I love the short term rental model. I have used Airbnb as both a host and guest, but recently there has been a change in the customer service group. This change has lead to worse customer service then the cable company. “Support Ambassadors” don’t know Airbnb’s policies and just read from a prompt on their screen. Then they say they will forward your issue to a “specialist/investigation team”. They promise to get back to you the next day and then the next day you get a message saying they will get to it the next day and so on for weeks. Until you call again and then they give you more canned responses and no support with your issue or explanation for how to avoid the issue in the future.
The review process is extremely flawed and gives a significant advantage to large hosting companies making it hard for hosts with one or two properties to succeed without farming out hosting to a large servicing company which ruins the quaint and cool experience of integration with a resident of the area you are visiting. Also, Airbnb doesn’t hold hosts or guests responsible for providing accurate descriptions of their rental or accurate reviews. Their policy says that they will, but they do not regulate or enforce it. There is no base line standard for hosts to model their guest’s experience after. This leads leads to guests having in consistent experiences and hosts receiving un reliable reviews. Setting a base line standard would help guests know what to expect and provide hosts to with confidence that they are providing the type of experience guests are expecting.
Great concept and with some improvements with their customer support and setting clearer expectations for a hosting expectations/guest experience it could be awesome, but unfortunately Airbnb is not concerned with guests or hosts experience, but only public opinion and making money.
Airbnb is charging us $1000!!!!!
We had a new guest book our unit through airbnb and a previous guest ask to extend (outside of airbnb). Before making a decision we asked the new guest if they cared about cancelling because a previous guest wants to extend. The new guest agreed that cancelling wouldn’t be a problem and then cancelled. So details:
1. We had a conversation with someone wanting to book and both the new guest and us agreed that cancelling the reservation was OK for both of us.
2. Airbnb decided to switch the cancellation to “cancelled by owner” without informing us or asking us or even giving us the opportunity to actually rent the unit to the new guest because we had a conversation, even though WE BOTH AGREED to cancel in that conversation.
3. Airbnb is now making $1000 (not the new guest) for doing absolutely nothing.
4. If Airbnb had informed us that we would be charged $1000!!! then we would have simply rented the unit to the new guest and asked the current guest to leave. Instead they decided to try to steal money from us and then still make more on the new guest now needing to book a new location.
5. They are asking for some impossible form of “documentation” that can not exist because they have read the conversations already and have seen that both us and the new tenant agreed to cancel solely through their message app. There is NO other documentation outside of the actual message in which we both AGREED TO CANCEL in their App.
I literally have never written a review in my life, but I actually hate this company, and a $1000 penalty is absolutely insane to individuals trying to make a living. I’m disappointed in the process, the customer service and company as a whole. This is robbery & we plan to never use this company again.
My son and his girlfriend and I stayed at an Airbnb on Thursday. It was my first time ever experiencing staying in an Airbnb. The place was nice. It was clean. The guy was nice or so. I thought everything went well. We left had no issues until I read his review. He completely LIED about everything he accused us of smoking in the room. None of us ever smoked anything in that room!! 😡My son does smoke, but I made him go OUTSIDE and I was with him each time he did, so I don’t see what the need was for him to lie. If this is what I’m gonna have to expect from hosts at Airbnb’s that lie for absolutely no reason trying to tarnish my reputation then I don’t want to book with Airbnb anymore. That was absolutely unnecessary. We were kind we were quiet. We were nice and respected all of his rules. My son and I are African-American and it seems as though based on his review and the way, he lied for no reason seems as though he may have been racist because why else would he lie? We did nothing wrong to him so this is how you treat your black customers? Hmm 🤔 good to know… and to think I was going to refer him to all of my friends and family and I left him the most wonderful review… smh WOW.. by the way his name is ray he has an Airbnb out in Malden Massachusetts.. BEWARE
I have stayed at a couple of hundred Airbnbs with an impeccable review record. If the Airbnb is good, it can be great.
However in many ways, Airbnb is an awful company to deal with when there are safety issues or last minute cancellations by the host and when you are on your own in a foreign country.
They have high pressure tactics that force you to click and reserve in these situations and they claim that the onus of the refund when there is a cancelation - even if the reservation happened in a high pressure reservation due to safety issues when you are looking for an new place is entirely on the host - and even when the host says they want to refund, they don’t bother to refund.
They give no credit for a guest who has built a great reputation unlike Hilton or Marriott.
They talk a good game about safety but they don’t really care unless someone is being raped or dying. In actual safety situations they call you back after hours.
Their reviews are increasingly worthless because they focus hard on getting hosts to become your buddies and then no one leaves actual reviews of the location or other problems because of psychological pressure from your new host.
Caveat emptor!
Had a bad experience on airbnb. Host completely misrepresented his property. I even had to contact airbnb to get out of the rental which they coordinated. I left a review about it for the host after and he was able to have it removed despite documented evidence and action already taken against him to get us out by airbnb itself!
