ACCUSATION BY AIRBNBle

[Dan480]

Got an email from Lando in customer service stating that I had entered my rented home without permission and if it happened again, I would be kicked out of the Airbnb community.

A week before this message I had a guest "create an office" in my house and put my furniture in the open garage. I objected and the guest left the next day and also canceled the rest of his reservation. I had no need to enter the house and absolutely did not enter.

Since the Lando email I have talked to more than 10 customer service people (but not with Lando).

They sound really concerned at first but the next message i receive is only a copy of the Lando message.

I have even sent a registered, hand written letter to Brian Chesky asking to tell me why they think i did something wrong, without even receiving an acknowledgement.

Anybody have similar experiences?

 it feels wrong to be accused of misbehavior and not have any recourse. It put a very dark cloud over my opinion of Airbnb.

A little transparency might go a long way.

It's time for me to re-evaluate my connection with this badly run business 

[Susan1188]

It sounds like your problem guest went on a retaliatory vendetta behind your back with CS.

So sorry this happened to you.

Did you set up a thread at the first hint of trouble with this guest?  I don't know if this would make the guest accusation less credible.
I have been doing that as a pre-emptive measure so that I hit the first strike if ever the guest starts involving CS.  And getting the whole story back-and-forth on the platform, which I suppose you did.

It's so frustrating not to be appreciated, since it's superhosts like you that give Airbnb it's good name and generate much of it's value.  If there were no hosts like you, there would also be no guests flocking to the platform.

Your CS person should have looked at your history before threatening and accusing you.  But you also don't know what the guest kicked up behind your back.  

[Dan480]

@Susan1188 

Hi Susan,

By now, it is unlikely I will ever hear what kind of malarkey this vengeful guest concocted.

However, I get the feeing (partly because he lives in San Jose) that he knows someone inside airbnb.

He has obviously dealt with this before because he knew exactly how to stay inside the guidelines for complaining, to a T.

@Katie

Would it be within the CC guiselines to re-produce his review of our house? After all, it is public information right?

but I'll wait for your answer..

[Susan1188]

@Dan480 
Hey Dan how are you doing?  Hope this isn't taking up too much head-space.

I have noticed CS has automated more and more their responses.
Artificial Intelligence, parametrisation, and really performant algorithms.  It's their business that's what they do.  

They are responding on the chat with more and more automated bot messages.  You never know is Lando a real person or a bot or half and half.

So, don't take personally what the Lando-bot told you.

They detect certain issues - and privacy is a big one.  It seems anything to do with a guest complaining about a camera or in your case about host supposedly entering the property...

Was this his review? "...We arrived late Friday evening and ended up leaving Sat evening instead of Sunday. The other homes were close to each other. Felt like we were being watched the whole time. It was a little creepy. The bedrooms were super hot...."

Yes it looks like he knows how to play Airbnb... maybe you should respond.  "We want all guests to have a 5 star experience and are sorry we couldn't provide this for X.  This guest moved our furniture outside to create an outdoor office and was rankled when we then terminated his reservation, which explains this strange review"  Anyway his review looks dumb because of your great history and all your other reviews, anyone can tell this guy had an agenda when he wrote that.

All your guest had to do was say you entered without knocking - maybe there is even a toggle switch or check box something on his complaint screen for him to claim it was a "privacy issue" , and the I'm sure the support people get an automated message popping up for them to vet or not and send along.


How many hosts recently have provided camera footage to prove guest behaviour only to get zapped with a condemnation and a sanction for legal, disclosed camera footage!
Security would be another one,  guest could get your listing suspended until you get a safety certificate they complain about a gas leak...

He might know someone at Airbnb or just be an experienced guest and going on FB forums that tell guests exactly how to formulate their vengeful complaints to get the host zapped.

[Dan480]

@Susan11 

My thoughts exactly Susan. 

I flagged the guest to airbnb and gave them pictures of the conversation with him, the (quasi nice) note he left, a damaged chair and more. I never got a different response from airbnb, only the copy and pasted "Lando message".

Now we are looking at an IPO.

Corporations check their conscience at the door for the benefit of Benjamin$.

Money they sorely need in this case to survive, due to less than prudent financial decisions.

Your thought:

Should we hosts need to organize as to effect change?

