Hello everybody,
Over the years, airbnb has been a major life companion, after traveling the US for work using mostly airbnb as accomodations, I settled in a little surfing paradise in Siargao Philippines where I would open some little rental houses with my savings. Life was perfect, recently opened accomodations started to be full. On December 16th, the typhoon Rai decimated 90% of the houses of the island. People are starving, and without roof for rainy season. After 4 days without signal trying to help the community rebuild, I went to the nearest non affected area to coordinate some donation and emergency supplies to send to the people in need (you can follow the action on the Bastien del isle Facebook account). With no electricity in the neartown and limited internet, it's complicated to communicate to the outside and I couldn't access the airbnb platform.
In the meantime, I've been getting harrassed over the phone by Airbnb customer service to agree to give full refunds to all my guests. I already wrote to them to tell that I have no house anymore, and that all my guest could choose between get full refund or half refund, with the other half going to the community to feed people in need.
Since, I'm getting harrassed by the customer service who call me to accept to give full refund to the guests. I've lost everything and people just call me asking "how are you today, are you ok to refund fully your guests ?? " I've lost everything and it is just a total lack of tact when it's the 5th time that you receive a call. Then I receive some emails saying how nice of a host I am. On the side no help or understanding for the platform that you have been using for years. I booked over 100 accomodations and hosted over 100 guests !
Like most people who experienced the typhoon, we are in a trauma and focusing on helping the community. We have no more energy to fight against airbnb and it seems to be a fight at the moment, not a collaboration.
Airbnb says that it will cover the guests in case of natural disaster, yes they will, harassing the landlord to accept to give full refund of everything, regardless the situation. We don't have houses anymore.
I'm writting this to express my profund frustration from Airbnb. It used to be a flexible platform with a community spirit, it's becoming a money cow using cheap customer services representative who have no clue what they are doing and no understanding. This is sad.