not getting paid

[Diana239]

I've hosted with AirBnB for about two years now. I had a guest for two nights a week ago. Despite the fact that she has paid AirBnB and I can see the money sitting in my Future Transactions, AirBnB have not passed this payment on to me. It usually goes into my Paypal account.
I have made a number of phone calls to customer services to find out what is happening. They have told me, on the phone and in emails, that the issue has been passed to another department, marked "urgent". No one can give me contact details for this department so I can speak to someone and find out what is happening. I am just supposed to sit here, be patient and wait for them to contact me.
This really isn't good enough. Customer service seems to have no powers to resolve the matter or to give me any clear answers, nor am I allowed to speak to the people who DO – so I'm told – have the authority to make the payment. Nor is there is anywhere I can make a formal complaint. AirBnB clearly isn't set up to offer good customer service or to deal efficiently with anything that is marginally different from their production line system.

Very angry and frustrated!

Diana

[Lena12]

Never had an issue with airbnb on getting payout.  But it looks like this particular payment was skipped.  I've received payments prior, and after.  No problem.  Who I need to talk?  Please suggest.

Thank you.

[Jean98]

I had the same experience.  airbnb paid me eventually, with an apology, but only after I'd sent an enquiry.

I agree, their customer service is not good enough.  Airbnb takes 15% between what guests pay and what you receive and we get very little value for the enormous cut they take

It's almost impossible to reach airbnb by email with a question.  

[Robin148]

Can you tell me please how you made that enquiry?

Thanks

Robin

[Lauri7]

I have had the same thing just happen.  Where did you even find the phone number to contact Airbnb??

[Jean98]

I'm in South Africa, so I don't phone airbnb, but send an email to response@airbnb.com.  You get a standard non-sensical reply, but often a real person responds to your query.

[Robin148]

Thank you so much Jean!

Cheers,

Robin

[Jill128]

I just had a guest for 31 days, Airbnb pay monthly for stats over 28 days, they say they paid for the whole booking but in short by $343NZ which I think is the other 3 days! The emails bounces back  response@airbnb 

[Trudie1]

Hi .... i am in East London South Africa and have had 2 airbnb guests and have still to set up my payment method. I am battling though because when register with Paypal it tells me USD only and of course we need Rand.... ZAR. What am i doing wrong as i could really do with the money that is owed to me? I have tried looking sending emails to airbnb and it is an impossibilty to try and get some help from them. Very disappointing that one can not actually communicate with Airbnb.... Please help me and tell me how i set my payout situation up.

Regards Trudie 

[Personal information removed]

[Jean98]

I understand your frustration.  South Africa is not well supported by airbnb.  I struggled to get my first guests' payments out of them. NB you have to keep a check on your payouts, because sometimes airbnb forgets to pay you!

Write an email to response@airbnb.com.  You'll get a standard reply, but sometimes a real person intervenes and responds to your questions.

airbnb always pay in dollars.  You have to have a paypal account (it's easy to open one and paypal's customer service is excellent.  They phoned me and walked me through the steps to set up a link from paypal to my FNB account (from there, I transfer it to ABSA, but ABSA has started charging high fees for this, so I'm reconsidering that option).

Good luck!

[Trudie1]

Hi Jean thanks for responding - yes I see we can only have USD.I saw someone in Cape Town had got a reserve bank form and i guess airbnb pays into that directly. I have been looking at for a reserve bank form but am not having any luck.... think i will have to go to absa and speak directly to them about it. Very frustrating but thanks so much for responding. Think I must just go direct into my account if you say paypal are charging a lot.

Thanks again.

Regards Trudie

[Jean98]

I tried the directly to ABSA option when I started hosting in 2015 but my payments didn't come through.  Eventually ABSA had to prove that they hadn't received the payments!  Then airbnb suggested I go via Paypal instead.

airbnb's service is dreadful.

[Jean98]

Hi Gareth

I get my airbnb payments via PayPal to FNB and via them to ABSA.  They all take their fees along the way but it works and about a week after your guest arrives, the money is in your SA banking account.

Keep a spreadsheet that tracks what you should get paid once the guest books and then when you see it in your bank account.  Airbnb does sometimes neglect to make the payment!

I found Paypay tremendously helpful in setting up the linkage to FNB.  They phoned me and guided me through the process and even got FNB on the line to set up their side of the canel for payment.

Good luck!

[Lorraine54]

I have just had guest over the weekend and payment has not been received.  Normally it goes through the night they arrive.  How did you solve the problem?

[Diana239]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I see that some of you have tracked down a couple of other ways I can contact AirBnB. I will try those.

AirBnB are fine provided everything is running smoothly but if there is the slightest glitsch it seems to go pear-shaped. There is very little option on the site itself for you to contact them directly. And really, their suggestion to "ask the community" is asking other people to do their job for them. I found phone numbers by Googling "AirBnB" phone numbers online. Using these I did actually get to speak to a (shock) real human being! However, the human being was purely a frontline presence and was not empowered to pass me on to anyone with the knowledge or authority to tell me what on earth is happening. I have even emailed their CEO Brian Chesky (a billionaire) but no response of course. It's all enormously frustrating. 

It has been suggested to me to put a tweet on their Twitter feed. I get paid via Paypal so it has also been suggested that I try to get Paypal to get the money from them. Haven't done this yet as it's all so timeconsuming.

AirBnB are very quick to pick up on requests trying to bypass their system (eg asking you to reply to a personal email address). They say this is because of security but it does also mean they would miss out on the commission for such bookings.

I haven't had any other trouble with them until now and my guests have been lovely. I set up a Paypal account quite easily and they pay the money (Sterling) into that and I then transfer it to my bank account.

Even IKEA offer better customer service – and that's saying something!