after nearly an hour on chat with airbnb, still no answers, nothing even close to definitive

[Victoria620]

i'm a superhost with instant book. in 2018 i cancelled two reservations. first one, a woman instant booked with a message that she would be bringing her dog. i have a no pet policy. second one, i felt uncomfortable with the guest's review responses. she was also a host and her responses to her guests were very snarky. i hae two listings, so theoretically i had six penalty-free cancellations. well i'm penalized. the message at the bottom is what i get in an email titled, "can you host xxx on xxx dates? the guests in these emails all meet my requirements to instant book and yet i'm having to aaprove them. i've gotten NINE of these from guests who meet my requirements. 

after nearly an hour (50 mintues) on chat, i still don't know why this is showing. well, i do know-- they told me: "We do not want you to feel that you are being penalized, but we just wanted to help you in making sure that calendar dates are up to date an is available for booking. " 

my calendar is up to date. when i asked how long this would go on for and pointed out that this feels like a penalty, i was told: "I am unable to provide an exact date for that as this is something that is being reviewed further by Airbnb before returning to Instant book. I highly suggest to continue being active and accepting to reservation request as that will help the record of the listing to be in a positive note." 

so i asked why i need to show anything if i'm not being penalized and don't their actions define a penalty? i'm beyond frustrated. they're going to elevate me to someone else, but i'm not hopeful. it's so ridiculous that airbnb just lies about their policies and then offers zero communication about them. argh. thanks for reading. 

here's the message in the email i get: 

Why am I seeing this request?

We sometimes require hosts to accept a reservation request even when they have Instant Book turned on. You’re most likely to see this when you haven’t updated your calendar in a while or you’ve recently canceled a reservation.

[Susan17]

The following is a conversation which took place between a host who had his IB suspended due to a guest cancelling within the 48hr Grace period, and Airbnb Support... 

Airbnb Support
4:15 PM
Okay, So I finally got an answer for you and I will leave this pending for a while to make sure. It seems that the issue was in fact created by your guest cancellations and it has flagged your account for a 7-day probation where 50% of guests see your listing as request to book. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. I hope my answers have helped to clear things up.

5:49 PM
Andrew thank you for looking in on this. So if guests cancel in the 48 grace period, Airbnb will penalize me? This started the beginning of the month and is still going on, which is past the seven days. When will I be off double secret probation?

Airbnb Support
7:07 PM
I am not sure why its still ongoing, one thing I was told to try is to make some changes on your calendar. For whatever reason, it flags activity on the account. I hope this helps let me know.

*The average time reported by hosts adjusting their calendars daily in order to "get out of IB jail" is 18 days. Works for some, not for others. 

[Victoria620]

i had a guest cancel in a 48 hour period a week ago. if i'm understanding this right i was penalized for that as well? my IB and search ranking issues started november/ december 2018. this is BS. 

[Susan17]

@Victoria620 Yes, as crazy as it sounds, it's a distinct possibility. 😞

[Rachel177]

@Susan17 - oh the irony! The last time I called to get a third party booking cancelled the CS rep suggested that I remove IB. I had to educate him on search rankings, as well as verified ID & recommendations from other hosts for IB, which increases my sense of security as I'm welcoming strangers into my home. Of course he had no idea about any of that.

[Susan17]

@Rachel177 Yep. Educating Airbnb CX agents on Airbnb policies and practices - we've all been there, at some point! 🙂

To be fair though, one only has to check out Airbnb employees' reviews on websites such as Glassdoor to understand the impossible circumstances (and conditions) many of them are working under, particularly the lower level staffers. Overworked, inadequately trained, and underpaid in many regions. A thankless, hopeless job, by anyone's standards. 

[Ben551]

I’m starting to wonder (seriously) about some of these descriptions about AirBnb CS.

Based on the reports on this forum, it appears that everyone in the Northern Hemisphere (including the US and UK) gets routed to a call centre run by illiterate, uneducated swamp things who don’t know their own name much less their terms of service.  

I’ve had no such problems in this part of the world.  I’ve contacted support about 5-6 times for various reasons and have always found myself talking to intelligent folk who know the AirBnb platform and can actually answer my questions... well mannered... even had some good suggestions...

Say. Did AirBnb outsource Nothern Hemisphere customer support to Mars at some point?

