time with AirBnB is over

[Sam397]

Well everyone after 8 + years using AirBnB I unlisted my last property 2 days ago. Unfortunetely the customer support got the best of me. 3 years ago I had 3 listings and another two going up within a month.  Then all of a sudden my listings which had always showed up in the searches in the first pages fell all the way to the back. For  3 months  I spoke with no less than 10 different reps and no help. All they would tell me is its based on an algorythm. Even though they agreed that I was doing everything I was supposed to (at a high level) and my listing should have been up in the front pages they just kept telling me there was nothing they could do. Not one of them said let me talk to my boss and see if we can figure it out. Well after 3 months I shut down 1 listing.

It turned out that AiRBnB really wants you to use smart pricing, because once I turned it I got a booking a few hours later was getting them every day after. My listings moved back up to the front pages and never went back. Of course they denied that it had anything to do with it. Then last year I shut down my second one because of lazy reps and then a few days ago I had an issue and the rep I had wouldnt answer any questions. All he did was send me his original email in responce to my questions. He wouldnt even give me his name. Finally I got fed up and Sunday I told him my next guest arrived Thursday and if things wernt resolved I would not host them. I didnt gear anything back and Thursday morning the guest was still booked. So I called them up and told them to cancel all of my bookings and unlist me.

The problem is that there is no way to contact any supervisors if your unhappy with the rep, the only tway to contact them is by contacting the same people you had issues with, and of course they wont turn themselves in.. The reps know this and they dont put in any extra effort. So as long as they continue to do things this way things wont change.

So I guess AiRBnBs poor customer service has cost them another host. You would think that the people in charge would monitor things like this. You guys should google 'AiRBnB customer support'sometime. Its crazy, its  page after page after page of nothing but people saying things like worst support ever, they should be ashamed, there are hundreds of lines that say how bad they are.  So good luck hosts, I have a feeling I will not be the last to do this. 

[John5097]

@Sam397 

I'm winding down my listing. But unlike you I plan to honor all my existing reservations. It's not anyone's fault that you weren't getting as many bookings as you wanted. When a host turns off Instant Book they actually get a warning that they might not get as many bookings. 

I turned off Instant Book years ago and always stayed booked 100% of the time. I would never call customer service and be that demanding and just rude. 

* Every day new listings go live and they are going to prioritize listings guest are booking. 

Even though I have over 470 5 star reviews and always stayed booked, there are millions of other listings and hundreds of new ones that start up every year in my area, and don't think for a minute anyone will lose sleep over mine not being available. 

Unlike you I plan to end things on a good note. 

*

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[Helen3]

I doubt it's anything to do with Smart Pricing @Sam397 I've never used it and have always been on the first page for my type of listings.

I do remember from your previous posts that you've had quite a few problems with your listings and guests  over the years , which did affect your rankings because of poor reviews and guest complaints.

You are correct if the Airbnb marketing platform isn't working for your STR business I agree it's best to leave and focus on other platforms that work better for you and direct bookings.

However I agree with @John5097 it's appalling that you have cancelled multiple guest booking because you're upset with Airbnb. Those guests booked with you in good faith and you have ruined their plans .

The professional and right thing to do would have been to pause your listings so you didn't get more bookings  while you managed bookings with the guests who booked .

Shame on you. 

[Sam397]

I didnt say that smart pricing was the reason, I said that for 3 months I didnt get bookings, then I turned it on and started getting them right away. Now it is my opinion that was the reason. The rest of you can come to whatever conclusion you want.

Also Helen the reason they want you to use smart pricing is because they control the money thats charged and make more money. If you dont have many bookings they dont mess with it but if yoiu have a lot of bookings than that a lot of money so they really want you to do it. 

[Sam397]

@John5097  @Helen3 .     WOW, now I remember why I stopped participating in the forum.

