from frustrated, outraged, and confused hosts for days on end.

I understand that when a company is this big, they are going to have a myriad of issues to deal with all the time, but many of the issues stem from Airbnb's own attitude, cluelessness, and general mismanagement. It could be a great company, but something's gotta change.

[Robin4]

@Sarah977

Once again Sarah, every word good common sense.

I said yesterday if Airbnb had kept us briefed none of these threads would have got off the ground....and we are just the tip of the iceberg here. I cannot begin to imagine how much CX resource this has taken up. As of last Friday there were 23,000 unprocessed transactions....how many recipients of those would been simply sitting on their hands whistling a happy tune??

Look Sarah, lessons will be learned here I am sure....there can't be too many Ostriches at 888 Brannan St!

Lets see what happens!

Cheers......Rob

[Rebecca181]

@Sarah977 Agree with everything you say, above. The two other platforms I list on required proof that I owned my home before they would list my property. Airbnb required absolutely no proof of ownership. I fail to understand how this is a socially responsible (and ethical) thing to do. 

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181  It would certainly seem like a no-brainer that one couldn't list a property they didn't own or have permission to list. I suspect the youthful demographic of Airbnb employees means few of them are actually homeowners themselves so are clueless as to why a homeowner would object to their 19 year old tenant renting out the spare room (or worse, renting out the whole apartment while they go sleep on a friend's couch) in contravention of the "no subletting" clause in the lease. And I imagine a lot of Airbnb employees are doing exactly that themselves.

[Rebecca181]

@Sarah977 Indeed, I was once chewed out on some forum or another by an Airbnb host who was infuriated by the fact that their landlord had found out their home was being rented out without their permission and the tenant / 'host' was being evicted as a consequence of this breach of contract. I had listed in my response to this host the many reasons that a homeowner / landlord would have every right to be upset and possibly evict the tenant for breach of contractual terms - lack of commercial liability insurance being one of the primary reasons I listed. This 'host' simply could not hear or acknowledge what I was saying. She presented herself as being abjectly entitled, and spoke to me like I was an uptight old fogie who didn't understand the hip and cool (and millenially-driven) 'sharing' mentality. I was able to get it out of her at last that she had never owned property in her life - The fact that she chooses to be willfully ignorant to justify her selfish position I found inexcusable. 

I see this entitled attitude often from hosts who do not actually own the properties they are renting out short term. Airbnb makes it way too easy for such *illegal* rentals to take place. 

This is why I can only laugh and roll my eyes when Airbnb Corporate goes on and on and on in their press releases and Q & A's about how socially conscious and 'community-oriented' they are. The image of a wolf in sheep's clothing comes to mind...as does the term 'feral capitalism'. 

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181 I love the "feral capitalism"- never heard that term. And I seem to remember that thread you're talking about. I just had a situation here recently where I was looking after my neighbor's place- they had gone back to Canada for a year to deal with medical issues, and had rented out their place on Airbnb for the first month, which I was on call for, then they had a 6 month renter coming in, not from any booking platform, at which point I was off-duty, the renter would handle everything.

The renter was a 28 year-old woman and her 25 year old friend. They weren't there 2 weeks when they told the other neighbor that they had rented a place not far from here for the Easter break, and were leaving and would be back in 5 days. Within an hour of them leaving, cars started arriving- 3 in all, about 12 people. One car had come down the road, lost, asking for "Casa de (the renters's name)" He had the Airbnb app up on his phone. I instantly Googled that and an Airbnb listing came up, although it was deactivated. I called the owners to tell them what was happening, they called the girl, off on her holiday and told her to get her ass back there and get rid of whoever was staying. She claimed they were her friends, total BS, but did make the trip back (about a 3 hour journey each way) to boot them out.

When I asked the girls a week later why they thought it was okay to Airbnb a place that they were just renting themselves, without the owners' permission, they skirted around an answer, going on about how they've been doing this a long time (which tells you a lot right there), that they were very experienced (how can people that age be "very experienced" at anything) at vetting guests, and that it wasn't a problem because "Airbnb will totally cover any damages". I suggested they read this forum to find out just how completely Airbnb has hosts' backs. They also claimed that the listing I found "Was never an active listing"- I guess they think anyone over 30 is an idiot- it wouldn't have appeared on a Google search if it was never an active listing.

I went on to explain to them why it wasn't cool, that the owners chose them to rent the house for 6 months based on meeting them, and their references, and that they were taking advantage of someone else's investment and trust. 

Their response to all of this was "I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree."

[Kevin616]

---

@Rebecca181 wrote:

@Sarah977 Indeed, I was once chewed out on some forum or another by an Airbnb host who was infuriated by the fact that their landlord had found out their home was being rented out without their permission and the tenant / 'host' was being evicted as a consequence of this breach of contract. I had listed in my response to this host the many reasons that a homeowner / landlord would have every right to be upset and possibly evict the tenant for breach of contractual terms - lack of commercial liability insurance being one of the primary reasons I listed. This 'host' simply could not hear or acknowledge what I was saying. She presented herself as being abjectly entitled, and spoke to me like I was an uptight old fogie who didn't understand the hip and cool (and millenially-driven) 'sharing' mentality. I was able to get it out of her at last that she had never owned property in her life - The fact that she chooses to be willfully ignorant to justify her selfish position I found inexcusable. 

I see this entitled attitude often from hosts who do not actually own the properties they are renting out short term. Airbnb makes it way too easy for such *illegal* rentals to take place. 

