Blatant shortages in payout to host

[Pamela407]

Alert-  we have had shortages in each guests payout to one of our listing we started auditing when a random payout from a guest showed up in a different host account.

Took hours to audit and type in a clear format to send to supervisor.  Floor rep didn’t have calculator. Supervisor didn’t read until I threatened to get legal involved.   

Does anyone know how to reach Airbnb legal?  Now auditing 11 total listings and seeing more mistakes.  Wtf?

[Matthew285]

@Pamela407 if all 11 listings are showing some sort of shortfall, in addition to forcefully trying to get Airbnb to actually examine your calculations (a difficult task), please be open to the possibility there is some error either in the data being gathered or in the methodology used to calculate the amounts due.

I know Airbnb's system can exhibit glitches and behave in unintended ways, but it seems unusual for there to be a shortfall in 11 of 11 of your listings, yet for almost no other hosts to report systemic shortfalls in payments. You know from reading these discussion boards that Airbnb hosts are not shy about complaining about Airbnb errors, and a system-wide payment shortfall would cause a vertible flood of host complaints.

If you are willing, perhaps you can share an example of the numbers that display the shortfall?

[Pamela407]

Matthew,

”we have had shortages in each guests payout in one of our listings”, now auditing 11.  

Anyone know the contact tact for legal department?

[Matthew285]

@Pamela407 I don't know of any direct / publicly available contact information for the legal department.

But honestly, if there are shortfalls in your payments, I would think the slowest possible way to fix that would be to contact the legal department. Having been both on the plaintiff side and the defendant side in legal situations, it seems that when lawyers get involved, "speed" is never a word you would apply to what happens.

If you were to somehow get in contact with Airbnb's lawyers, and they somehow chose to get involved in your situation, I would predict the following would happen.

1. No other employees of Airbnb would be allowed to help you (because anything they do related to your situation would have to be cleared through legal first).
2. No other employees of Airbnb would probably even be allowed to talk to you.
3. Their legal department would take their sweet, sweet time making sure every single aspect of the payment situation was examined to the nth degree... all to your detriment.
4. Every part of your relationship with Airbnb would be put under a microscope, by the same people who wrote the Airbnb Terms of Service. That would be fun.
5. If you retained legal representation of your own, your own legal expense would far, far exceed any possible amounts you are seeking in your payments. (It is super-fun to be chatting with a lawyer that is costing you $1,200 / hour).

That being said, if you want to try to contact their legal department, your best bet would be to contact Airbnb support and ask to be contacted by their legal department.

I think it would be a terrible, terrible idea, but that would be the way to do it.

Possibly a better idea: tell us some of the information you have found that indicates a shortfall in your payments. Make sure you are actually being shorted before starting to wrangle with the legal department of a company that has billions of dollars at its disposal, and could terminate your account with a snap of its mighty fingers.

I can't tell you what to do in this situation; you are the boss, and the only one who can choose your path. I hope whatever path you choose brings you good fortune.