Airbnb is becoming trash for host?

Airbnb is becoming trash for host?

I'm a host and recently Airbnb is simply becoming complete garbage. We are thinking of leaving after so many problems we are having.

 

  1. Guests are pigs. Everybody knows, the guests are not what they were when Airbnb first started. But now, it's not just annoying, it's actually bad. Airbnb educates host to be mindful and impartial with guests that are coming in, but they do not spend enough time educating the guests. So far, we spend twice the time of cleaning (+ covid regulation) because the guests are pigs. They leave the place messy, they do not do dishes, move furniture, leave with things around and lie about damage. We got someone who literally moved in with all their belonging for literally 1 day, and scuffed all walls and punctured ceilings; we can't do anything about that. Someone else took a white towel with menstruation blood on it and hid it in a stack of brand new clean towels. 
  2. Support is inexistent. In the past month, we called support 5 times, because we are a plus host we are told that the current support is not trained to handle any of our concerns. Asking to be transferred is not possible. So they ask us to open online tickets, but those are not being answered. We had a question in one of them and they simply close it without answering.
  3. Airbnb resolutions are at a halt. We have an open Airbnb resolution that hasn't been answered for 14 days. Sitting on Airbnb side. The guest agreed to pay us extra, they didn't. We open a resolution ticket and involved Airbnb. It should be quite simple to handle? Waiting that long, Airbnb will not be able to take the money off the security deposit anymore.
  4. Someone breaks the Airbnb rules. The host pays. A person booked a month in advanced on behalf of someone else (it's not allowed to do that based on Airbnb rules). We actually cannot get that person off our calendar. 0 Reviews. After all of what is going on, we don't want to take our chances. So we call Airbnb and ask them to take that reservation down. Support cannot handle it (because we are an Airbnb Plus); and online tickets do not handle it either. After 18 days of waiting; we decided to handle it and pay a penalty. The guest is furious that we didn't handle it earlier. Now our ticket turned into "we handled it, remove the penalty". Still no answers. 30 days waiting.
  5. Get better features if you give us your house. After having all these problems, we decided to turn off Instant Booking. We start getting more nice conversations before people book our house. We like that. But Airbnb decided to remove features for us: we do not show up in the search much anymore. We cannot cancel penalty free if something were to happen. They will NOT share the star ratings per category. What is this? Sounds like a game where if you pay you get more features. That is completely absurd.

 

Are you guys experiencing the same things? We are so close to call it quit.

25 Replies 25
Elizabeth1262
Level 3
Winthrop, ME

I feel your pain. I’ve also had people completely rearrange the furniture, use the porta potty as the only guest using it and complain it stunk after 4 days(it gets serviced by the company every 7 ), people not reading listing, only booking based on price & then asking questions easily answered on listing, & people outright lying about their stays in order to get their money back(after raving about the space). It’s been about 50% of my guests this year, & I always mark I don’t want them back. The biggest complainers by far have been middle aged women not accustomed to rustic accommodations, thinking they’re getting a 5star hotel for $30/night. Ridiculous that they can get away with false reviews & refunds & AirBnb is NOT remotely supportive or responsive.

@Elizabeth1262  That is so annoying.  What woman can get to middle age and not know what she will or will not be comfortable with?  Your listing couldn't be more clear.  Hang in there.

Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Jean-Sébastien3, from my experience:

 

1. I've hardly had any guests in the last few months because of COVID-19, but the few I've had have been fine. Unlike a lot of other hosts, I've not noticed any dip in standards from the guests who have stayed. However, I have been getting a lot of enquiries from guests who sound like trouble. I end up trying to dissuade most of them from booking, which kind of defeats the purpose of advertising on Airbnb in the first place. So yes, the standard does seem to be going downhill.

 

2. I have noticed that support has gotten a bit faster lately (compared to the first few months of the pandemic) but they don't seem to deal with stuff very effectively and you have to explain over and over again.

 

3. I've not opened any resolutions but you only have to browse the CC to see many other hosts having similar problems to yours.

 

4. Likewise, not had to deal with this lately.

 

5. This is the way it's worked with Instant Booking for a long time, which is the only reason I use it. I didn't ever want to use it and didn't at the beginning but then Airbnb really started to push it and I found that I dropped off the search results if I didn't use it. Then there are also the star ratings etc. (weirdly though, lately I have seen star ratings appear on some non IB enquiries, but not sure if that is just a technical glitch) and the penalty free cancellations.

 

This is nothing new, as they are incentives Airbnb uses to make more hosts use IB, but you are right, it's not fair. ALL hosts should be able to see a guest's star ratings. After all, any guest can see ours. All hosts should be able to cancel penalty free occasionally, if they feel uncomfortable with a booking. Unfortunately, I really don't see Airbnb changing this.

