Missing Payouts, Has this happened to anybody else?

[Susan723]

Any other hosts experiencing missing payments from Airbnb? It first happened to me earlier this year. It was just one payment that time and only a few hundred dollars. After 3 days and receiving no notice of payout I called and spent hours on the email and phone with airbnb. They finally acknowledged their error and issued the payment. For my hours of trouble they sent me a coffee mug. This time the missing payouts total nearly $2k. I have already spent much time trying to get it corrected. So far I am just getting the "we are checking into it" email message. The original rep I spoke with acknowledged to me that there was a mistake made. So now I just get to sit and wait for them to hopefully correct their error again. I wonder if I will get another coffee mug. Frankly I would rather just timely get my payouts and without having to waste hours of my time to get them. Anyway just wondering if this is happening to other hosts and also a heads up to other hosts to be sure to keep track of your payouts.

[Bez2]

Update - finally received my payout, what a relief. Don’t give up! Thanks for everyone for their, support and encouragement in this forum.

[John1574]

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@Bez2 

Thank you for the update! Great news!

Please, when you get the time, share the details of what you had to go through in order to get your payout.

For instance, did they ever give you an explanation for what caused the snafu?

Did the moderators on this form give you any real assistance or just verbal support?

Did customer service tell you where the money had been while it was delayed being paid out to you?

Did customer service tell you that your account had been hacked?

Whatever you are comfortable sharing, please do.

Many of us are looking for patterns, similarities in these cases and looking for template on how to handle this if it happens to us.

More and more, I'm beginning to think that this is a security problem: that hackers have found a way into the Airbnb system, especially in certain parts of the world, and they are responsible for this and Airbnb is keeping it under wraps,  hidden from the public and from hosts.

Any light you can shed on the entire process that you went through to get paid would be helpful to us. Thank you.

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[Bez2]

Did customer service tell you where the money had been while it was delayed being paid out to you?

NO, BUT I THINK IT WAS BECAUSE THE GUEST HAD CHANGED THE NUMBER COMING BUT AIRBNB HAD NOT TAKEN THE EXTRA MONEY

Did customer service tell you that your account had been hacked?

No.

The moderator never got back to me, whether she flagged it up with cs I am not sure.

i left it for over two weeks b4 I rang again. I immediately told the gentleman that I was a super host and very cross and maybe I should speak to his superior. However, he was courteous and much more accommodating than the man I spoke to the first time I rang. He went away and came back and said it was being dealt with immediately and to expect a confirmation email soon, that was daytime yesterday, last night I had a confirmation email that the payment was going through and this morning it was in my account!

good luck everyone

Whatever you are comfortable sharing, please do.

Many of us are looking for patterns, similarities in these cases and looking for template on how to handle this if it happens to us.

More and more, I'm beginning to think that this is a security problem: that hackers have found a way into the Airbnb system, especially in certain parts of the world, and they are responsible for this and Airbnb is keeping it under wraps,  hidden from the public and from hosts.

Any light you can shed on the entire process that you went through to get paid would be helpful to us. Thank you.

[John1574]

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@Bez2 

Thank you. The additional information is very helpful.

I understand that your guests changed the number of people who were coming and that, that initially caused the problem because the additional guests were not billed by AirBnB.

Did Airbnb fail to pay for the entire stay or just for the additional guests?

When this type of situation occurs, I often use the Send Money or Request Money feature that is on the inbox page. 

Did either you or the guest try to use that feature?

And to reiterate, from your last post, I get the impression that you called CS twice: the first time you got the run around, but the second time you called, about two weeks later, you got a good customer service rep who quickly solved the problem for you. Is that correct?

I hope you do not feel put out by my questions. This is a hot button topic that has many hosts worried, and the more information we can get, about how it occurs and how it is solved, the better.

Even seemingly insignificant facts can be part of the learning curve for running an Airbnb business.

Thanks for your time in helping out the forum.

Very valuable.

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[Sathis7]

I am badly affected due to missing pay outs. I contacted Airbnb on 30 December 2019 and informed that I have not received a pay out (USD 1833.30). I was informed that there is a technical glitch and I will receive the pay out once it is resolved. Since then, I have given over 08 telephone calls and sent many emails reminding Airbnb to release the payout. Response I received was exactly the same. It's 01 month since the guest checked-in and the payout is still pending.

I certainly do not understand why a technical glitch should take so long to be resolved.

Needless to elaborate the impact on a 03 bed room property, when USD 1833.30 not paid as per the contract between Airbnb and the host. Since I know the financial difficulties faced by the small property owners in Sri Lanka, I do not wish to see same happening to the others. Sathis Abeyasuriya
Managing Proprietor, Makuludola Bungalow, Makuludola Estate, Telijjawila, SRI LANKA

[John1574]

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 @Sathis7 

That's tough, my sympathies.

A poster on this thread, Ella, go back a page or  two, find Ella, She got them to move rather quickly when she told them she will be canceling all future bookings until the payout occurred since they broke the agreement by not paying her she told them she was not obligated to continue working with them. They paid.

You got to get tough, give them hell, and take it up the Cs tree to a manager.

I've also heard that approaching them through the Twitter and their Facebook is sometimes more effective than calling. Are use all three.

Good luck.

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[Sathis7]

Thank you for taking your valuable time to educate me on the way forward. Much appreciated. 

[Huma0]

Under my Earnings tab, I can see a couple of payouts from May and August that are marked as 'expected' rather than paid. 

Of course, I am going to call Airbnb about this, but it's worth keeping  a track of you payouts by checking your earnings page (you have to check month by month) just in case. I know Airbnb sent me a confirmation email about at least one of these payouts saying it was being sent to me, so I thought nothing more about it at the time, but five months later it is still sitting there!