[Victoria620]

my support person sent no less than five messages "mirroring" my frustrations, without ever answering my question. mars indeed.

[Susan17]

@Ben551 

Here's three and a half thousand other opinions on Airbnb Customer service, from every corner of the earth. Most of these haven't been as lucky as you either.. 🙂

https://ie.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com

[Ben551]

@Susan17. Thanks! See that proves my point entirely. Scanning through 15 pages, there is a huge theme of unhappy people in the Northern Hemisphere! I really do think you guys are getting a different set of people on the other end of the phone.

It makes sense too. When I phone CS in New Zealand I do it in my business hours, which is midnight for you folk.

Maybe they have an entirely separate call centre for you folks in the Northern globe?

[Susan17]

Actually @Ben551, we're very lucky to have not one, but two fabulous Airbnb offices here in Dublin - the  EMEA HQ, and the original non-US HQ, with its focus of customer experience and support (allegedly). The "Airbnb Customer Care Hub", I believe it's billed as. We also have Aisling Hassell, VP of Community Support and Global Head of CX based here too. 🙂

However, even though both offices are only 10 minutes down the road, nine times out of ten, our calls go straight through to the call centre in the Philippines, no matter what time of the day or night we call (even when calling the so-called superhost "premium support line")

Don't get me wrong - the CX agents in the Philippines are unfailingly lovely, and do their very best to assist, every time, and sometimes, if it's a simple, uncomplicated issue, everything can go smoothly. But unfortunately, the language barriers and the glaringly obvious lack of training the agents are given, create huge frustrations and exasperation for hosts calling in with serious problems that the agents simply are neither equipped nor qualified to deal with. And that level of incompetence and unprofessionalism in providing adequate customer care is inexcusable for any  company, let alone a $38 billion global corporation with a decade of experience behind it. 

As regards hosts in the Southern hemisphere having a better time of it - I'm pretty sure quite a sizeable percentage of the 23000 anxious, stressed-out hosts in Australia who were left waiting for up to 2 months for their payments throughout November and December, whilst being fobbed off with every excuse under the sun and/or stonewalled by customer service agent after customer service agent, would strongly disagree with you 🙂 

[Ben551]

@Susan17  wow, interesting.  I think you've answered my question though.  That's not the same offices for customer support we get.  I've never once been put through to the Philippines, or anywhere  foreign for that matter. 

Update:  Answered my own question.  NZ CS gets routed to Canada for some reason (explains why the lady I spoke to yesterday was Canadian... although the one before that was Scottish, so go figure).  Australia gets routed to Philippines or elsewhere.  Sorry about it... knew there was something fishy going on.  Makes sense though, given New Zealand has a very different timezone to most of Australia (sometimes up to 7 hours different).

[Sarah977]

@Ben551   Mars would probably be an improvement on clueless 19 year olds who have no training, don't speak English fluently enough to understand what you are trying to talk to them about, and who only appear to be competent at cut and paste answers having nothing to do with the reason you've contacted them. Also quite competent at pushing the "This case is now closed" button.

[Victoria620]

here's the latest i have from support. it's basically sorry/ not sorry. 

Airbnb Support

1:31 AM

Hello Victoria,

Apologies for the delatyed reply, I was out of office for awhile and needed some time to look into this for you.

Thank you for providing all the above information regarding your issue, I really appreciate it.

I have investigated this further for you and spoke with some experts and the reason that this is happening to you is because your account was deemed as a potential high denial risk.

I cannot tell for sure why this has happened as I can see you have amazing ratings and also you are a very valuable Superhost to our community.

From reviewing everything on your account, it all seems perfectly fine to me. Unfortunately, I cannot put an exact time frame on how long this issue will persist, but I am sure that if you keep doing what you're doing (stay active on calendar, no cancellations, denied requests, etc)

In the mean time we will be investigating the issue.

Thank you so much for your time and patience, it is really appreciated.

Kind regards,

[Jennifer1421]

@Victoria620

This is what I was told today, when I called with the same issue:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Is-Instant-Book-Down-1-22-19/m-p/922537#M192914

I had 2 guests cancel bookings this month, well in advance of their dates.

It would be interesting to know which story is the truth.

[Victoria620]

@Jennifer1421 unreal! 

i think the truth is they made a change to penalize, or in their words, "discourage" cancellations by penalizing the host.