Reaching Community Support

[Aisling]

Hi everyone, 

Thanks for all of your messages and responses over the last week on my last post providing some context to the challenges our Community Support team has been facing and what we’ve done about it to ensure we can support you better and quicker. 

I worked with our Community Managers here to collate feedback around Community Support and wanted to share some additional information with you. 

Urgent Non-COVID support 

For any urgent Non-COVID-19 related issues, we have a separate and dedicated team of experts working on urgent safety concerns 24/7. 

If you have any safety concerns, we recommend 2 options designed to support you in these situations. 

• Our Safety Center is a resource for guests and hosts to learn more about how to stay safe on their trip. Additionally, our in-app Urgent Support Line is available to English speaking members of our global community who are on an active trip and would like to talk to a Safety specialist about a safety, security, or urgent matter.
• Our Neighborhood Tool is designed for neighbors around the world to report unwanted noise and nuisance issues related to an Airbnb listing. For those living in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands who want to call our Safety team directly, we also have a Neighborhood Support line available in English. 

Managing future cancellations

As I mentioned in my prior post, we are still working through our backlog of tickets since the WHO announced COVID-19 as a pandemic with the new ways of working. 

Since my last update, we have launched an update about coverage under our Extenuating Circumstances Policy to provide guidance for future reservations with check-ins between March 14, 2020 and May 31, 2020. If you’re a host, you’ll find information in your hosting dashboard. As a host, If you receive questions from any of your guests regarding cancellation requests, The best way is to advise guests to go to their Trips page to initiate a mutual cancellation. Note only guests will have the option to initiate. 

Ways to reach us

If you still need support, we have created tools that allow you to quickly solve many issues using our Help Centre on our web page or mobile app or you can message us directly from the Airbnb app. For more information regarding coronavirus, our extenuating circumstances policy or regarding changing or cancelling a reservation, please visit airbnb.com/covid19. 

Thanks again for your candid feedback, we hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy.

Aisling

[Sarah977]

@Albert1743  Lizzie is a forum moderator here. She doesn't have anything to do with Airbnb customer service, the emails you sent, or the answer you received.

[Albert1743]

Thx Sarah. Just becoz Lizzie replied me that she would talk to her colleague in CS team and update me. That's why I asked her again. In other words, Aisling and Lizzie are not the staff of Airbnb, right? They could not help to solve the Customer Support Team issues?

If so, who can I speak to for complaining the Customer Support Team as no one replied me when I post the complains in the Airbnb Feedback section which the Case Manager asked me to do so???

[Sarah977]

@Albert1743 Yes, Lizzie, Stephanie and Quincy, who are the forum moderators here, will often offer to pass users concerns here on to the support team, and try to get answers to posters' questions, but they don't actually make decisions about how things get handled.

Aisling does work for Airbnb, but it appears that her job consists of just posting the topic here from Airbnb, but not responding to individual posters. 

Airbnb Feedback isn't responded to. It says that right where you fill in the feedback box. The case manager asked you to do that so she can wash her hands of you. Supposedly they read feedback, but you won't get a personal response. 

I'm not sure exactly what you are expecting at this point. You've received a message that your case is closed, and it's a final decision. You haven't stated what your issue is here, aside from the fact that you feel you should receive a refund. When was your check-in date? When did you make the booking? When did you cancel it? What was the cancellation policy for the listing? If you give some details here, other posters may be able to give you advice.

Also, Lizzie, or anyone else won't see that you have addressed them in a post here unless you tag them, like I did you at the start of this reply. To tag, hit the @key, then a box will come up with a list of names. If you don't see the name you are looking for, type the name slowly and another box will come up with that person's tag and click on it. 

[Susan17]

@Sarah977 @Albert1743

@Aisling who created this thread, is Aisling Hassell, Airbnb VP of Community Support, and undoubtedly the same Aisling that Albert mentioned earlier that he cc'ed in his email to Brian Chesky. 

[Albert1743]

Thanks for the clarification @Susan17 @Sarah977 

[Sarah977]

@Susan17  I was being somewhat snarky when I said Aisling's job appeared to just consist of posting info here but not following up in answering individuals ;-)) I did know her job title- I'm sure she does other things besides posting and ghosting, but I don't know what they are.

[Albert1743]

Hello @Aisling @Lizzie I sent a complain letter via email to Brian on 17Apr and copied to Belinda, Aisling and Chris. I doubt whether the Customer Support team had carried out what Brian wanted to do. They revoked his statements shown to the world and were just using some operational excuses which did not make any sense to a customer. They avoided to address my concerns and only said that the case was final. I don't want to make things complicated and just fight for a  fair and justice review as a normal consumer will do. 

[Aisling]

Albert,

I did receive your complaint and forwarded to my escalations team. Let me check what the status is. I can't promise the answer will meet what you have asked for, but I can assure you it will get a thorough and fair review.

And for clarification to all, I do work for Airbnb and lead the global Community Support team. I wanted to post here to let you all know we are working hard to support you all in these challenging times. As you can imagine, my team has been incredibly busy and is also coping with remote working.
It's definitely not an easy time for any of you, and we understand that. We also need to empathize with the broad financial challenges this virus is bringing where people have lost jobs, or are dealing with Covid-19 in their families, or struggling with the lockdown provisions in so many countries.  In my role I see the pain on all sides of our community. It's a time to look out for each other and to hope that we see some light at the end of the tunnel soon.

