Airbnb is holding my money without my permission

Shel0
Level 2
Phoenix, AZ

Airbnb is holding my money without my permission

I am frustrated, upset and feel so wronged. I am considering legal recourse unless Airbnb gets back to me with this. We have been with Airbnb for over 1 year and I have nothing less than 4-star reviews. But recently we hosted a guest during ThanksGiving. He checked in with his family at night and next morning I got a text telling me how he is unhappy with the cleanliness. I went and cleaned the house and got them new sheets, just to mitigate the issue. Just when I was done cleaning the house again, the guest escalated the issue to Airbnb and I get a call from Airbnb explaining the situation and that this guest is asking for a refund.  I was disappointed, I had spent a holiday away from my friends and family to clean this house and now this guest is asking for full refund. The matter got escalated and finally, a manager called me back 24 hours later, letting me know that they are favouring the guest and he will receive a full refund.   This gets worse 8 days later when I did not receive payments from Airbnb for the recent stays (2 different stays have been completed since Thanks Giving)  I called and found out that Airbnb had awarded the guest an addition $360 over and beyond the full refund. And that's why they have been withholding my money. Are they allowed to do this? Without discussing this with me without any warning. This is fraud. I have had no written or phone conversation with Airbnb about this. This guest stays 1 night and then complains. Not only does he get the refund but an additional $360? We have been wronged here. Please, I would love to know all your thoughts on this. 

 

15 Replies 15
David126
Level 10
Como, CO

I have never heard of this and did not think there is such a penalty, interested to see if anybody else has come across this.

 

Could be a rogue ABB employee making it up as they go along, seen that?

David
Emiel1
Level 10
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

Hi,

This is strange story. I can only imagine Airbnb had to relocate the guest and is charging you for the extra costs. But then there must be at least communication about it and the business should appear in your transaction history. Did you check this ? Your reviews are OK and cleanliness is even praised. I think it needs more explanation in detail from Airbnb. Best regards, Emiel

Shel0
Level 2
Phoenix, AZ

I tried calling Airbnb customer service 2 times for the last 2 days besides the numerous times previously. Every time they claim the issue has been escalated to the correct team and they will get back to me in 24 hours. But I have not received any calls or email yet. Do they treat all the property owners this bad?  I feel disrespected and wronged again. I have had no explanation from Airbnb-why do I have a penalty for that stay. I have great reviews, and I did everything in my means to fix any issues the customer had. Still, the customer demanded a refund. So Airbnb decides to not only refund the full amount of stay but also penalize me.  Could someone please advise what I should do here? I am hoping to resolve this by taking to the management rather than going to legal way. But honestly, I don't see another way.


All your help is appreciated

@Shel0

 

Seems common judging by posts on this forum.

 

Sometime Twitter gets to a higher level and might get something done.

David
Emiel1
Level 10
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

@Shel0Did you check your transaction history ? There must be something in it about the extra refund. It  seems almost impossible to me Airbnb did not communicate to you in any way about this.You stated in first posting:

"I called and found out that Airbnb had awarded the guest an addition $360 over and beyond the full refund."

So it's told to you only in this phonecall or did they Airbnb also pointed you to previous messages sent or items listed in your transaction overview about the subject ? Did you overlook something yourself ?

 

Best regards,Emiel.

After I did not receive the payments for the last stay, I did go back and check that they have withheld an additional $360. But this is not an explanation. They have not given me any explanation, the reason for withholding this. It is not impossible- it is happening to me so it could happen to others

I am not sure why are you trying to minimize what was done to me. I would not be on this website and calling Airbnb so many times- if it was as simple as referring back to my previous emails. As you must have read before, a penalty is uncommon. Why did they do this to me? and especially without any explanation. This is WRONG!  I am upset, and they don't bother to call back! it is a nightmare. 

The only penaties I know about are for cancellations. I can see one but would not be for this amount.

David

Yes, this is typical behavior by Air B n B. I have not had this particular experience but many others and worse. They do not give a darn about their hosts. We are a dime a dozen to them and a resource to be used and abused and then discarded. It is how they run their business.

Linda108
Level 10
La Quinta, CA

@Shel0  With the information you have provided, this Air BNB action does not make sense.  Perhaps you should seek arbitration as described in the Terms.

 

I do see that there was a host cancellation and wonder if part of the money is related to that.   Just a thought.

 

Keep us posted as I am sure other hosts are very interested.

 

**[Post moved from duplicate topic]

Corinne198
Level 4
Canterbury, NH

HORRIBLE customer service!!!!!

I recently had a guest leave after 1 hour, scheduled for 27 day stay ($2700).  Their reasoning: narrow staircase ( mentioned in our description). “

Unsafe for pregnant woman with PTSD”.

