Helen,
I'm a paying customer of AirBNB -who are kindly making it impossible for me to raise a dispute - yet you seem rather dismissive of my problem.
Let's go over the history shall we? See if some shifts of opinion can happen...
1. I'm having an issue with a crap stay at a place that was horribly misleading
2. I get as far as I can with the host, he doesn't want to play ball
3. I look for some kind of dispute resolution. I can't find anything. I'm thinking, "surely, it's here somewhere." Frustration increases
4. I then okay, I'll just contact AirBNB. Can't find anything for live chat, or email, or creating a ticket. Increased frustration.
5. I see the US numbers and think, "okay, that's a last resort but surely... surely... I can communicate in some way with AirBNB before I have to make international phone calls?!"
6. I realise that everywhere I look, I'm pushed to community forums. I don't see how a community form is going to help me. AirBNB have passed the buck of customer support onto unpaid "enthusiasts" of the platform who can't help me about specific account issues, so my question needs to be general... okay, I'll post a question asking how to get to some kind of "dispute resolution area". Every other platform known to man, that I've used in my 20 years of being a tech nerd and share economy / social user across many, many platforms (upwork, uber, carnextdoor, ebay, etc), has a dispute resolution area.
Now let's go through the history of my community forum experience...
1. "I can't find a link on any page, anywhere that offers any kind of resolution center"
2. Adam, go to www.airbnb.com/resolutions
3. I go there but learn that I can request money but in fact the request is simply sending a message to the host. There's nothing to say that Upwork will step in at some point. It's just a message. I send him a message and yup... it's just a message. So this isn't a "resolution center" at all. It's just a page that says "resolution" and then takes you to messages.
Now, the lovely community here didn't know that I had already gone through an extensive messaging process with the host and that's because you're not upwork and you can't have an "account level" conversation with me and SEE that I've already been in enstended discussions with the host. Now, that's not your fault but already you can see the service I'm getting from these lovely volunteers, is sub-standard, and of course it'll be sub-standard. They can only help people on general level, not an account level.
But my question wasn't really answered anyway. I wanted to know how to get to (if it exists) a dispute resolution area from my dashboard. Yet again, ever other platform known to man has buttons / links / menu fo this stuff. AirBNB, it seems, have decided, "no, we're going to make our faux 'resolution' area (that just sends messages) a URL not accessible until you type it in manually (or otherwise learn the URL from someone and bookmark it). Now, if no one of this forum thinks that's absolutely astonishing... then I give up, I'm the odd one out, and I should go sit under a tree and take a **bleep** load of acid because I clearly can't co-exist in this world with companies and people that think a buried dispute resolution service (which isn't a service anyway), is not a deliberate attempt to make it VERY difficult for someone to get AirBNB to step in when problems can't be resolved.
4. So I ask again, "I can't find a link on any page (in my dashboard) that offers any kind of "resolution center"
5. "Adam, go to Your Trips on your Dashboard. Go all the way to the bottom of the page where you will see 'Need to Resolve an Issue?' You will see a link to the Resolution Center there."
6. I look, and can not, for the life of me, find it. Frustration levels are hitting pretty high here.
7. "the word "resolution" or "need" is nowhere on that page."
8. Adam, did you try www.airbnb.com/resolutions?
Is this person serious? Firstly, if they had a "Need to Resolve an Issue" link on their screen and I didn't then one of is definitely taking too much acid. But that person never clarified that... I can only assume they were on the cookies. And then they suggest (again) the exact same suggstion from point (2). We're going around in circles here.
9. Alternatively, tell me why you are requesting a refund. There might be another way.
Well, this is now laughable. I'm requesting a refund because of a problem with a host. I'm not going to run through the entire scenario with a public forum... I've done my best to negotiate with the host, and now I need help from AirBNB... I DON'T need the "outsourced help center because AirBNB don't want to spend any money on customer support and they know people (for some bizarre reason) will just do it for free... we call them 'brand ambassadors'). I need an "account level" discussion with AirBNB.
10. Well, what happened to you saying that on your screen there's a link to "resolutions" ??
11. That question is, again, ignored.
12. Adam, all you need to do is go to the Help Center using the Help link on your dashboard
What help link?? That's the very question I started this thread about. WHERE is a link / button that takes me to some kind of dispute resolution. And now, at point (12), the answer it "just click the link in your dashboard".
An anology... "Hey Peter, I'm looking in my closet and can't find my shoes"... "Oh, just look in the closet".
13. Brave Helen steps in to tell me I'm being dismissive.
Helen... You're been incredibly dismissive of my problem. And we are still here, with no one (except me) able to answer the question. And the answer is:
1. There is not link / button to get to the dispute resolution area
2. The dispute resolution area is simply another face on the standard messaging system
So my answer is, AirBNB perform no dispute resolution services whatsoever on this platform.
Now if I'm wrong, can people stop loving AirBNB just for a second, and remember that they're a capitalistic enterprise doing their best to use you as customer service mules... and just focus on my question... and answer it.
So far, no one's done that because no one has any bloody idea how the platform works because none of you are trained in how it works.
So from here on in, I'll simply do what I just did... I'll report a criminal activity - and that gets me a fairly swift phone call directly from San Fran... It's the only way I can solve this problem because waiting for my host to reply to my refund request is like waiting for this forum to be able to answer a simple question. It'll never happen.
