Hello there,
This post is about my extreme dissatisfaction with Airbnb's customer support for hosts and a bad outcome:
1. I had a renter who was supposed to check out at 11 am.
2. At 1 pm, I noticed they were still leaving and entering the property (I was on my way to clean, which was about 2.5 hours away).
3. Earlier in the day, I messaged the renter to thank them for staying and ask them to please let me know when they checked out. I heard nothing back.
4. At 115pm, I changed the combination to the lock.
5. At 330pm, my wife and I are just about at the property to clean. I work out of this location and need the unit for a few days.
6. At 335 p.m., I got a call from the renter, who was locked out of the unit and could not get back in. I explained that she was due to check out at 11 am that morning. She got agitated at me, and the conversation was very tense. I told her she needed to vacate the property, as I needed it for work. Her rental was up. She blames me for kicking her out. She chose the wrong departure date.
7. I tell her to take an hour, get her stuff together, and see if she can find another place to stay. I open the door to let her in, get her things, and prepare to vacate. My wife and I go to a coffee shop to wait for them to vacate.
8. About an hour later, she calls me to tell me she's left, never acknowledging her mistake, instead insinuating that I am making this hard for her by forcing her to leave. She hangs up on me. That is the last time we have communicated.
9. All signs were that she had been having a great stay until that point; she messaged me the day before to tell me that.
10. Her review came in and gave me a 3/5 rating. This is her review: "Very responsive host. Had a couple of issues but all was resolved." This is my first non-5 rating, so my perfect score is ruined, and I"m pissed. If I'm not gonna get a 5-star rating, I want to know I did something to deserve it.
11. I call and message Airbnb to ask them to remove this review. She violated her terms by not leaving on time and did not have the right to review her stay, as she was biased by our experience when I had to tell her to vacate.
12. Calling Airbnb is awful. Their customer service reps work in a large room with massive background noise. Their English is marginal to poor, making it very difficult to have a conversation. The same goes for trying the chat route.
13. They refuse to remove the review, saying the renter did not violate their terms and conditions. They closed the case.
I am sharing this to see if I have any recourse left. In a situation like this, where I have to remove the tenant, they should not be able to review, as they likely leave a poor review, as in this case.
So, the 3-star rating is not removed, and I'm unhappy about that. However, I'm also highly concerned about what will happen when I need Airbnb's host services for something more serious. I now have zero confidence in Airbnb customer support, and I have doubts that they will be there for me as a host when I need them.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to receiving any feedback.
CR