Nanxing0
Level 10
Haverford, PA

@Jean-Sébastien3 I'm also experiencing almost everything you have said and truly feel your pain. One thing I want to correct is that I want to replace the word "pig" with "horse", but to add "some" before the "guests". Basically I still have more than 80% good guests although number of problematic guests rised sharply. We have tightened our guest filtering policies and rejecting all local guests with new profile at this time and this seems to help a lot with it.

Alice357
Level 2
Melbourne, Australia

I just posted a similar conversation before seeing your post. I'm having similar issues, not just with terrible guest, but also with property damages and items stolen by the guest. This is not the first time that I have guest with 0-1 positive review, verified by Airbnb, and ended up with terrible outcome. 

 

I was traumatised with this recent guest, who broken all the house rules, by having additional guests stay over, trashed the house, smoked heavily inside the house, damaged quite a few items, left a whole mess with stains and chemicals residues, and even human feces! The guest has even opened up my locked cabinet and stolen my equipments, supplies from my cabinets. Once the guest checked out, we were traumatised by this whole incident, and we reported to Airbnb immediately via Resolution centre, with all the photos and evidences. However, I'm still waiting for Airbnb team for reply, and the wait is over a month now. And they are bouncing my issue to Safety team and there is no reply despite they said they will get back to me within 48hrs after 3 weeks.

 

I am getting no support from Airbnb. There is no longer call to support, and apparently Airbnb will refer you to send messages via Airbnb app, which they will keep referring you away by Helpbot. They promised to get back to you, but they never did, and the reply was that they have high amount of inquiries and they are not able to respond as quickly.

 

This is really frustrating, plus the long suffering this year with all the cancellations with Covid-19. I'm wondering if any Host has experienced the same issue dealing with Airbnb? How do you escalate your complaint further ?

How many references had they? It was possible to select guests by references, verified profile and request by them

Maribel130
Level 2
Waterloo, Canada

I too have had several issues in the last 2 weeks eith 4 reservations and AirBnB is not dealing with these complaints at all in a productive manner. It’s is all unusually terrible. It’s like the support staff were all fired. I’m so angry.

Maribel130
Level 2
Waterloo, Canada

Also, report to the police. Get a case #. Have them charged with theft and mischief. Then contact AirBnB again to tell them this has escalated to a police matter.

We have almost a five star rating for more than 10 reviews and here comes a guest, new to Airbnb and without any review, who wants to get a free vacation. So he complained to Airbnb and sent fake pictures to get a 100% refund AFTER of course his one week stay. I did not know that when it is the guest's word against the host, Airbnb always sides with the guest not matter that the host has a 5 star rating and the guest none. I have asked what measures can take hosts to protect themselves from this type of scams with no answer from Airbnb yet.

Geoffrey125
Level 3
Campbell, CA

Airbnb support has been getting weaker and weaker over the years. I hosted almost 1000 stays and in recent inquiries with support, have received little if any actual support. They have gotten too big to support their hosts. Best to have a great cleaning staff that can report issues between stays, idiot proof your units, have clear policies, and install security cameras as necessary. I dont lean on support for anything anymore. I still report but really just hoping that someone will take my feedback.

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Jackie17
Level 2
Mojácar, Spain

I understand the frustration  you are experiencing.  I have been lucky in that most of my few guests this year have been fine.  However one set of guests left my place in a bad state, food residue on floor, bedding filthy, damage to WIFI equipment and CO2 detector, pool filthy where they did not shower before using.  When they left they reversed into my drive lights smashing them off the wall, pulling out electrical cables and blowing all the power to both my home, apartment and electric gates. Had to go through host guarantee to get paid for repairs which guest refused to pay.  The guest then gave a one star review as opposed to all previous 5 star reviews.  For this Airbnb have dropped my ratings to 4.2 and there seems nothing I can do about it.  This is going to impact greatly on bookings especially at this time.  I think they should look at previous reviews and the reason for the low rating before they drop you.  Has anyone else experienced this?

Bonnie64
Level 4
Bountiful, UT

Airbnb keeps marking the problems I contact them about as "resolved" when in fact they have done NOTHING to get back with me to discuss the problem and a resolution. I too am seeing homeless in my place. They have a certain oder when they come in. One guy told me he was taking a short trip to my city to find other living arrangements.

 

I have decided to up the price, make the stay 2 weeks maximum, take off instant booking, and will not take anyone who does not have at least 3-5 reviews. Too risky. I am always surprised at who shows up at the door since most of the reservations have no face on them that matches the one who rings the door bell. I never know if I am getting someone nice or a murderer. Almost ready to kick Airbnb over board as they do NOT care about hosts anymore and I pay for the damages!!

Laura162
Level 2
Atlanta, GA

We have received no support over the past two weeks from terrible stays.  AirBnb refused to allow us to cancel a guest who had bad reviews.  We were forced to host the guest and multiple rules were broken.  We decided to stop offering instant booking.  I believe more hosts will make the decision to remove instant book after they realize they have zero support from AirBnb for cancelling a reservation.  We have also increased our price and minimum stay to limit our use.