Think Twice Before Starting with Airbnb

[Carie1]

Beware.

Once you start with Airbnb, it is hard to leave. If you have a high rating, it will cost a lot to establish with a different platform and rebuild. So, my advice: don't do it. Don't start with Airbnb.

In general, as you will see if you cruise the community forum, Airbnb is not host oriented. They don't have your back. And in some ways their system is beyond parasitic and into abusive, for several reasons, aside from general human fluffupery:

1. As with ride-sharing, Amazon and other online ventures, the first step for the dominant online provider is to put brick-and-mortar companies out of business by making prices very low. This doesn't just give them greater leverage over the consumer, but it also shifts the workforce from an organized one to a diffuse, un-unionized, screwable population. If you join Airbnb you will be as valued and cherished as an Uber driver. Don't think 'Airbnb gets a cut of my take, so surely the more money I make the more money they make.' Think 'Airbnb is in the phase of crushing hotels, and to do that they need to crush their hosts, too.' In every way they can, Airbnb will try to push your prices down. (You can say 'I won't rely on their suggested price,' --don't!--but in the leaner times their suggested prices become a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

2. Time is money. If you get in a problem where a drunken guest takes your jade lamp and tries to impale someone else, meanwhile leaving several large holes in your kitchen wall--just saying--and you hope Airbnb will refund you in a timely manner--No. Maybe you'll expect a stall, because every day they delay is more money for them and less for you. You can expect to be dicked around (depreciating the value of the jade lamp because... jade fades? Rather than using replacement value). But really no matter how hard you try to prepare yourself, you can have no idea how crushingly horrible, inconvenient and deliberately dehumanizing the 'resolution' process is. (And my host isn't even disputing!)  So here are things to think about:

- of course there is the full-time job of tracking your things and their condition, keeping receipts, etc

- in your disaster planning, realize that you can't count on Airbnb to pay for repairs in a timely manner, and this could mean YOU WILL BE SHUT DOWN so that while you are sitting in your drafty kitchen, you will not only be frustrated as heck but you will also have lost your income for an indeterminate amount of time. My damages were over $7,000. I can't float that. Could you?

- Imagine the worst, most unresponsive, most 'riddled by rules and ruled by riddles' federal bureaucracy and then multiply that by 10. There are three separate departments, one for extra cleaning costs, one for repairs and one for broken rules. And they don't talk to each other. (Why should they? Delay is good for them.) So budget your time for this morass--and I include their wretched resolution platform in this! It is a bottomless well.

- The delay is a feature, not a bug. I resisted the conclusion that the de-humanizing is also a feature, a deliberate  pattern, but actually I am happier now that I admit the obvious. They really could not accidentally be so horrible. I felt like Charlie trying to just at least touch the football... For example in the now 10 weeks since the hole-bashing event, I have not received one call from my case manager, but I have repeatedly been getting little teases 'send me your telephone number' (because Airbnb doesn't have my number?) I respond. But of course, no call. You can't do crap like that 4 times and have it be an accident.

- And this is not a lower-level staff issue. This is a management issue. It seems likely it is being managed exactly the way Airbnb wants it to be managed.

If you do decide to do Airbnb despite this warning, my other advice is: keep your sense of humor. They really do have the power to exert considerable practical harm, but if you can laugh at them at least it doesn't have to go soul-deep. They won't have your back. They are not well-intentioned towards you. To expect that is a recipe for misery. Plan accordingly.

Good luck--

Carie

[Lorna170]

@Carie1   It appears that you have been abused by this OTA beyond reason.  I would suggest that you move on and find a better means of advertising your space.  Perhaps a local realtor who is hungry for their commission would suit you.  I wish you luck in the new year.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Carie1  I am sorry your property was damaged and you were treated that way by Airbnb 😞  Whoever spent more than a couple of hours reading this forum is pretty aware of what he can expect while hosting on ABB and how different it is from their advertising. We all play Russian roulette here and it is scary.

I see you are a super host, joined ABB in 2012, have 300 reviews from your guests and also many from your hosts.

[Ann72]

@Carie1  "If you get in a problem where a drunken guest takes your jade lamp and tries to impale someone else, meanwhile leaving several large holes in your kitchen wall--just saying--" - I see your sense of humor is firmly in place.  An absolute necessity!  I'm sorry to hear about all the dicking around, but thank you for delineating the horrible fact that there are three separate departments "dedicated" to "resolution" and that they don't talk to each other.

[Carie1]

🤪

Yeah that lightened my spirits. Thank you @Ann72   Only thing better than a  laugh is a shared laugh!

 That card is actually a pornographic card which was stuck face-forward (so to speak) in the hole to greet me when I came home.

[Huma0]

@Carie1 

Wow.

[Ann72]

Oh good Lord @Carie1 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

[Huma0]

@

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@Carie1 wrote:

- The delay is a feature, not a bug.  in the now 10 weeks since the hole-bashing event, I have not received one call from my case manager, but I have repeatedly been getting little teases 'send me your telephone number' (because Airbnb doesn't have my number?) I respond. But of course, no call. You can't do crap like that 4 times and have it be an accident.

Yep, I believe you are right because some of the nonsense you get in response doesn't make any sense otherwise.

Recent example for an issue that was nowhere near as bad as yours, but reiterates your point.

