Empathy with hosts?

[Matias181]

Hello everyone! I have been hosting for a bit more than a year, using the platform as a guest for 6, but this is the first time I post here. 

I tried finding a similar situation in older posts, but had no luck. Maybe I worry too much but the interaction with the support team left me somewhat of a bitter taste. Should I just don't pay attention to the secret notes on our profiles? Is this normal? Is it me or there is no empathy towards hosts who are honest and try their best?.

So, here is the story. (Sorry for the length of this, and thanks for your advice!)

I will have hosting restrictions for a while, so I set up custom rules to avoid any issues. However, I received an instant booking today at 7 pm, for a check in in less than 48 hours (which shouldn't have been possible due to the rules I set). I immediately contacted Airbnb support (btw, I was so worried I didn't even realise that the guest was booking the place for their cousin and wife, instead of themselves) explaining that there was something apparently wrong with the calendar, that I was not going to be able to host, and that I wanted to know what to do, since I didn't want to get penalised.

Next thing I did was message the guest explaining the same thing, saying that I contacted Airbnb to help with the cancelation, that they will be 100% refunded, but that I could not cancel until I got a reply from Airbnb. Half an hour later, still no answer. Guest cancelled the reservation. I refunded the total. No more news from guest. Airbnb system was down for a few hours after that.

Later on, support replies. I send them a screenshot showing my custom rules. They tell me I have apparently set them wrong.

While checking if refund went ok, I realised that the guest was charged the guest fee (9.5 euro). So I ask the support agent if there was any way that money could be refunded, as I thought it was unfair due to an honest mistake with a tool (which in my opinion, it is super user-unfriendly)

Here is where it gets a bit disappointing for me... exchange of messages with operator:

**[Private conversation with CS removed in line with Community Center Guidelines]

[Emiel1]

@Matias181 

IMHO the Airbnb support rep. is acting correctly. If you made a mistake in setting up your calender, then you need to cancel the reservation right away. No need to bother Airbnb CS with it, sorry.

[Matias181]

Hi Emiel, thanks for your message. I fully agree that if I make a mistake with the calendar, I need to cancel the reservation right away. However, I didn't know I had made a mistake with the calendar until the support rep. pointed it out. This was after the guest had already cancelled the reservation. Anyway, it goes beyond that.

Me, a part of Airbnb community with acceptable enough peer-rating, who cares about the values this platform adheres to, had an issue. I sought support immediately, was completely transparent with both the rep. and the guest, and tried to be fair.

That issue ended up being an honest mistake with a not so straightforward tool. What did I get from support?

I was not pointed to, for example, any article or support platform where I can learn to prevent that mistake with the tool.

Instead:

I was accused of violating the hosts standard policy.

I was told I should not be transparent with the guest. I should stay silent until I get a reply from support.

I shouldn't have asked for support to refund the guest fee to the guest (if I hadn't asked, none of this would have happened, since the guest didn't request it)

There is an internal, secret "profile noting". (doesn't really go with transparency).

I may still be penalised for what we know.

To sum up, that doesn't look like "support". 

Maybe I didn't post this in the right place. Please forgive me, and if needed, please move it to where it should go 😉 Thanks

[Emiel1]

@Matias181 

I understand your disappointment with Airbnb CS, but the guest already cancelled the reservation and seems not to be bothered about lost Service Fee ? So "case closed" !

By insisting to refund Euro 9,50 ("being fair" is a very good attitude, but sometimes a business approach is best thing to do) you triggered a line of communication with a bad outcome for yourself.

[Sarah977]

I usually agree with Emiel's take on things, but in this case, I'd respectfully have to disagree. It isn't at all clear to me that this was Matias's error, it wasn't to him at the time, and there are certainly plenty of posts on this forum where hosts say that a guest was able to IB even though the criteria they had set correctly were not met.

I also find the tone of this CS rep's messages to be curt and threatening, which wasn't at all necessary, given that the host remained polite throughout the exchange.

"you could also wait our answer and not tell her that you could not host her."

This line especially was uncalled for, as we all know that support can take days or weeks to get back to a host about an issue and letting the guest know right way that you won't be able to accommodate is indeed the right thing to do if the host believes there was a glitch that wasn't their fault and they are waiting to hear back from CS. No host wants to do the cancellation from their end and be penalized if it turns out to just be a platform glitch, rather than the host being lax about keeping their calendar and settings up to date.

Yes, unfortunately, Matias, Airbnb treats hosts like naughty children.

