complaint against airbnb

[Beefy0]

I am getting seriously **bleep** off with airbnb.

Firstly, it is impossible - as far as I can find to contact them directly to lodge my complaint. It is like trying to find your way through a maze. Most user unfriendly. Secondly, my complaint is the number of emails I get all related to one booking. Everything is already done, dusted and confirmed with guests and I still get on average of 4 emails afterwards stating my time to respond is running out etc. etc.  Grrrrrrrrr - I am seriously thinking of cancelling my arrangement with airbnb if only I knew how? 

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*[Profanity hidden –in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Jeff581]

I can't believe AirBnB removed my review but kept the host's review of me. Here is my review, which tells the whole story. I filed another complaint against their customer service and had the case escalated, but no one called and it has been three days. Very disappointed by AB. Does anyone have any suggestion what I can do in this case?

"I apologize because this review is going to a bit long. It has become my worse experience with airbnb by now.

I checked in this place  just to find it very different from shown in the pictures. The building is extreme old, stairs are narrow and shaky, floors are dirty, smell is strange, the only bathroom is too small to just turn around inside. Two things made us particularly uncomfortable. For one, all the beds are dirty. There are stains on beds and mattresses (I have pictures), making us feel like there are a lot of bacteria inside. For the other, there is a strange hole low on the wall in the hallway. As we got close, there are water pipelines inside and they are very hot. Because we have a 4-year old boy, they were concerned by his safety. We decided to move out, so I called AirBnB. The first associate I spoke sounded quite sympathetic and asked us if we wanted to move out immediately, and if so, she could book us a hotel room just for that night. I thanked her and decided not to move out that night because it was quite late and we were too exhausted to pull all the heavy luggages down three high floors (without elevator) just to move again the second day. Rather we decided to stay overnight, but book another place immediately for the remaining four night, which the associate encouraged us to do.

I waited the second day, but airbnb did not call me on this case. So I called them around noon an d request a refund of the remaining 4 nights. I got a case specialist to talk to me. He told me he needed to speak to the hosts. Then he called back and say the hosts only agreed to return $140 out of the $550 I paid for the stay if I cancelled the reservation. I argued that this was not a cancellation, it was a complaint, and there were so many problems with this place. But the guy did not listen to me and said that was no other option. I felt they only care about the hosts, not the customers. I tried to talk to the hosts, but they refused my request again. At the end, we moved out, lost all the money even though we only stayed there for one night. I am extremely disappointed."

[Sarah977]

@Jeff581   I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. Believe me, Airbnb acts with hosts exactly the way they do with guests- if you read through a couple pages of the Hosting forum here, you'll see that for yourself. Sometimes you get a good CS rep who understands the issue and is helpful, sometimes you get one who is clueless and dismisses you without addressing the issue in a responsible way.  Hosts wait for days for a call-back which never comes, have Airbnb refund horrible guests who lied about the listing, etc, etc. They don't seem to favor either hosts or guests, they just have a way of operating that is frustrating and doesn't please anyone.

The likely reason your review was removed was because you spoke about the involvement of Airbnb- that's against their review rules. If you had just written about the listing itself, rather than a dispute process involving Airbnb, I'm pretty sure your review would not have been removed. 

[Alexis259]

Airbnb is completely scammers company wich i will not recommend.

I showed up to the place after a 4 hours drive the owner of the house said my phone did not wake me up. I tried to get a refund they immediately started telling me why u didn't use Airbnb msg without letting  me explain that i summited a resolution and tellling me after a day that they only will offer me 50% witch end of being only 30%. i had a family trip planned two infant that were crying almos half of the trip an lost all my vacation reservation in other places i will not recommend this to no one. 

[Ashish33]

I had incident with airbnb. Guest requested to book and accepted it . But even after accepting the request and asking multiple times guest didn't upload his correct picture .
I reach to airbnb , it brushed the hand saying its between guest and host.

How can it be?
To resolve racial discrimination in guest airbnb hidden the guest pic. Ut after accepting ,why it is not helping host. Why I am bound to do
1) let somebody in my house who dont know how look like I.e. can be even criiminal itself, as guest are not bound to upload correct picture and neither airbnb support that
2) or pay the penalty 50$ to Airbnb for canceling the request when my whole booking benefit could have been just 20$ itself
3) either stop using airbnb as host as let alone to save my self from facing possinle security issue or monetary issue mention in 1 and 2 point itself
I wanted to add picture here.

[Heidi338]

ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE COMPANY WHO STEAL MONEY FROM YOUR ACCOUNT WITH NO WARNING OR AUTHORISATION FROM YOU. I WILL NEVER EVER IN MY LIFE USE AIRBNB AGAIN. BLOODY USELESS THIEVES. 

[David3106]

None of you have gone through this.

Our condo was robbed of everything by a crimial gang.

AirB&B suggested we contact the criminals and see if we can work something out in 72 hours. How stupid is that. A 72 hour getaway for the gang! Despite begging them daily to help us with the police investigation all  I got was a non returnable email from somone named Ray who said someone would call. But it is eleven days and no call. They refuse give a name or number of someone who would be handling my situation.

AirB&B is like a credit card company with no Fraud department. They leave Hosts like sitting ducks. Bound to be more Host who will be hurt as we were!

[Andrew1310]

All the support numbers go through to philippine call centres. They just lie about getting your complaints l9oked at by somebody. There are no managers. The SMT are in hiding

[Brookie0]

https://youtu.be/g7sPuIYxTvk

This is how I was treated!