I hope you stay safe and well Albert.

[Albert1743]

@Aisling  Thank you for your reply. I understand that it is a very hard time for all of us and appreciate that you have taken your time in my case.  Certainly,  I am happy to wait. Stay safe and healthy. Best regards.

[Susan17]

@Aisling 

As VP and lead of the global Community Support team - and the person with whom the CX buck ultimately stops - could you please confirm or deny the information contained in the email below, sent from a member of your support team to a host earlier this week

* Hosts will receive an email when a support payment is issued.

* This email will have an attached csv file which they can open in  Excel or Google sheets to review details of all the reservations that were included in the disbursement

* If a host hasn't received an email yet, their disbursement hasn't been issued yet

Timeline for next waves of hosts to receive payments and emails

20 April 2020 - 20K hosts
21 April 2020 - 145K hosts
22 April 2020 - 150K hosts
23 April 2020 - 184K hosts

Thanks again for being a valued Airbnb host.

As part of a project I've been working on for several years, I'm in close and constant contact with a vast network of hosts, all based in different markets around the world - which gives me a pretty clear and accurate overview of the global situation - and had already asked them to keep me posted if/when they receive their "25%" (12.5%) payouts.

As of this morning, April 23, most have received neither recompense, nor notification. Only a small percentage have reported receiving any payouts at all, and those who did, have mostly received piddling amounts, and nowhere near the amounts they were expecting.

As evidenced by the flood of anguished, desperate posts on this forum and all over social and mainstream media (including Sal Rodriguez' excellent and hard-hitting CNBC investigative report yesterday), countless thousands of distraught hosts worldwide are suffering extreme and unbearable hardship as a direct result of Airbnb’s unilateral - and questionably lawful - decision to shoulder hosts with the entire 100% burden of COVID-related cancellations. Leaving them even deeper in limbo now, with no clear or factual indication as to how and when they might receive their meagre 12.5% recompense from the alleged and widely-publicised $250 million relief fund, is nothing short of grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. (As a fellow Irish woman, I'm sure you're familiar with the acronym GUBU)

Please advise at your very earliest convenience. Hosts have families to feed, and homes to save. Rome is burning, while Nero fiddles. 

[Aisling]

Thanks @Susan17 . We started sending support payments late last week, and some of you may have seen payments in your accounts. 

Unfortunately, we’re running slightly behind the original schedule— and some of the support payments have been delayed. We know how important these payments are, and we’re sorry. We’re working as hard as we can to get back on track.

This first batch of payments will include eligible reservations before April 8, and total $140 million USD for 500,000 hosts. Despite the delays, rest assured, everyone that is eligible will receive their support payment. We hope to have the first group sent by May 1. 

Hosts with eligible reservations will receive an email when their support payment is issued, including a file so you can see what qualifies and how the payment was calculated. You’ll also find the payment in your transaction history.

As you mentioned, one thing we should also clarify is that the calculation for the payments will be based on 25% of what a cancellation charge would have been, not the total value of the booking. You can learn more about how the disbursements work here.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe, and I appreciate the post. You can continue to check airbnb.com/COVID for updates.

Aisling

[Sarah977]

@Aisling  Airbnb has removed all traces of the original booking payments for COVID related payments, pretty obviously so that hosts cannot check to make sure they are receiving the correct amount for these disbursements. Did Airbnb really think this wouldn't incense hosts even more than they were already, or that it would somehow go unnoticed? How can Airbnb continue to practice such blatantly underhanded behavior, yet keep pretending and reassuring hosts that you care about dealing with them fairly? It's the ultimate in hypocrisy.

And why do you run such an incompetent customer service dept, with reps who have poor English comprehension skills, send cut-and-paste responses which don't relate in the slightest to the issues or questions posed, and who seem wholly uninformed about Airbnb policies?

[Aisling]

Thanks @Sarah977  . I’m sorry you’ve experienced this issue. 

Sometimes we test small changes to try and improve the platform for our hosts, meaning some hosts see things that others don’t. In this case, we had received complaints that displaying guest refunds was confusing in the payout view, so we launched a test to try and simplify the page. I’ve just talked to our product team, and we’ve ended the test since it seems to be creating confusion. 

We want to provide as much transparency as possible when it comes to cancelled reservations—keep an eye out for an update to your “Reservations” page next week for a clearer view of what reservations qualify for support payments from our $250 million USD fund.

-Aisling

[Sarah977]

@Aisling  It isn't just that I've experienced this issue, or that it was a "small change" tested on a few accounts- all hosts have reported here that all the original payment information for their cancelled bookings disappeared. 

And testing changes, eliminating or adding features, without informing hosts of the change, is one of the things that is most aggravating to hosts about the way Airbnb deals with its hosts. Why are we not given the respect to notify us? One day we go onto our hosting pages, and the entire format has changed, we have to waste time hunting around for where things have been moved to, find work-arounds, etc. It's as if someone went into your kitchen, without your permission, while you were out and reorganized all your drawers and cupboards in a way that made no sense to you and you had to spend hours trying to locate where your vegetable peeler is.

[Aisling]

Hi @Sarah977 ,

Thanks for your message. I appreciate the stress and frustration of visiting your account information to find things have moved or been updated. As you can appreciate we're always making updates given feedback we hear from users and what our data tells us about how users interact with our products. I'll bring this back to the team to discuss how we keep hosts updated about changes we have made, and help them to navigate the changes.

Aisling