@Matias181

[Inna22]

Even if Matias made a mistake in his settings, the agent's curt tone was uncalled for. This was clearly a mistake, we all make them. If Airbnb had  "how to" support tools, we could be blamed for them (perhaps). Some rules are not clear at all. For example, I have a one day notice rule. Does that mean that guests can book up to 24 hours of my check in time? Midnight the night before? Whose time zone? I have always received conflicting information about this from CS and have asked them to cancel reservations made at midnight- the whole point was for me to not wake up to a reservation moving in that day! They took care of it with no fuss a few times and a few times I was told up to midnight is still one day notice. 

Informing the guest was also an honest thing to do here and in guest's best interest. 

The last point I would like to make is the number of times I got a call from Airbnb begging me to refund a guest who made a mistake in booking my place (they usually wanted to through a party and realized they would not get away with it). After that they went on to attempt to re-house the guest and dump them on another unsuspecting host. Why would the same curtesy not be extended to host when they made a mistake? Re-house the guest, give a full refund, everyone is happy. I bet you those party guests do not have any secret marks on their "file".

@Matias181 @Sarah977 @Emiel1 

[Sarah977]

While there have always been some CS reps who are clueless and give out bad or incorrect advice, they at least always used to be reasonably polite. I don't know where Airbnb is outsourcing to these days, or whether their hiring criteria has changed, or they're just paying so little that they don't get good reps, but there have been more and more reports here of just plain rude and dismissive CS reps.

[Emiel1]

@Sarah977 

Although Airbnb CS is a disaster, which can be read from many messages in the community, in this case i believe the CS rep. is not rude, but is taking a business approach to the issue, which is experienced by the OP  as not fair and having no empathy. Which i fully understand, but IMO that is what can be expected from Airbnb these days.

[Matias181]

Thank you all for your feedback. I appreciate everyone's point of view.

Reading through different posts in the community, I realise there are no "universal best practices" to hosting on Airbnb. I see that everyone has their way of seeing the different topics (sometimes even completely opposed), but we all agree on at least 2 points:

- CS is mediocre

-Hosts are always the ones thrown under the bus

I guess my question then is... Is there anything that can be done to improve that? Or we are just supposed to take it like a champ? -well, there is the option of leaving the platform... true.

I don't know.. I maybe had higher, impossible expectations... but I'm still not ready to just resign myself to having a mediocre service in return of our investment.

And ultimately, I strongly refuse to accept that honesty and good faith are penalised, especially for business reasons.

@Sarah977 @Emiel1 @Inna22 

[Inna22]

@Matias181 perhaps IPO will force them to hire experienced management vs running on ideas. We also do not know exactly what makes the bottom line for them. They do read these boards so speaking up might take us just one step further

[John5097]

Not saying this is the case, but CS may factor how the account is being used from other activity, if it appears that host got a better booking another booking site. And even if this was just a one off mistake CS may have very strict policy. To them its even worse if guest had to cancel because host couldn't honer the agreement, and didn't get full refund and no reservation. Thank you for sharing this as well, as I'm confused at what the policy is, some say up to 3 cancelations a year with IB but ABB says no more than 1% cancelations. From reading the forms its seems clear that you want to avoid using CS at all. Just one note on your account shouldn't be an issue. The most important thing is to provide exactly what you say and simple instructions that don't have any problems. I also would have been surprised at such a curt interaction but that is kind of grey area, such is life, and the reality is that its a very simple and great opportunity for anyone to create a listing and Abb has to provide a service that keeps them in business, and a situation like this could go either way from the info provided. Good luck though and keeping your calander up to date and accurate is something the host can control, and I would rather ABB address situations that are beyond our control but have negative impact on us. But once again thanks for sharing as I could have made the same mistake. 

[Sarah977]

"Thank you for sharing this as well, as I'm confused at what the policy is, some say up to 3 cancelations a year with IB but ABB says no more than 1% cancelations."

I may be totally wrong, but I know the "No more than 1% cancellations" refers to Superhost status and perhaps that your 3 free IB cancellations may not count towards that, only cancellations which fall outside of that and also don't qualify under the EC policy.

@John5097

[John5097]

@Sarah977 yes the 1% cancelation rate is mentioned in the performance tab for super host requirements. I'm still not sure if that's 1 of 100 reservatons or 1% of actual nights rented out? There is no mention of it being after 3 cancelations, but you may be right. After reading this I would be less inclined to make any cancelations and wouldn't ask guest to cancel. 

[Sarah977]

That 1% cancellation rate refers to individual reservations, not to nights booked. And it has nothing to do with guest-generated cancellations, only host cancellations.

@John5097