[Ann72]

@Dan480  Not only is your CS experience ludicrous, the original rep and those who have followed do not seem to know the Terms of Service.  Here is a paragraph under "Guest Terms" (emphasis mine):

"2.3 Accommodation Reservations. An Accommodation reservation is a limited license to enter, occupy, and use the Accommodation. The Host retains the right to re-enter the Accommodation during your stay, to the extent: (i) it is reasonably necessary, (ii) permitted by your contract with the Host, and (iii) consistent with applicable law. If you stay past checkout, the Host has the right to make you leave in a manner consistent with applicable law, including by imposing reasonable overstay penalties. You may not exceed the maximum number of allowed Guests."

So even if you did enter the space, which you did not, it should not be grounds for you to be "kicked out" of the Airbnb community.

The phrase "limited license" is important here, as it does not give a guest the right of tenancy.

[Jillian115]

@Dan480 I have had some horrible customer experiences since AirBNB got rid of the majority of their customer service. This is exactly what worries me. We are left flying with no support these days. I would be horrified if that happened and yet there is no one left to support or protect us anymore. Getting an issue resolved these days take weeks. This situation is really scary. I'm sorry that happened.

[Ute42]

.

@Dan480 

A while ago there was a story from a fellowhost on here very similar to Yours.

A guest had accused the host of something, I forgot what it was. Then some back and forth with CS followed and finally the host got a written message from Customer Service stating that

• airbnb would never doubt the truthfulness of a guest

So if there's a he said – she said situation, the guest is condisered to be truthful and, as a logical consequence, the host is considered to be untruthful. That's exactely what happened to You. You were talking to 10 customer service people to no avail at all. Why? Because You're an untruthful host.

Many of us enjoy hosting, the main reason we are doing this though is to make some money for us and our families. The airbnb platform does generate money for uns and we are thankful for that.

But money isn't the only thing we want from airbnb. What we also want from airbnb is

• respect

cc: @Sarah977 @Phoenix14 @Emiel1 @Helen350 @Susan1188 @Ann72

[Dan480]

Hi all,

I wrote a better article before but lost it for unknown reasons. Likely my own bad.

When the founders of Airbnb had a good idea and ran with it, they never expected it to be this successful. Neither founder, likely, had the experience or education to lead a venture of such proportions. 

To grow the business they needed help, which is never hard to find for a profitable business. Although, GOOD help is always hard to find. 

Several less-than-prudent financial decisions were made and I wonder.

There is a reason why an IPO is in the pipeline.  Airbnb is in dire straights financially and an IPO  MAY make them weather the storm.

This is not to say it’s not a masterful platform.

But it seems recently pushed aside that it floats on the hosts. The market for customers is many orders of magnitude over the market for host spaces. Don’t forget that this massive investment is not weighing on Airbnb, but on the hosts. 

Pissing off a guest is wrong but much less expensive than disenfranchising hosts. Which, hosts are Airbnb customers too!

With the impending IPO Airbnb will enter the realm of amazon and Facebook corporation  platform successes. 

Corporations check their conscience at the door and only Benjamin$ count.

With the event of Bot CS we have been notified. 

For a continued successful future of Airbnb, HOST need a chair at the oval table.

We could collectively buy one at the IPO through buying (voting) stock but I’m afraid we won’t play well between the fund behemoths.

We could sway a large investor to include our experiences from the trenches in their voting decisions but that does not Guarantee us a chair either.

Generals often get disconnected from the battle at hand, by not communicating with the soldiers directly. 

Are we not seeing the beginnings of just that already?

Airbnb May become a great success and Brian Chesky May get to stand next to Zuckerberg on a podium one day, or it could become a dismal failure in the not too distant future (although I still don’t understand what makes Zuckerberg’s product’s worth).

Amazon may be a better comparison. They sell products AND services during the pandemic. 

Not unlike Amazon, Airbnb now has a unique position: with the roaring pandemic, travel and leisure ventures have been severely hit. 

Initially Airbnb was among them but with guests venturing outside large conglomerates, rural hosting became popular and now supports the bottom line.

In the future I can see Airbnb make alliances into small hotels,  adventures, theme parks, campings and the like, as the savior of small leisure business screaming for platform help.

Lastly,  hosts can create a union as an equal and opposite force to corporate Airbnb for United we stand  ... etc.

It will be very difficult to organize but we could send a sos flare to the top by organizing a “wild strike” ( that would get some attention I guess) but it won’t work post IPO.

Your thoughts?