First off John5097, who said anything about insta book, also I didnt say I wasnt keeping up with the competion. If you had actually read what I wrote I said 3 years ago I stopped getting bookings and shut down 1 of my listings. Then when I turned on SMART PRICING then my bookings started back up. As far as the success of my listings, I will put my numbers against yours or anybody elses ant day. I did not stop hosting because of bookings, low ratings I stopped because of poor customer service.. This was actually turning out to be my best year ever. I have had 4 months of being 100% booked, thats every single day of the month was booked. And not 1 month had more than 3 days unbooked. As far as my 5 star reviews go, I dont know the exact number but I have had over 700 reviews with at least 650 being 5 stars(maybe 675) Twice I went a year of nothing but 5 stars. Can you say that? As far as cancelling guests, I didnt go into any details about why but since there are people who just want to give negative comments even though they dont know why I  will give a few. AirBNb sent me an email on Saturday and said the pic of the ID that I gave them 8 years ago was not acceptable and that thay blocked my calander and would not pay me until I sent them a new one. They didnt give me any time to take care of it. When I contacted them asking why they would shut me down without giving me a chance to take care of it, the rep wouldnt give me an answer, he just resent his original email. As for cancelling the guest on the same day,  I told AiRBnB 4 days before my guest arrived I wasnt going to host someone if I wasnt going to get paid. In them 4 days they never contacted me and didnt do anything about the guest. The morning the guest was to arrive I got hold of them and told them how messed up it was that they did this to the guest and I told them I would host the guy but I wanted to be paid for that stay and the one that they still owed me by the time the stay ended. I was told NO. Thats when I said fine cancel them all and unlist me. Then I called the guest, (which they hadnt even called yet) and  I apologized and told him what was going on and then told him if they did not hook him up with an acceptable replacement to call me back and he could stay at the house on a cash basis and I would even give him a 25% percent discount. Now would you and your holier than god opinion of yourself done that, I doubt it. 

Now Helen3, I do remember you as well. * And not only that your memory isnt very good. Not one time did I ever complain about my guest, or bad reviews or my ratings and never said I was struggling because of them things. I made superhost right away and was one the entire 8 years I hosted. The only thing  I ever complained about was the customer support.

And for the record the majority of the people who got cancelled contacted me after and are very satisfied with how it turned out.

When I first started hosting I participated on the forum because I thought it was a great tool to help me succeed in hosting, and it was very helpful. But only did it for about a year *The reason for this post was because I had posted my problems with customer support in my early days of hosting and I wanted to let people know that 8 years later my run ended because of the same issues I had in the beginning. So you people who want to critsize me and tell me what a bad person I am save your comments because I was very succesful at hosting so much so I will put money on which of us was  the better host any day.

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[Helen3]

Wow @Sam397 when you are called out for your poor behaviour towards guests you respond by nasty name calling and insults - how sad.

So your ID ran out with Airbnb  - all you had to do was upload a current drivers licence/passport to continue to get paid and to operate on Airbnb .

Instead you got into a strop and cancelled all your bookings highly inconveniencing your guests and upsetting their plans. 

I highly doubt those who you cancelled contacted you saying they were very satisfied that you cancelled their bookings and ruined their travel plans.

Not uploading your updated ID so you could continue to host was a decision you made - you can't put that at Airbnb customer services door .

i appreciate how truly awful Airbnb CS is but in your situation it was in your gift to easily resolve the situation but you chose not to.

By the way you asked whether we have gone for a year with nothing but five star reviews - yes I have for three years consecutively 😀

we are not in the playground and while I disagree with your approach to hosting I have never indulged in personal name calling.

hopefully you will learn from this experience going into your next venture.