- I call Airbnb and speak to a nice CS rep, who later messages me, with platitudes like "It's been a pleasure assisting a Superhost like you," but saying he sympathises yet can do nothing to help and directing me to links for policies that he must surely know I understand as all of that was discussed on the phone.

- Next message is Airbnb BOT trying to get me to close the conversation, which I don't. Instead, I message again trying to clarify the issue.

- I then get messaged by a different CS rep, telling me the ticket has been reassigned to him, but no actual response to my issue.

- I respond to rep 2, outlining the issue again. I get a response saying that he wants to "set expectations" because he will be out of the office for a few days. I never hear from him again.

- I get contacted by rep 3, who just sends me the same links for the Airbnb policies. I respond with my questions again and she sends me more help centre links.

- Airbnb BOT tries again to get me to close the tread.

- I refuse to close the thread and then reiterate the issue in more detail, trying to be as clear as I possibly can.

- The rep responds saying someone will respond to me, but they haven't as yet.

- The BOT asks me again to close the thread.

- If no one has actually understood what I am writing, why not call me back to clarify? Not one of them has called me since I made the initial phone call a week ago.

Clearly all this has happened over a period of several days. I am not asking anything terribly complicated, but it seems clear to me it is just stalling and nothing else as if they are trained to stall in the hope that you will give up and go away.

[Ann72]

@Huma0  How awful.  I can't.  All this time spent on "setting expectations" (I threw up in my mouth a little at that) - surely that costs as much as just handling the issue?

[Carie1]

Yes, I wonder about that. It is so miserable for the support people to take these calls, because there is nothing they can do. But I call. Every. Day. That's gotta be expensive.

[Huma0]

@Carie1 @Ann72 

I am not sure this is a case of Airbnb CS wasting money. These are standard responses they send out to multitudes of people. It's quick and easy. They do it in the hope that you will just go away.

That is going to work out cheaper than them actually taking the time to investigate and properly respond to the issue, which would also mean they could potentially need to DO something or even reimburse you in some kind of way, or even worse, admit that they didn't follow their own policy and have to do a bunch of work to put things right.

When I had some guests wrongfully refunded when the pandemic first broke out, and I mean refunded for nights they had already stayed at my home and enjoyed my hospitality, Airbnb CS repeatedly told me (each case passed from one rep to another) that it was according to policy. It was not. Since when do you refund perfectly happy guests for nights they've already stayed and up to two weeks of them for each guest?

Well, I was not about to accept that and I fought tooth and nail, repeatedly quoting their own policies back to them. I would not give up (I had time because I lost my job and all my Airbnb bookings due to COVID). 

They tried for a long time to stall and fob me off and I guess eventually realised I was not going to go away. They ended up having to refund me out of their own coffers (not the guests). So yeah, false economy, but only with the determined hosts who will not give up. I imagine so many just walk away with frustration.

[Huma0]

@Ann72 

Yep, I didn't love that either, especially as said rep responded saying he was handling my case now without any response to the case and next message was that he was going to be away for a few days, followed by radio silence. How nice of him to "set expectations'.

This is something I have experienced a few times how, i.e. the case being passed around from rep to rep with no one actually doing anything.

Quite often what happens is that you respond to the rep who has not dealt with your problem and get a message saying your case will be assigned to someone from the appropriate team (phrased in a way as if they are doing you a favour so a newbie might interpret that as the case being escalated).

That new person then messages you to say they are handling your case but, rather than message you anything relevant about it, say they will be out of the office for a couple of days. You then don't hear from them and the BOT asks you if everything is resolved. This happens OVER and OVER.

I am in a mind to agree with @Carie1 . This is not accidental. It is not incompetence. It is an intentional tactic to fob people off.

[Huma0]

@Ann72 

What I mean is, why does the case keep getting reassigned to people who are immediately going to be out of the office for a few days? What kind of Mickey Mouse operation is that? Why would you reassign something to someone who is not going to be there rather than hand it to someone who is.

I'm sorry, but this is BS. I've had it too many times to believe it's a coincidence.

A lot of people are going to give up trying to get a meaningful response and that's exactly what they are aiming for.

[Ann72]

@Huma0  You are spot on.  It's appalling.

[Traci138]

@Carie1& @Huma0 I actually got someone to call me back (supposedly a supervisor) who actually took time to hear me out and I actually felt heard and appreciated.  BUT that being said she still couldn't help me with my review being removed for going against their content policy regarding irrelevancy in nature. Specifically  this part "Reviews that contain no relevant information about a host or guest, listing, or experience may be removed. Reviews that contain mostly irrelevant information are also subject to removal, but only where the otherwise relevant information would not be expected to meaningfully inform the booking decisions of other community members."  The review was one hour after I filed a damage claim against her.  It said "Horrible! Do NOT stay here , especially if you have children and beware this woman is VERY RUDE."  She gave me all ones even after she texted me saying everything was great and had no issues.  Its a long story to get into really but if you read her review by me it will give you a good general idea of what happened. Anyways, I learned from this customer service rep that took time to call me that the review dispute process undergoes a point system to determine if they get removed (or so this is their story).  This was not abusive enough towards me or my property to rectify having the review removed, even though it CLEARLY violates the content policy I posted here.  Two people I spoke with at Airbnb agreed with me but there was "nothing they could do".