I brought up the issue after he was able to leave me a dishonest review himself which is still on my profile and airbnb said they’d look into the issue. I sent them the same pictures and chats that I had previously and they simply closed the ticket with me and did nothing.
So do not trust reviews on airbnb and do not trust the integrity of airbnb ratings. They remove negative reviews when they think they’ll lose business.
His property had a perfect rating with a gap of a few months, likely from multiple reviews being removed. He’s a “super host” and honestly was one of the most arrogant and unprofessional people I’ve ever come across.
Airbnb, do better. That is ridiculous. I’ve spent 10,000 plus on airbnb this calendar year alone and I was on track to spend almost 60k in rentals as we are traveling. You’ve lost my business. Hi VRBO.
Help! This app has really taken a downward turn. I booked an air bnb only to find there was no heat and I was forced to sleep in a 55 degree damp apartment. I left the next day. After 36 hours on hold and dealing with tech support and the host I was only able to get a $700 refund on a $1200 stay.
The host was willing to give me a $980 refund it was the air bnb customer service staff that was relentlessly rude. I was passed around to 8 different reps, dropped calls, and attempts to continue the issue. Endless phone calls of “we’ll now it’s two days so we’ll have to charge you for two days” even when my host only agreed to one. On the third day at midnight I tearfully called and was completely disrespected. They attempted to get me to continue this issue for another night and charge me even though the host had agreed to a one day cancellation.
I will be booking through local agencies and hotels from here on out. 10 years ago this wouldn’t have been a problem. Air bnb is in its flop era/cash grab era. We live in a dystopia where you can book an apartment with no heat and still be charged over $500 for one night.
One of the beds is so awful that I can’t believe anyone has rated this higher than a 2. It is a good 12 inches higher on one side and sags terribly. It isn’t even an even sag. There is no way two people could be in the bed. It isn’t possible to be comfortable as one person. If you have a bad back, do yourself a favor and DON”T RENT this place. I love the location. It is clean. Also there are no dressers, drawers or shelves for your stuff, and no suitcase racks, no dish towels. You can buy $30 suitcase racks at Bed Bath and Beyond or cheap cardboard dressers. It also has the potential to be very noisy, but fortunately for us, the other tenants were quiet after bedtime. I would also have appreciated directions on the Roku TV. There is no bath mat in the bathroom and no non-slip strips in the shower. For the amount they charge, they could afford shelves or suitcase racks, bathmats, and other inexpensive amenities. There is no excuse for the bed. They could buy a used Motel 6 bed and it would be an improvement.
I have 2 travels with my friend both are using Airbnb, both are terrible experience.
1. Travel to Miami, we booked a 2 bedroom house, it looks nice from outside, but the room is very small, much smaller than a motel standard. And some unknown stains inside the bed sheet, disgusting. We complained to the host, he just asked us to cancel the order and no refund. The glass door of bathroom is broken, we’re so scared to use our hands to touch it, afraid it will fall down to hurt us.
2. Travel to Los Angeles, a separated house with 2 bedrooms. Many broken furnitures, a leg of a chairman is almost out from the wood board. A heavy fell down occurred when my friend sit on it causally. And the lock is very annoying, it always takes more than 10mins to open the door with the key gave by host; we doubted and begged her to change a correct key, she just hang off and reply nothing, no other to say noisy AC, bad network, dirt restroom etc. certainly another bad experience.
I love Air Bnb and I use it probably about once a month but every since the start of Covid, the host have been taking ridiculous advantages of the people the whole thing about Air Bnb is that it’s supposed to be better than hotels, and we shouldn’t have to deal with all the stupid stuff that we had to deal with at hotels
I got charged 150 for a cleaning fee for seven days then at the end of my stay I get texted that I need to clean up the house and take out the trash before I leave that seems ridiculous since I’m paying like $22 a day just for cleaning
Also most of these places you can’t even check in till 4 PM and then you have to check out as early as 10 AM so you’re not even getting a full day and when you’re on vacation you can’t even sleep in.
Like I said, I love Airbnb, but they need to realize that they are eventually going to lose if they make it to where the people are getting protected from all this nonsense
You have deployed at least 5 times to production this last month (little buggy maybe?) and you keep saying the same thing in your release notes. Maybe you could ACTUALLY use the space apple provides you to tell us, your customers, what you keep break-fixing so that we can try to be one step ahead of you. Especially when you are going to introduce new “enhancements” to the calendar that lose us money on weekend rentals. Did you actually think that use case through? Probably not because you hired a new director of product that has zero idea what the customer actually wants. Here’s a clue…ask your hosts. Tell them what you are doing by sending out communications! Get FEEDBACK in the app! Ask us! We would love to tell you how you can make it a better experience for us, for the guests and ultimately, make you more money! But you are dumb, corporate monkeys who do it your way. You are doing fantastic losing customers.