Can someone help me?

[Katelyn16]

I'm staying at an Airbnb in Vienna, and we just got a threatening note on our door (apparently a neighbor) saying that Airbnb is a crime and we need to go home. We've contacted the customer service line, and the woman there told us that we need to have the person who paid for the trip, an admin at our university call, she wouldn't speak to us, the guests. We need to be able to speak to someone about that to do, the owners are saying this has happened before and we need to know if we should leave the building or if there is an Airbnb policy for this. We canot get ahold of the admin at our school who official paid (from our money) and booked the trip. 

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Katelyn16  What is speaking to Airbnb going to do? 

[Inappropriate content hidden]

[Helen3]

@Rene-and-Zac0 I don't think the tone of your posts is terribly helpful for @Katelyn16 who is understandably is upset by the situation.

@Katelyn16 it is unfortunately that this has happened, if the secretary is around if this is a university trip, you must have a contact there you can talk to. If it is a business account there should be someone else who has access to the county. However from Airbnb's response I am not sure it is.

As unfortunately the host is not helping you have three choices

1. Get hold of somoene from the university

2. Stay in the apartment

3. Move out and find alternative accommodation and hope Airbnb agree to cancel and refund your original booking to the university. (you may have to contact family if you don't have enough funds for this)

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Helen3 I don’t live my life in fear.

Now if the note said “you have 24 hours to leave or I’m going to chop your head off”, I’d be concerned but a note saying “Airbnb is illegal, go home” is a joke. 

It’s a matter of not being bullied and capitulating to some phantom leaving notes on the door. 

Live your life like a cuck or live your life as a “free person”, it’s up to you. 

[Gordon0]

Your responses are a joke, Rene & Zac. I'm sure @Katelyn16 is finding them helpful. 

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Gordon0 I can tell you eat alot of Soy products. 

[Marit-Anne0]

@Katelyn16

airbnb cannot do anything to remedy the issue - you will have to make the decision if you want to stay or if you want to cancel an relocate. And take a photo of the note as proof.

and airbnb is right - with a business account, the company is the one to sort issues with airbnb as the responsible part for the booking.  

[Katelyn16]

I think we are going to see if the secretary is in on Monday, do you think she could hand us the admin powers? We had assumed as registered guests that we could do things like speak with Airbnb, but if we can get her taken off the account that would be great.

[Sarah977]

The booking was made through the secretary's account. No, you will not be able to change the already engaged booking to your account, but perhaps she can convince airbnb to allow you, as registered guests, to talk to them about this.

[Katelyn16]

We will definitely ask her to try that then. Honestly, involving the university would scale this issue quite a bit. Our university doesn’t deal with Airbnb, and if we come to them with this sort of issue on one of their first dealings - they may not use Airbnb in the future. We don’t want to see that happen (hotels are super expensive) and that’s another reason we would like to speak with Airbnb as the guests, involving the university is a little extreme at this point. 

[Sarah977]

@Katelyn16  Originally you said that you believed the secretary booked it on the Business account, now you say the university doesn't deal with airbnb, which would seem to mean that the  secretary booked it under her private account. It can't be both. You are very unclear on how your booking was made, which is making it difficult for you to deal with this effectively. 

[Katelyn16]

Sorry that was unclear, the university isn’t very new to dealing with Airbnb and usually uses hotels. We can’t be sure that the university secretary booked on her personal or business account, all we can see on our side is that we have emails sent to guests (the five of us) and that we are in communication with the host. I’m not sure how to ascertain how she booked, as no one in customer service will speak to us and the secretary is, of course, off work. It makes sense to me that it’s a business account, as it’s through the university who paid the booking fee. Ultimately, I will try to get her on the phone Monday so we (the guests) can speak with Airbnb directly. I’m still a bit confused as to why registered guests can’t speak with customer service in general without the bill payer’s express permission, as we would love to ask them questions - but hopefully, if the secretary can’t get taken off the account and let us deal with the issue, she can connect us to customer service. 

[Sarah977]

@Katelyn16  To give you an example- you could book a place through your own account and list a registered guest who will be travelling with you, but when the host goes to post a review of your stay with them, that review would only appear under your account, not under the registered guest under your booking, even if they have their own personal account as well. That's just how the platform works.

If you are booked at this place for awhile, I can understand that you feel uncomfortable and would want to have some resolution, but if it is just a few more days or a week, personally I think it is a big song and dance to go into over a nasty note left by some snarky neighbor.

[Kelly149]

@Sarah977 actually if you have an account that is added to any reservation then the review will also be visible on your profile. If you click on my profile, the only "guest" review I have is one where my husband booked our trip.

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Sarah977 My Nana used to say,

“if you let someone talk long enough, eventually they will tell on themselves”.

[Katelyn16]

This is what I said initially, “I believe that our secretary maybe had done the booking as a Business Booking, as it was the university booking the Airbnb for us.” I never stated that we were sure about it being a business account, I would assume it was - but regardless, we would like to speak - as guests - to someone within customer service. We can hopefully do so on Monday.