This is why I can only laugh and roll my eyes when Airbnb Corporate goes on and on and on in their press releases and Q & A's about how socially conscious and 'community-oriented' they are. The image of a wolf in sheep's clothing comes to mind...as does the term 'feral capitalism'. 

---

Well said Rebecca!

[Rebecca181]

@Kevin616 Thank you! Once again, I did not receive notification of being tagged; just stumbled upon your comment to me here. I enjoy your comments as well, and I do  hope you have gotten paid!!

[John764]

Where is 

 Lizzie

 

Lizzie

London, United Kingdom

Online Community Manager 9111 Posts

Send MessageView Profile in London, United Kingdom in Hosting 
Created Thursday | Latest activity yesterday

 

 

in all this??? 

 

not a peep that I can see.

[John764]

Where is Lizzie, the Online Community Manager, in all this?

Have I missed her comments or is there not a peep out of her either?

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

I am sorry if you have seen my update on this elsewhere in the CC. 

I'm pleased to share that a fix has been made. You should now have received an email from Airbnb, informing you of the next steps. Payments are now going out as usual and so there won't be any further delays. 

Once again, I am really sorry that you have experienced this delay with receiving your payment(s) and thank you for your patience. Please do keep me posted on this. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Kevin616]

---

@Lizzie wrote:

Hello everyone,

I am sorry if you have seen my update on this elsewhere in the CC. 

I'm pleased to share that a fix has been made. You should now have received an email from Airbnb, informing you of the next steps. Payments are now going out as usual and so there won't be any further delays. 

Once again, I am really sorry that you have experienced this delay with receiving your payment(s) and thank you for your patience. Please do keep me posted on this. 

Thanks,

Lizzie

---

Hi Lizzie,

can you find out , or do you know, if and when Airbnb are going to issue a statement, apology, announce preventative measures, compensate hosts, anything at all?

Also, can you link your "previous update" on this, as I've been right through the entire thread and haven't been able to find it 😱

thank you

[Lizzie]

Hello @Kevin616,

Thanks for your reply here. In terms of my post updates that I shared, this thread is one of the newer ones and so this is why it isn't here. We do have quite a few different topics on this here in the CC, ideally, it is good to have replies in a small number of topics, so that updates can be more readily found. 🙂

In regards to your other question, Airbnb has been sending out update emails regarding the next steps on payments, so I'm hoping you have received this. I also want to highlight that the update I have shared here in the Community Center, has come directly from our team working on this at Airbnb.  

To add, as I mention previously, I am taking all of the really important community feedback shared here, particularly regarding communication and am highlighting this to our teams, as we want to continually improve and make sure you have the information you need. Once more, I am really sorry about the delay regarding this.

Just to check have you received an update regarding your payments and/or have you received your payment yet? 

[Kevin616]

---

@Lizzie wrote:

Hello @Kevin616,

Thanks for your reply here. In terms of my post updates that I shared, this thread is one of the newer ones and so this is why it isn't here. We do have quite a few different topics on this here in the CC, ideally, it is good to have replies in a small number of topics, so that updates can be more readily found. 🙂

In regards to your other question, Airbnb has been sending out update emails regarding the next steps on payments, so I'm hoping you have received this. I also want to highlight that the update I have shared here in the Community Center, has come directly from our team working on this at Airbnb.  

To add, as I mention previously, I am taking all of the really important community feedback shared here, particularly regarding communication and am highlighting this to our teams, as we want to continually improve and make sure you have the information you need. Once more, I am really sorry about the delay regarding this.

Just to check have you received an update regarding your payments and/or have you received your payment yet? 

---

Hi Lizzie, 

yes, it would be helpful to have just one thread on each topic 😄 

unfortuntately, people not getting paid and not getting answers have a tendency to post first and not really take the time to search for similar topics first, which is a shame and something you could probably have someone program in a solution for.

fb dies itr witch a pop up for checking for example "is this the same place?"

but given abb's  record on IT updates, it's probably wise to leave well enough alone...:/

people are busy these days, and after spending an hour on the phone with abb and another 20 mins with their banks, then changing payout methods for no reason, then calling Airbnb again and , eventually getting through, not getting any decent response other than meaningless apologies and a complete lack of knowledge about the situation, I guess people just started posting their questions without much time left for research.

i appreciate your reply and understand that it's not your doing, fault or responsibility, however, the responses from abb, including numerous emails and messages, are very similar to your comments above and mostly are all coming thick and fast now that the problem has apparently been fixed.

IE: no real answers, lots of polite sentences and numerous apologies, but no real information, explanations on why we were all kept in the dark, what steps they are putting in place to avoid a repeat of the situation (which has happened before in 2015), no statement from management, no offers of promise, no compensation (I did get an offer of a $25 voucher "for my next trip", even though I'm a host and have never been a guest, and still there was no information on how to redeem it.

i could go on and on and on, but I'm convinced that the only people who actually 'get it' are other hosts.

no need to reply @Lizzie

[Dixie7]

Thank you so much Kevin, Robin, Sarah, Rebecca, etc, for taking your precious time to try and sort out this problem and get some real and proper answers from Airbnb, instead of the mechanically generated idiotic ones they have been feeding us. What are they hiding from us? It's unfortunate as I have been really enjoying my experience with Airbnb over the past 12 months. Now I'm feeling so ashamed to be part of an organisation that treats it's "employees" with so little respect.