The location of the apartment is WAY OUTSIDE of the blue circle Airbnb said it was in - not OK

[Hendrik4]

Hi all,

Sorry to have to ask here but as Airbnb don't like people contacting them, this is really all I have. I have travelled quite a bit with Airbnb and have always been happy with the process so far.

The situation: Now that I have paid for a booking and have the exact location, it turns out to be WAY OUTSIDE of the blue circle. Google Maps estimates a 35 minute walk to the nearest edge of the blue circle (the nearest edge!). We usually go back to the apartment at least once during the middle of the day, so we're going to lose around 2.5 hours of each vacation day due to Airbnb's false advertising. There are also safety issues for my girlfriend if she wants to walk into town alone. This is almost as far from "acceptable" as the apartment is from Airbnb's little blue circle...

As the map with the blue circle is controlled by Airbnb, and the address was known to Airbnb, this is an Airbnb problem, not a host problem. Has this happened to any of you? What can I do?

I appreciate any help at all! Thank you, guys.

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

Contact AirBnB - there are contact details on your booking confirmation in case of any problems. 

[Hendrik4]

Thanks for the quick reply, Gerry and Rashid.

Unfortunately, as I said in my post, Airbnb have made it pretty difficult to actually contact them. My booking confirmation contains a link which says "Contact Airbnb" which does NOT actually lead to any sort of contact form. It leads only to the help centre, which contains a maze of FAQs (none of which cover my dilemma). Searching for "wrong location" or "locations is false" in that help page yields three irrelevant replies about "neighbourhoods" and then a bunch of stuff to do with taxes. Contacting the host is easy, but this is seemingly not a host problem. This is an Airbnb problem, maybe (hopefully) just a simple IT error on their part.

Has anybody else had this problem? If so, how did you resolve it?

[America2]

Usually what you can do is to to go to gethuman

[Hendrik4]

Hey there America, thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, Airbnb has stripped whatever URL you put in. Now it just says "Usually what you can do is to to go to gethuman". It seems like they REALLY don't want  to be contacted. Any chance you could tell me which keywords I can put into Google so that the URL you tried to send me comes up as the first result?

Thanks!

[Ange2]

Here is a link to a page with all methods of Contact

If it is deleted type in "Contact Airbnb" in the 'search for anything area' top right of community forum and a list of posts appears, choose: Contact Airbnb: A Community Help Guide

Best,

[Jim-and-Marcia0]

Make your call to Airbnb as soon as possible, so you can cancel, get your money back and book another place. This will also allow the host's calendar to open up for other travellers. I find it easy to resolve issues with Airbnb representatives. The resolution center is also available to help sort things out and make things good. Good luck.

As to whether we experience problems with the map that shows our listing... yes we do. However, our listing shows the address and the blue circle in the correct spot, but lists our neighborhood with the wrong name. I contacted Airbnb and they told me the maps are not generated by them, instead they get the maps from Google. The reason ours shows the neighborhood name wrong is because Vancouver Washington is in the metro area of Portland Oregon, and the neighborhoods of Vancovuer are not defined, so it defaults to listing the name of the nearest Portland neighborhood. So it may mean the problem with the map in your case is a problem with Google maps and not so easy for Airbnb to fix. But check with Airbnb to resolve your current issue about rebooking. The host may want to pursue getting their place correct on the map, so you won't be the only traveller to experience this problem.

[Hendrik4]

Hey there,

Several of you have tried to post links to the direct contact page but these are being stripped by Airbnb (I wonder why…). I found an online unofficial map through the hidden maze to get to the REAL contact button, and I’m going to spell it out in words, without the link. Hopefully it will stay under the radar enough that it won’t get deleted.

To help others in the same spot: Go to "Help", click on ANY help topic (even if it has literally nothing to do with what you need). Then click on ANY subtopic (again, even one that has nothing to do with your problem). Scroll down and you will see a little blue link that says. “Still need help resolving an issue?” Click there. Then, scroll down ALL the way to the bottom. There are a bunch of big and colourful links it wants you to click, do NOT. Keep scrolling until you see a small grey link that says “My host wasn’t able to answer my question”. When it says “What is your question about?” Click “Travelling”. It will ask “What can we help you with?” You will have to choose from a list. If your question is not on there, choose the closest one. You will then have to choose from yet another drop down list. Do it. Certain combinations of those, and only certain ones, will then give you a text input box at the bottom and a button marked “Send via e-mail” - you’ve done it, well done!

To anyone who was wondering what happened with my address issue - well it turns out there are TWO identical house numbers “170/1” on the very same street in Bangkok, just miles apart. The Airbnb helper was also pretty astonished. I mean, literally the whole point of house numbers is that you can differentiate between houses on the same street. Except in Thailand, apparently. Either way, now that this phenomenon is known to Airbnb, I hope they come up with a solution.

Thanks to all those who tried to help, I hope this may be of help to others in the future.

H