The $600 owed to me by Airbnb...
On approximately 12 March 2020 I had a guest coming who worked for a large entertainment company that puts on shows across the country. He cancelled the reservation because his company cancelled their shows in my city. Normally there would have been 100% cancellation penalty but I voluntarily agreed to refund $600 or a $1500 reservation and told him that I would refund more if I received other guests during the time he was scheduled to stay. I was paid $900 on this reservation by Airbnb, taking into account that I already had authorized Airbnb to reduce my payout from $1500 to $900. Unfortunately, someone at Airbnb made a keyboard entry error and instead of witholding $900 from future revenues, they witheld the entire $1500 that they had refunded to the guest. This resulting in an underpayment to me of $600. All Airbnb had to due was compare the amount paid to me for this reservation with the amount witheld from future earnings. Between March and June I contacted Airbnb customer service, each interaction taking 1 or 2 hours because of the telephone queue to reach them. Even though the error was acknowledged by them, easily proven, and completely cut-and-dry, non of the interactions with Airbnb customer service resulting in them correcting the error. Since I no longer will waste my time contacting the customer service department, on July 7 I sent a "demand letter" to the Airbnb legal department along with an email to Brian Chesky with a copy of the fax to the legal department. I would have expected immediate action when the fax was received by the legal department...but I got no response. Subsequently I removed my listing from Airbnb, not because of this uncorrected error, but because of two recent guest experiences which I have written about on my post in this thread titled "Quit Airbnb last night..." In any case, after waiting 72 hours and getting no action from my communication with the legal department and no action from the email to Brian Chesky, I sent a carefully worded email to Brian Chesky's Personal Administrative Assistent, let's call her "Mary." Withing 15 minutes I received a message from an individual we can call "Mike," 'who acknowleged the error on the part of Airbnb and told me that he had approved the payour for me and that it would be forthcoming. Four days later it hit the account. Now, I could have resolved this myself if it was possible and convenient to contact Airbnb Customer Service. But with 90 minute wait times customer service is non-existent. In addition, I can't figure out why my clear contact with customer service between March and June was unable to effect a solution to this very simple matter. Nor do I understand why any legal department that received a fax alleging an error on the part of their client (Airbnb) would fail to respond promptly be contacting me by telephone and letting me know that they had received the fax and would quickly investigate and resolve.
Posted Jul 16, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC
You say "keyboard entry error", I say Airbnb is going broke and they're trying to cheat their hosts out of as much money as possible.
I'm thinking the hourly employees working from their home or the call center dont care about that at all.
They been doing the same to guests and then asking them to make donations to their favorite hosts. During a pandemic. Some of these guests probably lost their job, struggling with bills, and don’t even own their own home.
I do not believe at Airbnb is using this crisis and adjusting their cash flow management in this manner. This is a characteristic of companies short on cash but frankly I don't think Airbnb is in those dire straits yet. Rather, I expect it is a result the elimination of 100% of their contract workers and 25% of their employees leaving them at a 50% level of employment. The recent switch to focusing on locals rather than travelers must certainly contribute to what appears to be a significant worsening of host experience. Property owners usually do a thorough investigation of prospective tenants very different from the qualification process that Airbnb goes through. So there is probably a higher probability that a local guest who for whatever reason is unable to get an apartment, either because he doesn't pass the credit check, doesn't have the money for first and last and deposit, or has been evicted, or has a criminal record, or is a drug abuser, and doesn't have the ability for a prospective landlord to contact prior landlords to get a better idea of whether the tenant might present a problem. My experience recently which coincides with a covid-19 crisis is that I have had three out of four problem guests, including two individuals that could be characterized as extreme guest experiences. The experiences with my last two guests are described in my posting called "quit Airbnb last night..." They're clearly the type of guest that no host would reasonably put up with.