Australian hosting payouts.

[Robin4]

Here is an sms I am starting to send out to my future iminent reservations. This is for reservations that are to take place over the next 21 days......

Hello ………….. This is Rob your Airbnb host for your up-coming stay on…………. Due to an internal error within the Airbnb organisation, Australian hosts have not received hosting payouts since the end of October. As there has been no communication from Airbnb as to the cause or the expected rectification of this problem I have to inform you, your upcoming stay with us has been compromised to the point where we are not in a position to honour existing Airbnb reservations. I love my hosting and will always continue to provide the great experience that has got us where we are, but, we do need to be paid for the service we provide, we have costs that need to be covered.

I suggest at this point you cancel your existing Airbnb reservation and I will direct you to another hosting platform where the financial transaction will be more secure. I have a flexible cancellation policy which means you will be fully refunded for what I should have been paid by Airbnb and I will undertake to cover some of the loss of any service fees that Airbnb charged on your reservation.

I am sorry to have to bring this news to you but, the total lack of any help or information from Airbnb has forced us into this! Please attend to this urgently and I will help in any way I can.        Cheers……Rob  

I am sending another sms to guest reservations in excess of 21 days to inform them of the situation and to tell them I will keep them informed over the next 14 days of any possible resolution that Airbnb may be able to conjur up but at this point their reservation is secure!

Gee whiz, and to think the payout side of this business was the main thing we could rely on Airbnb for....I have said it before....every day teaches me something!

[Kath9]

@Robin4, @Lynette57, @Megan345, @Kristy43, good news! Just got the following email:

 And, even better, the money is in my account!

[Megan345]

Thats great and thanks for keeping us in the loop! I got an email a few hours ago saying that there was a problem with my payout details, etc, etc. (Number 6 in the email trail). Hopefully there will be some joy for the rest of us soon...

[Robin4]

@Kath9 @Megan345 @Lynette57 @Jessica-and-Henry0

I got the same email, oh joy of joys...and then I looked at it! They are processing the payouts to the old payout method I was instructed to replace.....what on earth can I possibly say.

These people make the Keystone Cops look like Rhodes schollars!

Cheers......Rob

[Megan345]

Its 'funny' the new payment terms. We are NOT ALLOWED to present a class action against airbnb. Who says? And why not? with 30k+ of us disgruntled and unpaid, maybe that should be challenged.

I think what bothers us all the most- decent top rating 5 *superhosts that go above and beyond- is the lack of transparency, reassurance, personal attendance, ie, with daily emails as to what going on not, even in the slightest degree occurring. All customer service skills that Airbnb prides themselves on encouraging with their fabulous platform. 

We all know that **bleep** can sometimes hit the fan, especially in a digital marketplace. Yes, there will be hackers, outages, system breakdowns, etc. Its not ok but life and business is not perfect. If we were TOLD about whatever glitches were happening, we would all feel like there was at least some resolution happening. I offer a luxury experience with a brunch and high end amenities that guests pay for, and each payout funds the next stays 'treats' as part of their payment. my airbnb income 'pays it forward' as they say. With a crippling mortgage on my own for a fabulous house , which is why I do Airbnb, the non payment means I have had to borrow money for my next guests stay. This is so humiliating and I am angry that I have been put in this position.

So STILL waiting on my last guests payment, new guests coming in for the next 2 weekends and apprently I need to update my payment details again. Eyeball emoticon..

As someone said.... 'crickets'.........

[Kath9]

@Robin4, you are hilarious! But oh no, the old payment method... I didn't update mine on advice of my CS person, but looks like those who did update their payment methods might still have some delays - you might have to go in and make your old one the default payment method again. Jeez, if only Airbnb had communicated all this properly to us in the first place, they could have avoided so many dramas!

[John764]

Well written Rob. We've been considering the same thing.

[John764]

The only think I would change in your sms is to no cover costs.

