My account has been closed

[David126]

This is partly to say goodbye to all the other Hosts I have interacted with and also give you a heads up. Firstly thanks for all your help over the last 3 years.

I listed on ABB 3 years ago, firstly with one room, then added 2 more and finally a 4th a month or so ago.

I have had around 1,000 bookings, 700 reviews and 400 5 star reviews and my rating was 4.7.

Superhost

Had one extenuating circumstances single night cancellation 18 months ago Burst pipe.

Use instant Book from about a month after I listed, I accept Dogs etc so no issues with any of ABB policies.

I have been super busy this summer, not sure when the last time was I had a night to myself,  and last weekend was our main event in town.

Most days I get a booking, but a lot of people book a week or 2 out and of late I have not had much availability.

A week ago a guest told me that she could nto find me on the AirBnB site, everyting was working fine from my end, I logged out and searched and could not find me either.

So I contacted ABB forst through the Help function , they were very responsive, congratulated me on all my good reviews etc etc, could see there was an issue bit would need to refer it, this went on for a few hours and they could get no feeback from the team that would handle it.

Couple of days later I tried Twitter, similar deal, your Manager will contact you by email.

Yesterday I tried agian, went through the same thing.

In the meantime I had Guests stay, I was paid, reviews done. All was normal.

Then I received the standard we are closing your account and not telling you why message I have seen many times on here.

Fortunately I am pretty easy to find with a Google search and most of my bookings have already contacted me and I have made other arrangements. I knew I was exposed mainly using one provider, ABB was the only site I used, I have friends, people I know stay with me. direct

I had also looked into what to do going forward and have now put the wheels in motion.

Why, well I do not know, I can think of only 2 reasons:

- My participation on here - but that seems unlikely, but not impossible.

- There was some technical glitch on my listing that disappeared me from the search function and it was easier for the person to just delete my account than sort it. I am inclined to believe this which is of course a sad indictment.

I am realistic, even with all my booking ABB probably made $2,000 a year from me, I am hardly of consequence to them.

Fortunatley this did not happen in June, I can deal with this as things have dipped, the Schools have gone back and to be honest I need a breather, has been a long summer.

My Guests were told ABB had cancelled the bookings, there were given the standard 10% credit to be used for another ABB booking and their money back. But not why.

I told them I would honour the price but without the AirBnB fee. I will be increasing my prices.

[Emiel1]

@David126

Sorry to read about Airbnb destroying their core business by simply kicking out their best  hosts.

What other company would show such behaviour ? There must be some malfunction (In the software or in an employee, or maybe both). Airbnb is still asking here "how are we doing ?":

https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

Unfortunatelly this whole thread does not fit into the message screen !

I wish you all the best,

Emiel

[Lawrene0]

Oh no, @David126! Very sad to hear this. And angry. And suspicious/paranoid that the truly unusual listings are being culled in advance of the Unique category launch, or something less fiendish and more inept, which is worse maybe. 

Do take care.

[David126]

Unique would be me a very small Railroad Hotel built in 1897 in the middle of the Rockies.

[Victoria110]

I've now read  many stories here and on social media of Airbnb closing accounts with no reason or recourse ... this is scary (as others have mentioned ) as many of us have come to depend on the income.

Two weeks ago I exchanged emails with a  "supervisor for customer support" expressing my concern about just this after reading one story in particular on Google news ...

The supervisor was reassuring and I was grateful for her response.... Perhaps I'm naive but I'm totally confused as to why this is happening. 

..below is part of her response. She is refering to a story I referenced about an account being closed.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

I am curious to know more about that host whose account was cancelled without any reason. I am pretty sure something triggered it to happen because all cancellations of our host's account is being handled by our safety team. They would always verify the validity of both the listing and the user to ensure the safety of both the guest and the host.

All possible violation will trigger for an email to be sent to the affected party/parties to inform them of the situation and provide them with instructions to resolve it.

I wish the host contacted us here at Airbnb so we could have assisted them in resolving the issue.

I assure you Victoria that we always deal with every situation with utmost integrity and transparency to all parties. We give great importance in maintaining the trust between us and our users.

I hope I was able to shed some light to your concerns. And remember that we are always here to support you.

[Fred13]

@Victoria110 That letter sounds reasonable, and certainly not one that would come from a lower-tier employee, good to see. To me, it suggests that the decision to cancel an account could be triggered by a 'safety concern' flag which their computer automatically reacts to, and then the procedure is for a human at Airbnb to be made aware of the case, by the host, in order to review the event.

   Granted an awkward procedure, but encouraging to hear somewhat in this particular case.

[Donna240]

@David126 I think your lack of availability is the culpret here, but why not tell you that, instead of making you feel there is something wrong? If someone has very few dates available, they may put them on ice until they have more available days, so someone without much business can move up in the listings. Who knows?

[David126]

I do have some direct bookings, some are not bookings but friends who stay with me, people I know but the vast majority of my business was ABB, my calendar was available 6 months out, when this happened the next 2 weeks were pretty blocked out but most years I will block out a week in a slow period to take a break anyway.

I am guessing why, one thing that occurred to me was that I have a lot of small value bookings, maybe ABB average say $9 a booking from me and with the high volume decided I was not profitable?

[Sally221]

  We too are small value & booked up & I'm hella nervous about what might happen... I have, over all, adored being able to have my "Micro BnB" I've loved not being the one who collected the cash from guests, loved meeting so many excellent people- we just had a gaggle of delightful young folk from Berlin & Copenhagen,  loved how kind, unsnarky and helpful these forums have been,   I hope & wish things can be righted- give your sweet Shadow a skritch on the chest for me, David, we had a beloved doggy by that name when I was a kid. I have some friends who are rail road fanatics & they were intrigued with the idea of booking a stay next vacation, Sally

[Sandra126]

David, you have always been one of the most reasonable posters here, I am stunned. I think you need an answer.

All the best for the future.

[Rosemarie9]

I am stunned also. It does not breed confidence in the platform. It is a shame that now i will be increasing my exposure by other means. I liked being able to see who was booking and felt somewhat secure as to who might show up, but having your account cancelled at any time is unfair without even explanation. I really appreciated David's input. I hope this turns out to be a bad dream.

[Oomesh-Kumarsingh0]

@Rosemarie9 Unfortunately this is not a bad dream! David's listings are invisible but his account is still active.I am still waiting for the mods to give us an explanation.We all deserve to know what's going on! 

[Rebecca181]

@Oomesh-Kumarsingh0 I agree. What generally happens is a host reports here (or on other AIrbnb forums) that their account was closed with no explanation (hosts / super hosts with exemplary records and often completely dedicated to Airbnb) and then it all just kind of fades away and we all move on. 

I hope that doesn't happen this time. I think we, as a community, deserve more than that.

[Oomesh-Kumarsingh0]

@Rebecca181 We should all ask them to give us an explanation.In order to accomplish this we must stand together and not let them divert our attention.There are more than 520000+ members in the community if at least 10% of us will support David we can surely be a game changer.United we stand!

[Shaun69]

@David126 Sir, you were one of the first hosts to respond to a question I had when I first started, I would like to thank you for your advise back in May. I will be very sorry to see you depart from this forum and I think the lack of an explanation from AIRBNB is totally unacceptable. Be happy and sucessfull going it via another route!!!!!

Regards Shaun.

[Inna22]

I was just starting a process of adding another property. But I will now hit the pause button until this gets resolved. @David126 did anyone respond to you at this point? Perhaps through Facebook?