Unreasonable charge from Airbnb and customer support is inadequate!

[Anastasiia5]

Dear fellow hosts,

I am seeking your advice on following.

I had new guests recently and only fraction of funds for the rent has been released. I have contacted the customer service for the reason and they referred to a sum of 1469 EUR that I owe to Airbnb (appearing in transaction history as resolution adjustment). 

The customer support links this to the previous long-term reservation, that got cancelled after a first month. A first payment was released without problem, but then there was an issue with getting the second payment. This happend as a result of Airbnb not providing my guest with an alternative payment option that he has asked for several times - immediately after his first payment to Airbnb was treated as fraudulent transaction and his card got cancelled. The guest refused paying through Airbnb and reservation was cancelled. I charged him offsite for the remaining month. 

The customer support claims that Airbnb was taking care of a missing payout and provided the 2nd payment €1,469.70. Now Airbnb taking back this the amount €1,469.70 on my payout until they have taken back the whole amount, and give this as a reason why I am only receiving less amount of my recent payout.

My problem is that I never get the second payment from Airbnb and have nothing to pay back. Moreover, the amount and a first payout date are not relevant to what I have in my transaction history. Practically, I cannot make any connection to what they give as a reason for a charge and real data as the amounts are wrong. 

Did anyone have anything similar to this? 

I did not receive any reply from Customer Support an I've sent them two emails already. I dont know what else I can do and seriously considering to cancel my Airbnb account and shift to another platform to adverise my property.

 Thank you for your kind advice.

Anastasiia

[Paul154]

Airbnb will not pay you if they themselves did not get paid.

First, try reaching out to the guest and asking them to pay.

Then try to get Airbnb to reach out to them.

Sometimes gentle prodding works.

Your last resort is to sue Airbnb and the guest. (Difficult and problematic, but possible)

[Matthew285]

@Anastasiia5, your story is a bit jumbled (not your fault, it is a confusing situation).

I am not sure what this means: "the amount and a first payout date are not relevant to what I have in my transaction history"

By the way: you mention that "I've sent them two emails already" to Airbnb customer service.

Did you actually send emails to some email address, or do you mean to have used Airbnb messaging to send two messages to Airbnb?

(I could see Airbnb not responding to emails, as that is not the normal way they do host support.)

It seems to me that if you could show them that you never received the 2nd disbursement, then they would stop trying to recover that money. But first, you have to actually get in contact with Airbnb support...

So did you send Airbnb messages or emails?

[Anastasiia5]

Hi Matthew, thank you for your reply!

it is confusing situation and I tried to make the story short here, which probably made it even more difficult to understand, I am sorry for that.

I sent emails, replying to already existing thread. The one where customer support specialist explained the reason for charges. She specified that if I have more questions I can reply the email otherwise the thread closes after 24 hours. I did reply within 2h and attached both bank statements and transactions history from Airbnb to evidence that there was no payment from them. 

[David126]

@Anastasiia5

I would try Twitter, the people there seem to have more of a clue.

[Matthew285]

@Anastasiia5 what did Airbnb say when you presented the bank statements?

It would seem clear that their own records would also show you did not receive the 2nd payment.

You should ask Airbnb to provide documentation to show what leads them to believe that they send the 2nd payment.

[Anastasiia5]

@Matthew285 I haven't received any response from Airbnb so far. It has been 24h since our last comunication and I think I have to call the customer support. I just hate to explain the situation over and over again:(

you are right, i will ask them to provide an evidence that the 2d payout has been sent.

Interestingly, when they wrote about the payout sequence, they said the first payment, the amount of €1743 was released on 17/01. In fact I have received the first payment four days earlier on 12/01 and it was €1518. Isn't it strange that we have different record on this? 

Thank you very much for your kind advices, i will let you know how this story ended.