Water Outage + Unresponsive Host

[Ilhan0]

Hi everyone,

This is the first time I've experienced a water outage in an Air BnB and I'm not sure what to do. It's obvious that it's due to the construction happening directly in front of our home but my host takes hours to respond to my air bnb messages because she claims she does not receive air bnb notifications on her phone. In any case, she's sent some water to our unit as soon as the outage took place which is helpful but it's been about 4 hours since the outage and I haven't heard any updates/explanations from her. 

Any advice on what to do? It's past 10PM now and I don't think the host will respond until tomorrow.

[Linda108]

Sometimes you need to make a phone call instead of messaging, @Ilhan0 .  Call the host  and get a plan for supplying water or fixing the problem.  If you do not get the response needed, contact Air BNB.  Here is a guide for contacting Air BNB.

[Helen3]

I agree in this situation I would contact the host by phone @Ilhan0  (follow up any conversation on Airbnb messenger).

If the host is unable or unwilling to fix the situation, I would just you contact Airbnb and see if they will cancel the booking and help you find somewhere else.

By the way it is rather silly of the host to claim you can't get messages on her phone, all she needs to do is change her settings so she gets text alerts.

[Sarah977]

@Ilhan0  And further to what Linda suggested, if you do need to contact a host by phone or text about an issue which could prove contentious, it's a good idea to follow it up with an Airbnb message, so Airbnb will have a record of the exchange.

"Hi XX, just documenting on the Airbnb messaging what we just discussed on the phone, that you'll be sending a water delivery in the next hour. Thanks, will let you know when delivery arrives or water gets turned on again."

[Sarah977]

@Helen3 Not the first time we've posted similar responses at the same time 🙂  The notification thing can be true, though. I've had times where my text notifications simply stopped coming. It took Airbnb a month and half to get them up and running again. But as I knew that was an issue, after initially missing a booking request, I made sure to check my account for messages a couple times a day.

[Helen3]

I know it's a bit spooky 🙂 @Sarah977 

Thanks for clarifying re text notifications. I can see there being an issue where there is a technical fault, but sometimes hosts don't realise getting text notifications is an option.