[John1574]

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@Huma0 

May and August, that is quite a while ago.

Do you have Payouts put directly into your checking or bank account?

I get my payouts put into  a PayPal account and from there I have to personally move it to my bank/checking account: I do not allow anyone access to my bank/checking acct.

We get our payouts like clockwork usually 24 hours after the guest checks in.

We get an email from paypal saying they Received money from Airbnb and it is now in our PayPal account. We then electronically transfer it into our bank.

Do you get a similar email from your banking service telling you the airbnb payment has been received? 

How do you monitor your bank account and your Airbnb account if a payment from many, many months ago was missed?

I'm sure it was a slight oversight on their part, and they will pay it out immediately, but please follow through so we know what happened and how it occurred.

Again, it looks like a case of "buyer beware"

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[Huma0]

@John1574 

My payouts are sent straight to my bank account and I find this easier for accounting purposes as you can see which payments are from Airbnb whereas Paypal payments don't specify where the funds originated from (on my bank statements anyway). I don't think I would have time to manually transfer all the payments from one to another. No, I don't get any notification from the bank.

So, I didn't miss the payments exactly. I know what the August one is and spoke to Airbnb about it at the time. It was for an extra charge to the guest, which Airbnb took from her immediately but did not pay to me. They told me it was an error on their side, that they had sorted it out and then I got an email saying the funds had been paid. Yet they are still showing as unpaid.

I noticed the May one some time ago and was waiting for both to be paid out, but they appear to still be sitting there. So, back on the phone to Airbnb...

[John1574]

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@Huma0 

I see, thanks for clarifying.

What we find valuable about our system is that because the Airbnb payments are the ONLY funds coming into our Paypal account -- it is a PayPal account dedicated only to receiving funds from Airbnb -- thus whenever we receive a notification from PayPal, usually 24 hours after a guest checks in, we know it is a payment from Airbnb.

I understand you do not receive any notification when Airbnb funds are deposited to you, and that puts it on you to track that the payments are being made on time.

We use a quick, three/four step process, that aids in our book keeping and tax preparation:

1. Email  notification received from PayPal that Airbnb funds have been received;  

2. Electronic transfer from PayPal to bank account;  

3. After 24 hours check online bank account that Airbnb funds were received from PayPal;  

4. Enter into QuickBooks spreadsheet for accounting and tax purposes. 

The actual time this takes sitting at a computer or using your smart phone would be about five minutes if done once a day and not after every single payment from multiple accounts.

Most of the time is spent waiting for websites to open and navigating their ineptitude.

I must say that we find PayPal an excellent service: not a single problem in the many years we have been doing business with them.

My incredible wife, Irene, developed this efficient system for handling the bookkeeping and accounting chores, and she has made it very easy to track and manage the bookkeeping, accounting and tax preparation.

We can all benefit by learning the different ways people run their business. At least I find it helpful and very interesting.

But as you well know, we are In business with an imperfect partner.

So . . . . .  back on the phone with you --and go get those funds.  (;>)

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[Huma0]

@John1574sounds like your system works well. Certainly it makes sense if using a separate Paypal account. It's just a shame you can't set it up to automatically then transfer to your bank account so you then only have to do the final check.

Generally speaking, I've not had issues with payouts from Airbnb. It's just these two payments which are both small. They are for extra funds requested from guests that the guests have agreed to (no disputes involved) so I don't know why they occasionally then get held up. I've not had a problem with payouts for bookings.

[Huma0]

Also @John1574  you are much more organised about this stuff than me and good for you. I really hate checking my bank account (for the reasons you mentioned above - it takes far too long) so normally only do it when I have transactions or something urgent to check. Otherwise, I still get a monthly statement and go through it then.

That does occasionally mean I miss something, like when my insurance company charged me twice in the same month, but luckily it's usually something small and I will eventually get round to dealing with it.

I would love to be more on top of these things, but really, I just hate it! I hated maths at school and I hate, hate, hate doing my tax return. Unfortunately my brain is wired to go into a trance whenever numbers are involved!

Oh, and don't mention spreadsheets. I hate those the most 😞

[John1574]

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@Huma0 

Ah ha, you're just like me.  I recognize myself in the self you describe: hate math, except we both love counting money, right. Lol

I was lucky to find a good wife, because I've got a mind like a sieve, and she has a mind like a Memory Palace. We have complementary skills and that's just kismet: I tell people, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. lol

But if you dedicate a PayPal account to just receiving funds from Airbnb, at least then you will get a notification each time you get paid. And an electronic transfer from PayPal to the bank takes mere seconds. You might consider it as a workaround.

You'll find a workaround for your mental block: that's what I call mine, a mental block, I have a lot of them and I'm always trying to hack them or find a work around for them someway -- it's a constant battle. So, know you are not alone in battling these minor demons.

Let us know when they pay you and why they held it up.

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[Huma0]

@John1574  I don't want to seem sexist, but I was watching 'Escape to the Chateau DIY'. One young couple was preparing for their first paying guests and had misplaced a box of lightbulbs needed quite urgently. The wife asked the husband (who it turns out had put them 'somewhere' to find them but he couldn't.

She asked him, "Did you do a boy look or a girl look?" 

She went off to have a go and found them in a random box with screwdrivers or something and explained, "This is how you do a girl look."

He didn't protest. You could see this was the dynamic of the couple and they were just used to it.

Getting back to the point, Airbnb sends you email notifications when you have been paid. That should be enough, i.e. if they say they have paid you, you should be able to trust that message. It's a shame if that is not the case and one has to double check each time.