They received 100% refund with NO call or email to us to discuss

They have not returned one call to us after 7 days and 22 phone calls from us.

 

**[Post moved from duplicate topic]

We are a Superhost of 6 years with 66 perfect reviews.

Nice way to show their thanks.

it is obvious Airbnb values their guests over their hosts!

Helga0
Level 10
Quimper, France

@Shel0, 360 in surprise penalties are a lot. As someone said before, you had a host cancellation on your account, over a month prior to arrival, in October. So this cancellation would be the second host cancellation and the fine would apply. If I remember right, it’s 100 for the second cancellation. But you have to look it up, it’s ages that I read the terms and they change once or twice a year. 

If a lodging is unusuable, has dirty sheets or is dirty, has broken appliancies posing a danger etc, airbnb could decide to cancel the stay and pay the difference to a hotel room or other airbnb. If they believe that you were at fault, it would come out of your pocket and count as an host cancellation. 

As damage control, you have to convince airbnb, that either the problem was not as bad as indicated, did not exist or that you remedied it immediately and the guest knew or even accepted your effort to correct the situation. 

If you brought “new sheets”, what do you mean: washed contrary to already used ones on the bed or brand new ones in their original packaging? If it was the latter, I would say so, that you offered that, even though the others were freshly washed. 

If it took you a day to clean the house -again-, a person not in your house may suppose, that it can’t have been very clean to start with. It’s an unfortunate description. 

Your reviews are quite good, but none of the recent ones mention, that it was very clean. If any of your guests mentioned that in the private remarks, I would say so in my correspondence with airbnb. They do not look up other threads, if you don’t tell them to. 

If you had very happy guests before that stay, you could ask them to confirm it was clean. 

Everyone can get a crazy guest now and then. I had one giving me one and two stars ratings in all categories, which usually triggers a flag. I had five stars the day before and the night after, by chance guests within 2 nights before and after had written how clean it was, so the crazy rating was seen as just that, crazy. 

 

**[Post moved from duplicate topic]

 

@Helga0 I think much of getting a review taken off depends on the Airbnb agent who happens to respond to you or your guests. We similarly have had all 5-star reviews for over two years straight, including several this spring and summer. Then we had a "crazy" guest, to use your wording, arrive from Spain with two elderly relatives whom, we deduced quickly, would have preferred that he had taken them to a hotel rather than an Airbnb. On the very first night, he was complaining that there was no maid service, that there was only one Spanish TV channel (in Portugal--but we have 200 channels plus Netflix access), and so on. 

 

Eventually, he fabricated this story that first night about a supposed "attack" that had taken place in which he claimed that some mystery man had thrown rocks at our window in the middle of the night and terrorised his relatives. He also broke a vase inside our house and claimed that a rock had somehow penetrated the window and window grill without breaking anything but the vase (which is physically impossible). He even called the police to try to get legitimacy for his story.

 

This was all an excuse to try to get a full refund. The police filled out no report because they told us, clearly, that no such attack had happened. We also called the security at the condominium and they told us the same, and Airbnb similarly told him and us that he could not receive a full refund after checking in without providing evidence. We tried to help him out as best as we could, but he had also booked our place for 9 days at peak season, and if he left and expected us to give him a full refund, we would have lost all that rental income and would still have had to pay Airbnb their fee, as they were not relenting.

 

So, the guest left and vowed to write us a bad review, and he did. In the review, he changed all the facts from his story, and we had all of this in writing on the Airbnb message system. 

 

Guess what? When we sent all the evidence to Airbnb, including where the guest had promised us that if we could get him a full refund, then he would write a good review for us (which supposedly violates the Airbnb review policy), the agent didn't even acknowledge any of it. Like you, we had had nothing but 5-star reviews before and after this guest checked in and out, and while the first few agents we had spoken with at the start of this case were very understanding, this one dismissed us outright and sent us what looked like a form letter: "Upon review, we have decided that the guest's review can stand." He did not refer to one single point related to our case. Then, to add insult to injury, we were told a week later that we would be losing our Superhost status until the next review in October, because of this one bad review.

 

We naturally protested with this agent, but he simply told us that if we were unsatisfied, then we should contact Airbnb feedback and gave us a link for contacting them. But then he added, "Please understand that you may not get a response from them."

 

And we heard nothing.

 

So, there you go. We understand now that when dealing with Airbnb agents, it is often "the luck of the draw." Some will sympathise, but others will side with the guest because it is easier--even if that guest is "crazy."

 

In the end, Airbnb is a business, and so if that sometimes means satisfying its customers while throwing its hosts under the bus, then some agents will choose that route. We are glad, however, to hear that it seemed to have worked out for you. Not all the agents are bad, but they are human--and as we know, some humans are just plain lazy and are thus going to choose the easy way out.