I am now already in a +10 day discussion with Airbnb on an i...
Latest reply
I am now already in a +10 day discussion with Airbnb on an issue of blocked days that are being switched to 'active' in the c...
Latest reply
Hi everyone,
I'm reaching out to the community to discuss an experience my friends and I have had today.
We've been planning a trip to Taiwan for 6 months. The trip is 4 days away and a system update triggered by Air B cancelled our property booking with no offer of compensation or warning. The stated reason was that the property did not comply with new safety standards being enforced. (E.g. a Carbon Monoxide Detector) Later on, in contact with the host, we find out that they actually did meet the conditions and install detectors within the set time frame. But Air B went ahead and cancelled their listing and all future bookings anyway. They told us we could keep our booking and wait for their listing to be reinstated on the site in 5-7 days... we arrive in Taiwan in 4 days...
Nobody reached out to help us in this situation, or offer monetary compensation, because every listing in our chosen area is now booked out or extremely expensive and over our budget for our dates. We eventually managed to scavenge a $100 coupon from a chat agent...
Has anyone had a similar experience in the past? I would like to gather input from others because I don't believe the burden should be on the consumer to fix an automated system update Air B triggered themselves? This might be a compliance/automated system update for them...but for travellers it's months of planning and hard earned money that goes down the drain. We're pretty stressed out about it and it's not exactly the experience we were promised.
[Post-story]
To top it all off. In a rush my friend was browsing other properties and reached this prompt "Reserve (Button) - You won't be charged straight away." Assuming it would lead to a quote/price breakdown which is the logical next step, she was actually charged straight away... This also means we didn't have a chance to apply the coupon we scrambled for after our booking was cancelled.
Of course, Air B support asked us to contact the new host - it was the host's decision. The host decided to comply with Air B policy and that is we would not be refunded if we cancelled (It was too close to the date...) Of course, with all the drama surrounding scams and dodgy behaviour, the host would be wary. We can't begrudge them for this.
Once again, why is the burden on users - travellers and hosts - to sort out glitches and issues arising from system failures and platform failures? Why are we using this site if Air B won't step in to mediate or help people? Isn't that what this business is supposed to be about?
We're currently in a bit of a battle with the Support Chat people. They keep copy-pasting sections from their Terms and Conditions to justify what has happened. It's clear that despite the injustice of the situation, the support team have no power to action anything meaningful or corrective for the situation we have been thrust into. And the general consensus between us is that we are highly disillusioned with the service we have been provided, and one of us has had a very similar experience before with cancellation.
The takeaway from these events is that trust, transparency, and fairness were all missing in our interactions with the company. We were just numbers in their game and our Graduation trip and the faith we placed in the platform is just there to be exploited for Air B's bottom line.
