Our host is refusing to communicate and our parcel is therefore stuck in New York

[Carin403]

We stayed in Brooklyn, New York, with a super host from 5 to 8 October 2019. Just before that, we were in Boston for a few days. When in Boston, I bought my son limited addition converse shoes which he desperately wanted for some time. I paid extra to have it delivered to Brooklyn asap, but the shoes were delivered a few hours after we left for the airport to go back home. 

Our host said she would gladly courier us the shoes and we would pay for the cost of course.  She just said that we should give her a few days as she was very busy. As she was a super host, I fully trusted her.

Days turned to weeks and I began asking about our parcel. At first our host answered, but then I realised there might be a problem. The parcel had to be sent internationally and to make things easier for our host, I arranged for my cousin in the US to help. Our host just had to send the parcel to my cousin and then my cousin would send it internationally. At first the host communicated with my cousin, but then she “disappeared”.
I asked Airnbn for help. They contacted the host and she explained to them that she was very busy, but that she would communicate with us. She also said that she had no intention of keeping our parcel and so on.

Weeks later...she has not to date communicated with us or my cousin. She still has our parcel. She is ignoring our airnbn app messages, emails and phone calls.

She received our parcel on 8 October and it is now 24 December (23 Dec in the US).

Please help! What can we do? We are so disappointed in this host. 

[Helen3]

You should never arrange for a parcel to be delivered to your hosts property without asking their permission @Carin403  particularly when you knew there was a risk of it not arriving before you left.

Having  said that, if the host agreed to return the item, why didn’t you arrange for a pre paid delivery to pick up the parcel rather than expecting the host to organise things? 

I don’t know what you can do apart from offer to organise a prepaid pick up. 

[John1080]

We've had this discussion a few times in other threads. Remember the woman who had a guest send ammunition across state lines to her house?! As @Helen3 said, it is not a good idea for a host to agree to receive packages and guests should not request such a thing.

@Carin403, in this case, your host should never have agreed to this request, but that she did, she should have carried through with the request and it is quite bad of her to have kept the package so long without communicating with you. 

I guess all you can do, is continue to get in touch with her. Typically, it is not advised to make contact outside the Airbnb platform, but maybe you can try giving her a call (making sure the time is a good one for her), and see what's going on.

Good luck to you!