[Sam397]

@Helen3, first of all I didnt call you one name. I said you wernt liked because of your being negative*. And considering that is exactly what you have done tonight I think its safe to say that was true.  Without knowing any details you said how I was in the wrong and how shameful I was and how I ruined peoples travel plans and then you basically called me a liar about guest being satisfied. Thats all good, thats how you are and no matter what I say you will continue to do that. But know this, you dont know all the details regarding what happened this last time, or anything thats happened in the past. It would take to long to list all the things that happened but the reason I  quit is because for two days  my rep wouldnt answer questions, he wouldnt work with me and was not providing me with any support whatsoever.  I did send in a new pic of my ID,  then I was told I had to send a selfie to show I was actually the one who sent the photo(WTF does it matter who sent a pic) and it just kept going on and on. And then after 20 times of asking what was wrong with the original photo, he finally told me. It was because the original photo was a black and white pic. They shut down my calander and stopped paying me without giving me any notice all because a pic of my ID that was fine for 8 years was a black and white photo. And that mam was wrong. So you sit here and judge all you want but it wasnt about the photo it was about how they stopped me making money over something as petty as a black and white photo and was not only completely unwilling to work with me to get this resolved but hindered in getting it resolved. So ya after getting this quality of customer support for so long I had enough and quit. So I have done all the explaining I am going too on this matter. Like I said I only posted this to give an ending to my story. And believe me if I would have remembered the people like you who gets off on starting arguments with people I never would have posted it. So thank you Helen3 for for showing me there is a good thing that will come out of quiting this platform, which is not having to listen to people like you.

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[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sam397 just wondering if you have cut off your nose to spite your face. If you were near 100% booked with airbnb what will you do now?

[Sam397]

@Mike-And-Jane0 , no I dont believe I did. If I decide to keep this house as a short term rental  I wont have the bookings I had with BnB but I will get enough to survive. I have a lot of people that dont go through BnB plus I had a lot of repeat business and if they cant find my listing they will call me to find out whats up. And since I dont clean my deleted files in my email I have several months of emails that I can get contact info off of. August is already half booked after a few days. And I will always have other options. I can use furnished finders or just rent monthly. 

This whole thing is about the lousy CS. I could have lived with their laziness or unwillingness to do anything extra but this last guy was something different. I dont know if he didnt do english well or what but he really was bad. I was actually going to unlist it at the end of last year but had it blocked for people so I  waited until that was over. But bookings was so good I held off. I was only $1000 short of my goal for the year and still had 5 months to go when this happened. 

[John5097]

@Sam397 

This isn't about me. I only have the past year stats but have close to  100% occupancy rate for the past 5 and half years. All five star reviews. 



It's hard to make sense of your incoherent ramblings. I've never used Smart Pricing either and stay booked all the time.

Customer service can't just move your listing to the top of the first page. That's not how it works. That's based on the guest feedback and experience. As I said over the years there are a lot of new listings and yours simply couldn't compete.

*
I also had to upload my ID reveal times. Super easy to take a pic of drivers license and upload it.

That's also not customer service's responsibility. Airbnb has to insure the safety of the other members, guest and host.

They should actually make everyone upload a verified ID which is one of the reasons I'm not hosting anymore.*

Unlike you I appreciate all the extra income I've made over the years. It's been a good little gig.

People do complain that Airbnb host canceled their reservations, it's one of the main complaints about the platform.

I see it as other host who put in a lot of work to make the system work. If everyone before you had did what you did and canceled their guest it would have gone out of businesss and you wouldn't have made all the extra income over the years. So you really screwed over other host, and many others like you who put their house for sale and keep booking reservations and cancel them when it sells, or whatever.

*
You're the one with the holier than thou attitude. Now you won't have the option to host again.

I don't get along with a lot of host but every guest I hosted had a 5 star stay (I had one 4 star review) and would use the platform again and book another listing with another host, so feel like I did my part. I don't need the money now so I'm just doing it because it was a good gig and want other people to have the opportunity and for a lot of host they depend on the income and work really hard.

Maybe you did have some really bad guest experiences and hope you can learn from it and next time not end things on a bad note. I suppose if you can't upload an ID there is something more to that, and Airbnb started verifying all host a few years back as a security measure.   

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[John5097]

@Sam397 

That's just my option. Maybe you didn't phrase the issues you had very well? 

