Hello all,
Having the worst expiernce with airbnb customer service and need some guidance as to my rights here/ how to manage.
I have Instant book on, never had a problem with it until now. On Tuesday the 17th a guest instant booked a room for Thursday the 19th July (today). Problem is that the date was closed/blocked in my calender as we have a guest checking out on the Thursday, and my partner and I are unable to be home to clean it and let a new guest check in on that day. Despite the calender being closed, this guest was able to book an instant reservation.
I contacted airbnb through their webite the same day (Tuesday) at 17:30 asking for help as to why this guest has been able to book and what I can do, as if I cancel I will lose my brand new superhost status. It's now Thursday 19th 01:20, still no response. It says that an airbnb specislit will contact me when they become available...its now been 33 hours and no response. I have tried several times today to use the call back feature, everytime I click the buttom it comes up saying Ooops Callback error: the system is undergoing mantinenance, please try again later, so I gave in and called airbnb directly on their US number after no-one picked up the Swedish number (out of hours so I guess low staff so long wait times).
I explained on the phone what had happened and was put on hold, the representitive (Anne) explained to me that, this is how Instant book worked, anyone can book anytime. I explained again that the date was closed and the guest should not be able to book in my calender and asked why it happened and was it going to happen again? Back on hold for another 10 minutes and she came back and said the exactly same line again, this is how instant book works, anyone can book any time (reading from a script I assume). I explained it again that is was closed and it's NOT how instant book works, back on hold for 10 minutes, and then she says I can see you have some dates blocked on your calender and I confirmed yes....but that's not the problem I have a guest arriving on a date when the room is closed, my parter has to take the day off work to clean the room after check out and wait for the new guest to arrive, to which she replies so what do you want me to do, cancel the reservation? I told her if it meant losing my superhost status then no, plus.... the guest is arriving in 11 hours, I don't want her to turn up at the airport and find out that she has no where to stay in the city....put back on hold for 15 minutes..she comes back with, there was maybe a problem that the guest booked at the same time you blocked the dates on the calender and it went through before you blocked it...no I blocked the rooms several weeks ago....okay same script line about maybe it went through before I closed.....I said no......it was blocked weeks ago, and she asked me then for the specific date that I blocked the room on my calender...how the hell am I supposed to remember that?! I told her I don't know the exact date, could of been 2-3 weeks ago, and this guest booked two days ago so it can't of been a "same moment" glitch.-..back on hold (call time 1:20hrs at this point, that I'm paying for). She comes back again with the line about how Instant booking works, I asked her so if my calender is closed for a month, can someone just book it for a month? No, because that's not how instant book works, if it is closed you shouldn't be able to book...back on hold for another 14 minutes, she comes on every 4 minutes to say thank you for waiting I'm just waiting for support from supervisor and then back on hold.
She comes back for the final time, to say that I can just cancel the booking, mark it as "unsafe/worried for danger" (can't remember the category that she said to mark - something like that) and my superhost status will not be affected. I asked her what happens to the guest, because she will be stranded (i've been in this situation before with a hotel and know how awful it is to turn up and be faced with nowhere to stay after a long flight).
She said the guest money will be refunded and she will have to find somewhere else to stay, no compensation for the guest, but they will help her if she wants to call, but I know we have the lowest priced room in the city, no chance she will find anywhere else to stay on the day for less than 3x the price she booked for. I asked if it would put some kind of mark on the guests record, if she's markes as someone with a danger warning will it affect her ability to use the platofmr and she just said, the guest can call us if she wants again.
I asked if there is some sort of compensation for me in this as I've had to call on my money for 1:30hrs as their callback service isn't working, their is no response on their email service, and that we are making a huge loss on this because of my partner needing to take a day off work to which she told me she needs to talk to a case manager but didn't want me to have false hope....guess that's a no then.
It was clear at this point in her mannerisim that she was desperate to get off the phone, and told me she would refer this to the case manager and she would email me right now so I know it's being dealt with. I asked for some kind of reference / her ID number incase the email didn't come in and I have to go through this again, she told me there is no reference number for the call and that she will email me right now, I asked for her name instead and she told me Anne. She then signed off the call by telling me to have a nice day and then calling me the wrong name and then hung up.
I'm almost dumbfounded by this...is this the normal airbnb customer service? I thought as Superhost we were supposed to have extra support/priority.
It's been 45 minutes since the call ended and there is still no email from anyone in my personal mail or on airbnb inbox.
As my partner has already had to organise to take the day off work to be home to clean the spare room and let the new guest in, I am not going to screw her over and cancel the booking 9 hours before she arrives, but due to loss of earnings for him it means we make a huge loss. As we are both students doing our internships it means we have very low income, so this has an serious impact for us.
I am so frustrated to be told that there's nothing they are doing about this. Quite clearly this is Airbnb's error (which she wouldn't say or apologise for, she just kept saying, that's how instant books works, and she also wasn't a native English speaker so don't know if she didn't understand what I was saying about the room being closed).
Has this happened to anyone else? Any advice on what I should do? Is there a way to comaplain about airbnb's complaint department?
Hope you're having a better day than me...
Davina
