Open letter to the CEO (Mr Chesky) and the CMO (Mr Mildenhall)

[Joanna96]

This all gets slightly more peculiar after posting the item below - we are snowed under with booking requests - more in 3 days than in six months !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Strangely they all have no reviews

Sir/Madam

I am the co owner of the property with Jo, the host, and I feel compelled to write to you concerning what I feel is our appalling treatment from your customer service department. Particularly with the customer service individual who dealt with the matter. The individual claimed in writing that she had tried to telephone to speak to Jo on more than one occasion before closing the case. This is simply a lie as your phone records will show.

We have let our property through your company since the autumn of last year and have have found it to be both remunerative and enjoyable- gaining superhost status, enjoying unfailingly good reviews, and meeting some charming people.

Three days in to the above reservation for some as yet undetermined reason the guests lost internet access despite the provider account being live and carrying out router resets. Unfortunately this coincided with us being on holiday in Africa and it was simply not feasible to resolve the problem with extensive international calls.

Subsequently the guest demanded $1000 compensation which we felt unreasonable and offered to cover their additional roaming charges. We are somewhat sceptical of the reason for the service outage as we have lived in the property for five years without problem and the provider’s engineer will attend on Tuesday to establish exactly what has gone on. Whilst I suspect tampering is unlikely it cannot be wholly ruled out until the inspection.

Your customer service department gave 24 hours to respond to the complaint from the guest which we missed by one hour and then subsequently decided to charge us $1,600 for not having internet for 5 days – equivalent to $320 per day which is not much more than the cost per night. I cannot see how it is fair or reasonable to compensate a guest such a significant sum particularly in the centre of London where free internet access is available from numerous Starbucks etc within a few minutes walk simply due to an internet outage.

This sum appears so arbitrary and ridiculous, as well as exceeding what even the guest requested, that I cannot be involved in a commercial relationship with a company that has such an appalling attitude to it’s clients. This was a deeply regrettable event, wholly out of our control which we would have been willing to make reasonable recompense for, however your customer service employee with her high handed and unreasonable approach has ended a mutually beneficial relationship.

This is a shame because my attitude has changed totally from being an AirBnB convert to someone that will now never do business with you again and as a result has cancelled all existing bookings and turned down guest enquiries. I will also not hesitate to share my experiences.

You are an enormous and successful company, however it is inevitable that this treatment is not isolated and unless you deal with people in a more equitable manner it cannot fail to effect you at some point.

I would respectfully suggest you review how this matter was handled and find ways to avoid creating hosts who wish to avoid dealing with you.

Regards

Jonathan

[Joanna96]

Sir/Madam

I am the co owner of the property with Jo, the host, and I feel compelled to write to you concerning what I feel is our appalling treatment from your customer service department. Particularly with the customer service individual who dealt with the matter. The individual claimed in writing that she had tried to telephone to speak to Jo on more than one occasion before closing the case. This is simply a lie as your phone records will show.

We have let our property through your company since the autumn of last year and have have found it to be both remunerative and enjoyable- gaining superhost status, enjoying unfailingly good reviews, and meeting some charming people.

Three days in to the above reservation for some as yet undetermined reason the guests lost internet access despite the provider account being live and carrying out router resets. Unfortunately this coincided with us being on holiday in Africa and it was simply not feasible to resolve the problem with extensive international calls.

Subsequently the guest demanded $1000 compensation which we felt unreasonable and offered to cover their additional roaming charges. We are somewhat sceptical of the reason for the service outage as we have lived in the property for five years without problem and the provider’s engineer will attend on Tuesday to establish exactly what has gone on. Whilst I suspect tampering is unlikely it cannot be wholly ruled out until the inspection.

Your customer service department gave 24 hours to respond to the complaint from the guest which we missed by one hour and then subsequently decided to charge us $1,600 for not having internet for 5 days – equivalent to $320 per day which is not much more than the cost per night. I cannot see how it is fair or reasonable to compensate a guest such a significant sum particularly in the centre of London where free internet access is available from numerous Starbucks etc within a few minutes walk simply due to an internet outage.

This sum appears so arbitrary and ridiculous, as well as exceeding what even the guest requested, that I cannot be involved in a commercial relationship with a company that has such an appalling attitude to it’s clients. This was a deeply regrettable event, wholly out of our control which we would have been willing to make reasonable recompense for, however your customer service employee with her high handed and unreasonable approach has ended a mutually beneficial relationship.

This is a shame because my attitude has changed totally from being an AirBnB convert to someone that will now never do business with you again and as a result has cancelled all existing bookings and turned down guest enquiries. I will also not hesitate to share my experiences.

You are an enormous and successful company, however it is inevitable that this treatment is not isolated and unless you deal with people in a more equitable manner it cannot fail to effect you at some point.

I would respectfully suggest you review how this matter was handled and find ways to avoid creating hosts who wish to avoid dealing with you.

