Contacting Airbnb

[Emma239]

Am quite horrified at the lack of support.  Placed two requests last night for someone to call me and no one did.  Can't email them either as it says "system error".  Now trying to locate their telephone number and can't find it anywhere.  Can someone please email me their number.  Thank you.

[David126]

https://www.airbnb.com/help/contact_us

[George204]

Sorry, but perhaps the most important piece of information is missing - AirBnB's phone number. As a new host, I had fits trying to figure out special pricing, and, because it was the only option available on a Sunday afternoon, I clicked on "Send an Email" to submit my question. I did receive a response pretty quickly, but it didn't solve my problem. I assumed I would receive further contact from AirBnB the following day, because the site showed my question was Pending. However, I heard nothing more, and by Tuesday morning AirBnB had closed the question.

My first potential guest had problems submitting her application to stay in my condo, receiving what turned out to be misleading error messages ("The system is down or your session has timed out"). She emailed her issue to AirBnB and also heard nothing back.

I only found AirBnB's phone number by doing a web search. I am happy to report that both times I called the number, I reached a live tech after only a short wait. In the first instance, the tech was able to explain exactly how to set the special pricing, and also offered some other useful tips for setting up my listing. In the second instance, the tech was able to find the problem with the guest's application, and contacted her directly to help her solve the problem. So, I give the phone support two thumbs up, and the email support two thumbs down (I'd point more thumbs down if I had them). Chat was also useless - both times I clicked Chat With Us, a daughter page opened up, but it was blank - not even a message with something like "Chat is not available right now. Please use the form to email your question to us." It's possible that Chat wouldn't work due to either the browser I use (Chrome) or the fact that I have an ad blocker extension active, but I've seen no mention anywhere on the site about these being an issue.

So, why hide the contact phone number when it's one of AirBnB's best support features (and in fact, seemingly the only way to resolve issues not covered in the online Help section)?

[Christian65]

Because it very ressource heavy and it costs Air a lot of money to have everybody call them when they could easily find the answers themselves.

If you look at these community pages you'll see that people's effort to find their solution is very poor. Instead of browsing through the pages, people post a new thread that has been answered a million times. And you' ll see that many of the problems and questions can be solved and answered here or via the Airbnb Help Center. 

Regardless, I can't accept the premise that they hide their number. Is this hiding in plain sight then? If you are truly screwed and in need of acute assistance, its not that hard to get in touch with them. 

https://www.airbnb.com/help/contact_us#/

I totally understand that people have their own experience and I get that customer service sometimes isn't helpful but isn't that a common customer service problem? Not that it shouldn't be dealt with in a critical debate but I genuinely think that they try to improve as much as they can but always with a tight focus on costs - as would any serious business do. 

But there are too many users who would prefer calling instead of just doing a bit of research and find the answer right in front of their eyes.

[David126]

@George204

You can not have looked very far, the Call Us is about as prominent as I can imagine.

[George204]

I was never able to see the phone number when I clicked on Contact Us, and when I click on the original link that you provided now, I get information on contacting my upcoming guest, but I don't see any phone number to contact AirBnB. If I click on the Visit the Help Center button at the top, I see information on various topics related to my current guest (including her phone number) and also some topics listed under Suggested For You, but again, AirBnB's phone number is nowhere to be found.

As mentioned in another reply to your post, I understand that phone support is expensive, but as I described in my previous post, based on the limited experience I and my first guest is that the Chat function doesn't work and emailed help questions get little or no response. As another poster mentioned, sometimes there are issues that are very time-critical and/or complicated that require interaction with someone from AirBnB, so it's vital that the phone number be easy to find.

I'm not sure why you are able to see a phone number and I can't, unless AirBnB is attempting to tailor the contact information to specific circumstances.

As you might gather, my experience setting up my listing was very frustrating, and I apologize if my tone is a bit strident as a result. I really did search look everywhere I could on the website to find the phone number, to no avail. My guest, who is also something of a newbie, had the same problem, as did the person who started this thread, so obviously I'm not alone. Even the tech I spoke with on my first call agreed that the number needed to be displayed.

David, I would ask you this: assuming the link you provided does sometimes display the phone number, how would someone find that link if they are starting from the AirBnB homepage?