Can someone please help us. We are at our wits ends trying to communicate effectively with Airbnb.
We too thought it might have been a scam when we first received emails and messages from Airbnb telling us our payments would be paused if we didn't provide more government ID details.
Our payments are now paused.
We have been trying to communicate meaningfully with Airbnb for months, but we've made no progress. We think many of the responses we receive are produced by robots.
The issue for us is simply that Airbnb is seeking “government ID” information from us that goes well beyond Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations. We operate as a company and have provided all the details we normally provide to do business in Australia. No other business has ever asked us to provide scanned copies of our passports and drivers licenses.
We are now at the point where we think we'll have to ditch Airbnb and switch to Stayz or Booking.com
We can show many instances of Airbnb's poor communication practices. Here's one example ...
"The level of verification you're being prompted to complete is required for hosts who have multiple listings on the Airbnb platform.
Typically, we ask users to verify their personal information as a security measure – this process eliminates the need for individual members of an organisation to provide their personal information.
I recommend completing this step as soon as possible to prevent your Airbnb payouts from being paused.
Please be advised that all users of Airbnb who submits their identification are all stored in the safe bank and this will be highly confidential".
Airbnb Support, 12:21am, 7 Jan 2022
(This is exactly as it was received ... grammar and spelling included)
We are not encouraged to send our scanned passports and drivers licences to an organisation who writes such nonsense.
We've offered to take our passports and drivers licenses to an Airbnb office so someone can sight them and record on our Airbnb file that they have sighted our ID and we are who we say we are. But that is too hard for Airbnb. I doubt they have any people in Australia!
At issue is the ID details Airbnb is seeking from us is enough to enable somebody to steal our identity. They don't need it in order to do business with us and, even if they must see our ID, there's no reason to keep it in "a safe bank".
If you have experienced something similar and know how to overcome this problem please let us know.