Airbnb Complaint

Submitted by: Anonymous | Post a complaint | Back to Complaints Forum

Through Airbnb, we accepted a request by 2 individuals to book a room in our apartment for 4 nights. The request initially came in for just one person, but the personal and introductory message clearly specify more than one person, so before we accepted their request, we asked the requester to adjust their request to 2 people, which they did thru airbnb so we accepted.

Here is more info about the accepted request:

Check-in: Mon, Jun 10, 2019

Check-out: Fri, Jun 14, 2019

Payout

$98 x 4 nights = $392.00

Cleaning fee = $60.00

Service fee = -$13.56

Total (USD) = $438.44

Let me say that Airbnb changed their term of service every few days, without letting current users know about it; no emails or notifications sent to us by them to let us know about any change. Before we used to be able to see who is requesting to stay with us, but apparently we’re no longer able to. Also Airbnb, who supposed to be in many countries in the world, supposedly check each guests ID and make sure these guests have a valid payment method before letting us accept requests. The normal procedure for payout by airbnb is that we get our payout the next day after the guests have checked-in to our place, because of course Airbnb collect the payment from the prospect before even allowing us to accept their requests, which gives us a sense of safety when accepting random people into our lives without knowing if they are actually able to pay us for the stay. Airbnb also advertise online that they have up to $1 Million Insurance Policy against guests’ damages but i strongly believe they are just inventing things to make hosts feel confortable doing business with them because none of that are true. So the guests stayed and we never got paid by Airbnb. We contacted them multiple times through their website without no feedback whatsoever, and not until we called them and wasted half of our days to stay on the line and being put on hold forever, that they decided to finally give us a feedback. Their feedback was that we won’t get a payout, until the guests pay them. So that’s when I realized that we have a problem. And after reaching out to Airbnb and the guests to find out what is really going. I was told that airbnb weren’t able to process the guest payment before the accepted reservation, but they still proceeded to have us accept the reservation and host these guests in our home without insuring the payments were made. After multiple tries to reach airbnb, Airbnb started categorizing the guests as “our guests” so they can exclude themselves from the responsibility they hold, which is to make sure we get paid before hosting “their guests” in our place. After a few more back and forth with both Airbnb and their Guests, we still haven’t got paid until this day, and Airbnb is telling us we have to wait until they get paid. So basically, we trust Airbnb with reservation, and not only they failed to do their part, but they also do not want to take responsibility and pay us and then do whatever they have to and collect from their Guests. We have requested multiple times to get our payout by Airbnb, but they never reply to us. The last reply they sent to us was a link about their terms of services, which of course is updated whenever it pleases them to do so, therefore unreliable whatsoever.

What would you like the company to do to fix the problem? (optional)
They need to pay us what we are due along with extra monetary compensation to help us with the emotional distress we’ve been going thru.

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