[Phoenix14]

@Ute42

The Airbnb Support response below was in relation to a cancelled reservation (booked Sept 2020, for Nov 2020,) with full conversation on message thread in which the guest had asked about cancellation policy prior to booking, and the host had informed them that they had been hammered by COVID EC cancellations since March, could not possibly afford to take any more, and advised guest to please seek out a listing with flexible cancellation if they felt there was any possibility at all that they may cancel.

Guest still chose to book, then later spent a week trying to cajole host into agreeing to full refund, using a variety of different excuses. When host held fast, guest went to Airbnb with "Oh, one of the party now has COVID". When host asked CS agent what proof that Airbnb had that any documentation that Airbnb had (allegedly) received was in relation to anyone even remotely connected to the booking guest, the following response was given.. (guest, of course got full refund. Host was left with nothing)

 

[Mary419]

So thankful to see cohesive support from hosts about this situation. I think Airbnb has really underestimated how deeply it cuts when hosts have been work horses for years and then find out they’re meaningless to “support” agents. When the wizard of oz is a bunch of hyper volatile youngsters without any reservations about insulting you and without any experience managing property, it’s enough to really take the wind out of your sails.  A few years ago my eyes were opened to this phenomenon when was woken up at 3am by Airbnb toll free number calling me. It was a young woman.  I know nothing about her so this isn’t “personal” but she was probably early 20s and very rude and told me my guests at a certain unit were too hot and if I didn’t fix their ac right away she would have me paying the difference for a hotel room. I told her I had no idea why they never told me of the issue and apparently had called Airbnb instead of me, but that I couldn’t help at 3am. I said I would call for service first thing in the morning. She said that was “unacceptable” and treated me so horribly that night, refusing to accept that 3am ac repairs aren’t  normal and rattling off Airbnb expectations of hosts. Along with threats.  I was a few years into using the site and about 3,000 reviews in... the fact I got no respect from her and was abused at that hour nearly sent me to an asylum... I had no idea how much the daily grind had worn me

down but I could take it until

that call. That sent me into a tailspin. I was so insulted. I had an ac man at that apartment at 8:15am the next morning. The windows were fogged over from the ice cold air inside vs warm outside. The guest stumbled down in his boxers. He told my ac man this was old news and not even a problem anymore. They had arrived in the July 4 heat of the day when it’s 100 outside and they didn’t know about the “20

degree differential” which meant it couldn’t get really cold inside until the sun went down...and also didn’t contact me as the host instead they called the Airbnb 800 number. They got frustrated being on hold and sent a tweet about Airbnb service sucking. The social media girl saw the tweet hours later and without checking my time zone called and abused me. And threatened me. This was the beginning of my eyes being opened. I’m still being shown just how little I matter. Many thousands of guests later I’m being told I don’t get it. I’m not sure how many more bookings need to go through me for them to see me as someone who gets it, or to see me as someone who’s got the benefit of the doubt. 

[Fred13]

I get @Katie 's meaning, in the sense that labeling or qualifying someone automatically based on just their age does probably tend to undermine taking that person seriously in the first place, especially when they are more than capable of doing a marvelous job at such a young age in some customer-related areas. I.E. tone, explaining company policy and such things in which they can always consult a guiding manual.  

This case appears to concern a judgement of human nature, in that the guest is given the benefit of the doubt over the host once again automatically (here is that word again), and that practice is very common with Airbnb. And the reason for that may indeed be a function of age, meaning who they are hiring and by whom; unless they are some 'boy wonder' (i.e. Mozart) few young people have had even the opportunity to experience much of life to finally understand patterns of human behavior. After all, wisdom comes from observed repetition, but that usually takes time (aka age).

[Dan480]

@Fred13 @Katie @Ute42 

Discrimination:

Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.

"discrimination between right and wrong"

We tend to forget the primary meaning of this over-used word. There are many levels of experience and misunderstanding....

[Dan480]

@Katie 

”Maintaining a basic level of respect for others is what keeps this Community a welcoming and resourceful place for all, and it is our job as Community Managers to ensure that this is the case.”

Could you plz relay the above to the 10+ CS’s I’ve attempted to communicate with Katie? (Pot...kettle....black...)

[Sme185]

Several weeks ago I sent a registered snail mail letter to Brian Chesky at the official Airbnb address to ask for management involvement with the problems I was presented by Airbnb CS.

The letter came back today, unaccepted.

Another affidavit of non support.

Us minions don’t count.
Money speaks for itself.

All the “caring” messages I receive from HQ are fake.