"I have a flexible cancellation policy which means you will be fully refunded for what I should have been paid by Airbnb. Given the circumstances, you should make sure Air BnB take full responsibility and waive any service or cancelation charges they intend to charge you for doing so. 

[Kevin616]

---

@John764 wrote:

The only think I would change in your sms is to no cover costs.

"I have a flexible cancellation policy which means you will be fully refunded for what I should have been paid by Airbnb. Given the circumstances, you should make sure Air BnB take full responsibility and waive any service or cancelation charges they intend to charge you for doing so. 

---

An excellent edit 👍🏽

[Robin4]

@John764

Thanks John, yes a fine bit of wording there on your part. I did think about that and felt it might lead to a bit of animosity with the guest if there was a hassle over the service fee component, So in the end I decided to throw out that olive branch as an incentive for the guest to book me through another site.

As it turned out, I had that in the wings but did not send it to any guests because I did not want to shoot myself in the foot if payouts started to come through.

The ironic thing is this afternoon I got email advice that 5 payouts are currently being proccessed, but guess what.....they are being sent to the payout method Airbnb CX instructed me to replace and delete!

The saga goes on!

Good on you John.

Cheers.....Rob

[John764]

We're past the point of explanations.

We won't consider the matter resolved until Air BnB demonstrate they can successfully pay all monies promptly over the next 12 months. Until that time we consider them on credit watch. 

The CEO's absence on this speaks volumes.

[Robin4]

@John764

John, John........... this will blow over...we are already receiving advice our payouts are being processed. The last thing we need to do, as a block, is makes goose's  of ourselves to the rest of the world.

I suggest you do what most of us have now done and give yourself a safety net. Make sure that you have an alternate strategy...I know we should not have to do it but, the reality is now, we do.....

Sort of looks a bit familiar doesn't it....but it's not!

I have picked up 2 reservations there in the past 24 hours. This situation is not a loss for me, it is a loss for Airbnb. I would never have gone down this path if Airbnb had seen fit to tell me what was going on over the past two weeks....but their total silence paniced me and I chose to do something about it!

Forget about having Airbnb demonstate something or other over the next millenium.... protect your ar*e and set up an alternate strategy!

Cheers......Rob

[John764]

Don't get me wrong Rob, we'll resume accepting reservation requests from Air BnB once payments reume and are up to date. Assuming this happens, we'll watch their performance closely over the next 12 months.

We have other strategies in place.

All the best to everyone in this mess.

[Kevin616]

---

@John764 wrote:

We're past the point of explanations.

We won't consider the matter resolved until Air BnB demonstrate they can successfully pay all monies promptly over the next 12 months. Until that time we consider them on credit watch. 

The CEO's absence on this speaks volumes.

---

Absolutely agree John!

[Kim87]

This is so preoccupying for all of us. I hope your reserved guests will book you through other platforms. As you say, cheers @Robin4.

[Robin4]

@Kim87

Kim the payouts  are now being processed and we should see them over the next three or four days.

I did not send any of my future reservations my text, once a few Australian hosts started to get notifications that payouts were once again being processed the need disappeared as it was only a matter of a short time before we could expect a resolution.

Kim, you always have to have a plan  B, you know as well as I that some of these 'glitches' can go on for a month or more, and we did not know where we stood, we were getting no information and conflicting advice from the company....Kim we were all scared. If the company had chosen to keep us in the loop, none of these threads would have even got off the ground. We were all searching for answers from each other, the lack of any other alternative being available.

Things are ok, these threads will now disappear into obscurity, and it has probably been good in a way, we needed a wake-up call that we can't just blindly put our faith in this company to always be there and always reliable......I have already seen a reservation come in from a site I was not using 2 weeks ago. That is Airbnb's loss and that sites gain!

I hope you are not to cold there in lovely Montreal....Spent some time in Quebec in 2014 and I consider that city to be 'hands down' the most beautiful city on earth.

Cheers.....Rob