Airbnb taking ages to pay hosts

[John2373]

Hi   Are we just unlucky or have other hosts encountered unreasonable delays in rental fees actually hitting a host's bank account.

 

We are in the UK and the money comes from Ireland but takes 5+ working days to reach our uk bank account.

 

VRBO are much faster !

 

If we transfer money from the uk to our Caribbean bank account it is received and cleared the following day at the latest--often on the same day !

 

Q1/  Are Airbnb penny pinching on this matter ? ---- or 

2/  Are they encountering financial or cash flow problems ?

 

Any ideas anyone

 

John

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@John2373 Quite simply Airbnb is managing its cash. This is just a good business practice and does not suggest they have a problem. You could try Paypal for faster payments.

[John2373]

Hi   " Managing its cash" --but isn't the cash actually the hosts ?

J

[Lorna170]

@John2373   

Like you, I transfer money from one account into another electronically, and it takes just minutes for both banks to acknowledge the transfer.  Many travel sites are taking longer to pay hosts.  When I started, guest payments were in my account the same day that they were initiated by the guest.  Now it can be as much as 10 working days later, depending on the travel (OTA) platform involved.

Obtaining refunds takes even longer if you are the guest.  I recently refunded a guest via an OTA and the money was pulled from my bank account within minutes of clicking the refund button.  The guest informed me 15 days later that the funds had finally been deposited to their account.  15 days!  

Organizations that handle the transfer of funds do have to abide by certain rules.  The rules don't always make sense, nor do they favor the consumer.  Unless I stand at the door with my hand out and the guest pays in cash, I will have to wait for the money to process through however many financial institutions are involved.

[John2373]

Hi Lorna

Airbnb say that the " processing" delay is down to Citibank ( which unless they are still in the dark ages using quill pens etc is unlikely !).

I suspect Airbnb are not correct about this .  However, trying to email Citibank for a comment seems impossible since Citibank clearly do not want anyone to have the terramity of actually contacting them via email.

I really wish someone would start a new platform which is fair to hosts. We started way back with Homeaway ( now swallowed up by greedy Expedia and renamed VRBO ! ) where :-  a) guest money was paid to us immediately when the booking was made and perhaps even more importantly  b) the guest damage deposit was physically paid to us when the booking was made. This really focused guest's attention about any breakages or overstays/extra guests etc and meant we had good " leverage " for compensation when our house rules were broken or items were broken.

Happy days

John