You don't know who you are dealing with.....

[Robin4]

We have a self contained Studio accommodation unit which we wished to let on a couple of home hosting sites. We listed with AIRBNB which has turned out to be a smooth and satisfactory experience! I also attempted to list with Trip Advisor and this has frustrated us to the point where I have now removed the listing from their site.

On accessing the Trip Advisor home page one of the major tabs is 'List your Property', which is what I thought I was doing! I followed all the prompts that Trip Advisor provided and after a relatively smooth description and photo page...(about the same as AIRBNB) I was given an ID number and was able to preview my property listing. I was congratulated for listing with Trip Advisor and advised my listing would be visible on Trip Advisor within a few days.....great! The only slightly strange thing about this was when previewing my listing the letting amount for our property was shown in English Pounds rather than $au. But, I thought, 'Oh well, a world wide company, they know what they are doing'!
That was four weeks ago, and ever since I have been able to find no record of my listing, and nor can anyone else!!! And what is worse there is absolutely no way to contact anyone within the Trip Advisor organisation to ask a question. The entire 'help' and 'customer support' section consists only of a few generic type topics and explanations. There is no way you can actually speak to, or email anybody with a specific question!
In desperation I went onto a forum site that has some sort of contact with Trip Advisor and typed my experience in dealing with these people. Next I received a reply from someone in Vancouver in Canada, and this person said...."There was no need for you to have any contact with Trip Advisor because you are not listed with Trip Advisor" !!!!! WHAT THE!
It appears my listing was at some point during the procedure palmed off to some English pop-up site that has an association with Trip Advisor called 'Holiday Lettings'!!
I now find out this is quite common with Trip Advisor. They have two sister organisations that they 'farm' off business to. I did receive a booking request through Holiday Lettings but because some of the information provided by the person requesting the booking was not recognised by the automated Holiday Lettings system, it showed up as a 'red' field and I was not able to send a typed response to this booking request.
All this exercise has done is mess me around and frustrated a potential guest, so I have now removed myself totally from Trip Advisor and Holiday Lettings. Thank God a booking did not proceed to the point where we needed to be paid for it! With the total lack of contact ability that Trip Advisor offers, hell would freeze over before we could actually see some money in our account!
Beware of Trip Advisor....despite appearances you have no idea who you might actually be dealing with!

[Deborah0]

Thanks for your story of your experience, Robin!

That sounds really very frustrating.  I think it's unconscionable that a company would offer no way for you to talk to customer service!! It's really frightening, to tell the truth.  THis story shows that Airbnb is doing so vastly much better than this.  Though Airbnb customer service isn't perfect and at times hosts get wrong info (and I dont' think any company has perfect customer service ) , one has to compare to other similar companies, and when a story like yours emerges, this really lends perspective on what we can be grateful for. 

[Robin4]

Hi Deborah, You are 100% right about the contactability thing. I know all the contact information I need to know with Airbnb, both here in Australia and around the world with help-line phone numbers and email adresses! I feel a sence of security with Airbnb I have not felt with other listing sites. I should also add that, that post I made concerning Trip Advisor was an experience I had some 6 months ago before I really started to get heavily involved with Airbnb. I simply copied it across from a review I did on the Productreview website. Reading it in the Community Centre gave the impression that this experience had just happened, and that is not the case!

I am glad though, that the experience did happen because, it has taught me that, as far as hosting is concerned, I am probably better off putting 'All my eggs in one basket'!!

I am overjoyed at the class of guest we are getting with Airbnb.....as I said in another post some have since become my friends....and I am gaining a lot of information by scrolling through the Community Centre to read of other hosts experiences.

It doesn't matter what your field....you can never have too much knowledge...Thank you Deborah, Clare, Dave and others for giving me the wisdom of your knowledge.....I really do appreciate it....Cheers....Rob

[Carolyn5]

I had this problem with both Trip Advisor and Stayz. Could not delete my account. Haven't even been able to get on to HomeStay.

Can you log in to Tripe Advisor? If you can and are unable to delete your listing, just delete all the info and leave "Delisted property, now unavailable" at the top. Remove all photos, phone numbers and personal details. Nobody from this site will be able to contact you.