There have been some other discussions about how host can cancel guest and stratiges to get out of paying the cancelation fees. 

Several of the "top contributors" chimed in on how to evade the fees and cancel upcoming reservations. I advised not do it but have to be very polite as there is a double standard as this is an internet forum, but they may be able to better assist you. 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-circle/Cancellation-fee-if-host-stops-hosting/m-p/2109331#M...

[Sam397]

@John5097, ???????????????

whats with all the stuff about cancellation fees. Up until this last thing I have never cancelled a booking unless there was a double booking and them are not the host fault. And I definetely dont try to come up with ways to avoid them. To be honest I wouldnt think there are ways to get out of them. If CS can charge you for something they do it. 

FYI , having no cancellations is one of the things on the list we talked about. 

[John5097]

@Sam397 

I responded to your original post where you stated that you told CS rep that you would cancel upcoming reservation if they didn't comply with your demands.  

"Finally I got fed up and Sunday I told him my next guest arrived Thursday and if things wernt resolved I would not host them. I didnt gear anything back and Thursday morning the guest was still booked. So I called them up and told them to cancel all of my bookings and unlist me."

[Sam397]

@John5097, I dont know maybe I am not being clear. So I am going to make 1 more attempt at this. First off, my problems have never been with guests, its 100% with CS.  My guest and I have had great experiences with each other and because of that a lot of my guest have stayed multiple times.

As for the problems I had concerning doing things to improve your place in searches, that was something that happened 3 years ago and lead up to me closing one of my listings. Nothing was ever said about CS moving my listing up in the searches so how you came up with that is beyond me. As far as things that determine where a listing falls in searches, there are several things that determine that and there is only one place that you can get the list. And according to Airbnb if you do them things your listing would move up in the searches. And all the reps I spoke with over the 3 months  agreed that I was doing everything on that list and doing them very well, and they all agreed that I should have been at the front of the list and that something wasnt right. My problem was that even though they knew something wasnt right they all took the easy way and said there wasnt anything they could do, not one of them was willing to do anything extra like saying let me talk to my boss and see whats going on. To me thats poor CS.

And what was all that crap about me screwing over hosts and hoping I am banned as a guest also. For your information I am not banned from anything and considering AiRBnB has already contacted me wanting to work this out I would say that they must think I am a pretty good host.

And if you would have read my reply to Helen3 you would have seen that this last issue wasnt about simply uploading a new pic, I did that. It was about them shutting me down without giving me a chance to get them the pic, not willing to work with me and several other things that was poor CS in my opinion.

My problem with you and Helen was that you knew nothing about what happened leading up to my telling them to cancel my bookings yet you said that I was in the wrong and how I screwed the guest over and made me out to be a POS. I am not the one who didnt contact me or the guest for 4 days leading up to start of the stay. I could have easily let this guy arrive and then tell him he cant stay and to contact CS. But I didnt do that I contacted CS and even told them I would host the guy but they had to agree to pay me for it, they wouldnt do it. Would you host people if you were not getting paid for it? I even called the guy and said if CS didnt find him a place I would host him, and the last thing he told me was thanks for doing everything I did and that he really appreciate it. I have talked to every guest that was booked in August and every one of them are not only happy with how things worked out and they also thanked me for all I did. The guest that was booked after August got a months notice and have plenty of time to find another place so not one guest was screwed over or had travel plans ruined. And that wasnt because of CS it was because I went out of my way to make it right. So dont sit here and try and judge me and say I was a bad host and did the guests wrong. 

So maybe in the future when participating in the forum you show people some respect and keep your negative comments to yourself when you dont know whats going on. 

And there is no need to pat yourself on the back by putting your stats up there, I never once said you wernt a good host, to be honest I can care less. I just simply said I am confident enough in my numbers to put my money on me against anyone. I am not saying that there isnt a host out there with better numbers, I know there are. But it would take almost perfect numbers to do it. And if your one of them then please put that gold star on your forehead because it would be well earned.