Extenuating Circumstance Cancellation & Account Hold

[Norman9]

Dear Airbnb Host Ambassadors and Staff,

I'm writing here to escalate a matter that the airbnb customer service call centers have given me a run-around and not able to assist nor resolve.  A cancellation (by the guest) was done in bad faith using Tsunami Warning as an after-the-fact extenuating circumstance - to double dip on a free stay and a refund.  No communication was made by the guest nor the "specialized team" who issued the refund and account hold. The guest had already abandoned the reservation and left our premises on 7/25/2025 willingly WITHOUT a refund (due to strict cancellation policy, and to take a free stay-incentive elsewhere) and who did in-fact left: I have the records of the conversation on him taking up a free stay offered by airbnb, as well as door entry and exit logs as proof of checkout on the morning of 7/25/2025; well before the extenuating circumstance event on 7/29/2025 where the refund request was initiated and later issued.

I would like someone at Airbnb HQ (in San Francisco or elsewhere) to listen to my case and address this serious concern on call-center quality moving forward.  I have been a host since 2012 (14 years) and have over 800+ reviews on my listing.  I have halted all reservations on Airbnb since this incident in July/August and hope to get this resolved quickly as it's been over 4 months.

Thank you,

-Norman

[Emilie]

Hi @Norman9, 

I hope you and your loved ones are all safe following that extreme weather warning earlier this year!

Have you heard anything further from the Support team regarding this case? As we do not have access to your account here, they are best placed to follow-up in this situation. 

Thanks 🙂

Emilie

[Norman9]

Hi Emilie, 

Thank you for the kind words.

Yes, after FOUR months of calling on weekends and during my time off— involving over a dozen conversations, each with a different representative on shift—the issue was finally resolved. The case was escalated to Shalini, who reviewed it thoroughly.  WOULD I RECOMMEND ANYONE ELSE TO HOST ON AIRBNB? 

Airbnb's (outsourced?) call centers perform no better than AI bots trained merely to apologize and pass the problem to the next poor soul (or to assert that they hold senior authority, deliver a final decision, and rely on templated responses). In comparison, the quality of Amazon.com's locally based customer service is night and day.

I provided extensive feedback to Shalini, in the hope that she can relay it to higher-level management to improve Airbnb's customer support.

Norman

[Ira5711]

@Norman9 Thank you for sharing the update Norma, it’s reassuring to hear it was resolved. If you don’t mind sharing, was there anything in particular that helped move the case forward (e.g. Community moderator, escalation, specific team)?
I have a similar case .