Regards

Jonathan

[Alexandra224]

This is ridiculous, demand to the host, for the fact of not having internet?... jeez.. things like this happen, is not like someone can't go to starbucks or other place with internet.. that's a lot of money tho.. :S i hope you solve this!

[Daria20]

God. This is ridiculous to begin with and an absolutely unacceptable behaviour on behalf of AirBnb. 
All my experiences with customer support service so far were horrible, but my issues were not as major as this one of course. 

Lately it seems to me that AirBnb is just a huge money making machine not caring about much more: whenever there are any issues on the hosting side it's virtually impossible to get any reasonable help or information from their "support". I guess they just believe that people will stay with them because it's a way of making money? Appalling attitude.

[Cynthia133]

AIR BNB IS A FRAUD... THEY ARENT A SERIOUS COMPAÑY THATS FOR SHURE

[Ange2]

@Joanna96   Try Twitter or FB you may get a reversal and an apology and your money I have seen it happen.

[Helen3]

Hi @Joanna96

Airbnb doesn't monitor these forums, why not contact Mr Chesky and Airbnb via twitter with a link to your letter.

You are rights this seems beyond ridiculous.

However as a side note, if I was having guests and wasn't in the country I would always have a knowledgeable friend or local superhost available to help out in case of any issues to do with my listing. And to be able to deal with Airbnb in a timely manner.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Joanna96

interesting... so Airbnb refunded 100% to your guest due to the lack of internet? Ok... if internet is the only thing that metter than why do we rent our houses when we could just rent our internet accsess? I'll put my router on my window so guests can sit on the street and surf for 45 - 100€/night (depends of the number of guests). Smoking, pets , infants and kids allowed.

[Zacharias0]

bahaha

[Cormac0]

@Joanna96

The word for that is extortion and it reminds me of the old adage Power corrupts and total power conrupts totally.

I wish Mr Chesky would stop giving interviews to Bloomberg and start answering legitimate concerns of his clientele.

[Gordon0]

An afwul outcome, truly. But with internet access pretty much considered a human right these days, not having somebody to manage issues like these (gas/elec/internet etc.) is dangerous. As for missing the deadline, again, very unfortunate, but wholy avoidable. 

Hope you manage to get some recourse. 

[Cormac0]

@Gordon

I must be honest, I find you comment very annoying this is AIRBNB, very reasonable priced accommodation in peoples own homes, and as @Joanna pointed out there were plenty of other alternative, (if the guest wasn’t such a jackass, my comment).

So, what I deduce from your comment Gordon, is that as Hosts we should be held to the same standards as Hotel accommodation where they have 24-hour maintenance crews for all the trades on standby.

When Brian (CEO & HOC of Airbnb) and his friends thought that renting out “space” on his living room floor with an air mattress provided to guest for a reasonable fee was a good idea,

I wonder did it cross Brian’s mind that one day the Guest would be looking for compensation because the Wi-Fi failed?

Regards

Cormac

ECK III

ECK VIII

[Gordon0]

@Cormac0

The days of Airbnb being about “very reasonable priced accommodation in peoples own homes” are long gone, and Joanna’s beautiful, luxuriously appointed house in an amazing location is testament to that.

With that comes expectation. While I absolutely agree that the measures taken here were somewhat disproportionate, it seems that the clouds aligned in a bad way (host out of the country/no back-up etc.) on this occasion.

However, Cormac, if you are happy to pay (from) £375 + charges per night (approx. 1,800+ PLN), and do without internet for five days (assuming you don’t need it for work, keeping in touch 24/7 etc., etc.), then you’re a very forgiving customer.

I hope that Joanna finds some resolution here, because it is a shocker.

As for being very annoyed, you’ll get over it.

[Ange2]

@Gordon0  The internet was allegedly out for three (3) days and even that is subject to an inquiry as mentioned in the hosts post, and  if it was a provider problem there was absolutely nothing the host could have done to rectify it anyway.   People do not own their internet, it's not like a toaster. 

I have stayed at 5 star hotels (real five stars, not Airbnb 5 stars) and when the internet went out the best I received was an apology, a cocktail and dinner on the house and a map to the nearest internet café.  Sometimes the nearest café doesn't have working internet either because there is a system wide outage, that has happened more than a few times in places I have traveled, and here in NYC.

[Gordon0]

@Ange2 I understand what you're saying, absolutely I do. But at least in your situation, you were able to speak to someone. On this occasion, the guest seemingly felt that they had been left high and dry. Had contact been easier, the guest should have been asked to leave. 

I am not 'sticking up' for Airbnb, they over reacted and clearly over compensated. But the fact of the matter remains, the guests felt that they were not given the service they expected and indeed had paid significantly for. 

[Ange2]

@Gordon0   Still not buying it,  it's usurious.  Airbnb sets an insanely high bar for hosts that even a 5-star hotel cannot reach and a five star hotel is way, way, way more than what these guests paid. The internet is not perfect and the sun doesn't shine for everyone's vacation.