Over the last 2 weeks, I have had occasion to contact Airbnb twice with regard to booking requests.
Bearing in mind that the host has 24 hours to respond or be penalised and also bear in mind that the host is measured on the booking acceptance rate and can be penalised if this is unsatisfactory to Airbnb, then one would think it not unreasonable to be given support by Airbnb within 24 hours. It is, after all Airbnb that imposes this time limit within which hosts have to respond.
Unfortunately, it seems that hosts may find themselves out on a limb when seeking support from Airbnb. On both occasions when I called, I spoke with someone who had a script which, when followed gave only two outcomes, namely profuse apologies for me needing to call and an assurance that the issue would be escalated. Requests to speak with someone able to make a decision and assist there and then were declined, with the obligatory apology and assurance of escalation being given again.
In both situations the handling of the matter by Airbnb was the same, it took 4 days for someone to contact me by message. Unbelievably, within 2 hours of receiving the message from Airbnb, a second message was received asking if support was still required because the case was about to be closed.
In one of my cases, a guest had submitted a booking request, this just appeared in my dashboard with the status "Checkpoint", I had no ability to accept or decline it. I called Airbnb, was informed that the customer needed to provide some ID and that if this wasn't forthcoming within 12 hours the request would be cancelled.
Given that my calendar was now blocked and Airbnb ought, in my opinio, do the ID verification before allowing a booking request to be made, I asked for the reservation to be cancelled. No can do I was told, you have to wait, but I did get the apology and promise of escalation.
After 20 hours, this request is still sitting there and the guest was insistent that the requisite ID had been submitted immediately it was requested. There were a couple of messages from Airbnb telling me that Airbnb required 12 hours to verify the information which the guest had submitted.
What is one to do? The guest cancelled the booking request, fortunately for me the reservation was made through another booking site so I didn't lose it.
However, today, 4 days later, I get a message from "your friend at Airbnb" informing me that they need to close the case to enable them to fix a technical issue. I never, as a customer or business partner have known any serious business or service provider refer to themselves as "your friend at Some Company" or the like.
Regardless, 4 days to respond to me, 4 days to tell me there's an issue that needs to be fixed and no mention of the lost booking nor any acknowledgement of the complete failure to deal with my problem within the time scales imposed upon me by Airbnb.
I am speechless, the other incident I referred to Airbnb was somewhat similar but the response time and the response itself was almost identical.
What has it come to?
