Payout on hold

[Mark6060]

Hi There,

we have just activated a new listing and received the first payout without any issues. Since then all of our payouts have placed ‘on hold’ pending investigation by a ‘specialist team’. I’ve over two hours on the phone to various call centres, have done everything asked of me, have had confirmation my account is verified and KYC info received. Every time I call to try and get help I get a different response, wait 24 hours, wait 72 hours, wait 15 days. 
very shocking experience and has left my wife and I feeling stressed and exhausted. We have multiple bookings over the next three months that we do not want to cancel due to inconvenience for the quest and large fines we will have to pay. 
We ran a listing back in 2015 and never had any of these issues. 
I see many others are having the same experience and I’m completely exasperated. 
Has anyone found a way to through this?

Regards

Mark

[Emilie]

Hi @Mark6060, 

Congratulations on your new your listing! How are you finding hosting after a 10 year break?

I'm sorry that you ran into a challenge right away, I wanted to check in and see if you'd found a solution with the Support team over the past week. It would be great if you could let us know, and if you need more advice we're here for you 🙂

Thanks, 

Emilie

[Mark6060]

Hi @Emilie ,
Thanks for getting in touch. 

We are finding our stride now after a bumpy start. Things were less complicated 10 years ago but I understand the changes. We had to get a business license due to restrictions in our area and then register with the province of British Columbia. That cost around $700 and took a few weeks to complete before we could list. We found getting the listing live was very easy (almost too easy) and didn't realize we had instant book enabled which caused some issues right off the bat. I think it'd be useful for AirBnB to offer a service for new/ returning hosts to go through everything, step by step, before going live. It seems like everything is geared toward getting listings live and bookings flowing asap. 

Our issue with payments being on hold has now been resolved thankfully 😆 but the experience was surprising for us and again could be something that AirBnB makes people aware of before signing up. From our perspective it didn't make sense that our payouts were put on hold after having all of our credentials verified and receiving our first payout. Then finding many other cases in the forums and online of people having similar difficulties left us feeling bewildered. 

Most of the call center operators we spoke to were not equipped to offer any help and we received contradictory information about the situation which didn't help. In one call center the operator who I was transferred to thought I was his manager and said some things I wasn't supposed to hear, when I mentioned i was the customer he just hung up!

I eventually connected with an agent  who was extremely helpful (Stacy), she found multiple issues with our account set up that were not obvious and corrected them, she kept us in the loop on progress and was very understanding. It would have been fantastic to have received that kind of help initially instead of bouncing around call centers for hours. 

So for anyone else experience the same issue, I would say, don't panic, be patient and keep contacting support until you connect with someone who can actually help. 

Thanks again Emilie, I hope our experience can be of use to other hosts.
Cheers
Mark