[Nikki203]

I had a terrible experience with Airbnb too. I booked with Adam in Tulsa, Ok for a bachelorette weekend about a month out. Contactes him a few days later to see how to going about cancelling due to bride calling off the wedding. Find out they had a "strict" cancellation policy. I would get full refund if I cancelled within 2 days after booking and 14days prior to stay. Weird requirements for cancelling. I reached out to him to ask how to cancel and he said to call him. I spoke to him and he sounded like he would just cancel on his side and that he would refund the full amount. He also said its up to Airbnb to give full refund. Called help desk and they said it's up to host to give full refund. These guys pocketed $300 of the full amount and was only refunded $120 back. Stay away feom Airbnb. 

[Sarah977]

@Nikki203  The situation you're describing is not one where that's a bad reflection on either the host or Airbnb. The cancellation policy is clearly stated on the listing and the details of all the cancellation policies are there to be read by guests. It is the guest's responsibility to inform themselves of the cancellation policy of a listing before they book- not say they "found out" when they tried to cancel. If you don't like the terms of a host's cancellation policy, don't book it- when you book, you are basically signing a contract that you need to read before signing. By booking, you are agreeing to the cancellation policy in place.

The host is correct- it is up to Airbnb to implement refunds, according to the cancellation policy, not the host. Hosts are not paid for bookings until 24 hours after the guest checks in- the host doesn't have your money, Airbnb does. 

If the guest has an issue that requires cancelling, that cancellation is up to0 the guest to make. If the host has a reason why he can't host a certain guest or on certain dates, or has to do plumbing work or other things that makes it necessary to cancel on a guest, it's up to the host to cancel. Hosts receive severe penalties from Airbnb for cancelling a reservation, so of course the host wouldn't cancel your booking when it's you that wants to back out.

There's no point in a host having a cancellation policy if they're just going to ignore it and fully refund any guest who wants to cancel. There may have been other guests who wanted to book those dates who couldn't because they were blocked for your booking. If the host can't rebook those dates now, you just expect the host to take the loss instead of you?

I'm sorry that you've lost money- it was an expensive lesson to read everything about a listing before booking. But the responsibility is yours, not the host's or the company's. 

[Paul1242]

Well, that is not a fair way to look at the booking since we as a host need to hold that booking and if you cancel due to the bride canceling it is not the host issue.  They could have booked with another guest but sometimes with such as late notice, you can not book that quickly.  Keep in mind Airbnb is not a hotel it is in most cases someone's residence.  You read the cancellation policy and you know what the terms and you approve when booking the reservation.  You were fortunate that you got some money back in most cases you would not.   My suggestion is the next time make the reservation with a hotel who will refund you ALL your money.

[Paul1242]

You introduce pricing tools but after beta testing these features, they don't work!   I understand that you want to update your systems but fix some of the feature sets that are not working properly.   Give the host an outline of what transpires first when setting up pricing.  I put a price in then I use Smart Pricing then I use the new rules to set up pricing for certain parts of the year.  When testing this functionality it DOES not work.  I need a breakdown of how to set up pricing so I can get the MOST benefit from the system so that I don't have to go in every day to adjust my pricing. 

The feature sets need to be outlined of what happens first, what happens next and so on.  When I work for software companies we would always outline how a 'feature set' would work by giving it a break down of how to enter the information.  Especially when I worked on the software where we had for-profit schools if they were not meeting their bottom line where the software would make the adjustments then it created more time for administrators to make the adjustment. 

That is what I am doing with your current pricing model and you have not an explanation of how it works on the back end.  Can you please give me some documentation on how the calculations work so I can set up my pricing to let the system do all the functionality?

[Daria113]

My previous experience with AirBnB was good, and I did not expect to stumble upon a scam this time. But, I guess there's always first time...

As it turns out AirBnB supports certain service providers, who are not the owners or owning/managing entities of the space, but suggest sort of "mediation service". They will (for additional fee of 11 euros per day stay) “kindly” call the hotel and book a room for you. Surely, the stay in the hotel is way cheaper than suggested by them price. They have a strict refund terms set, and answer/confirm reservation request extremely quickly. Even though, it may be more than a month or two until the check-in, it’s only possible to get refund of 50%. 

What made the experience even worse was that AirBnB will not assist you in requesting the full refund and cancelling the stay. They just close the case, as if “you have agreed to terms and conditions”. And I do understand, I did, but I also have a right to dispute, which they refused me in without even getting the details.

Understandable is also the fact that AirBnB gets a commission from these scammers, so they don't try to protect the customer. They also are not interested in providing refunds… apparently... So to say, AirBnB are quite discourteous and in fact support such scammers. 

I do not manifest not using AirBnB, but will myself try avoiding the service. I understand too, that this experience will be considered a pointless whining in the world of “getting money”, and it seems this philosophy has conquered any sense of integrity here.

AirBnB doesn’t even require these scammers to provide you the real booking confirmation, and if suddenly it will appear that the reservation is not there, they surely won’t assist in getting host to provide you other equivalent accommodation.

I will check each suggestion twice from now on, but mostly will try to avoid it.

[Emmanouil3]

Yes that is totally true. No way to contact them. They cancelld my booking and kept 30€ with no reason. I paid a deposit of 50% and they gave me about a week to pay the rest. But they start trying to pull the money just form the next day and because there was no available balance they canceled the order keeping the commission.! No path to complain.

[Sarah977]

@Emmanouil3   There is a huge pinned post near the top of the first page of the Help section of this forum that lists all the ways to contact Airbnb. And a simple Google search also comes up with phone numbers for Airbnb all over the world.