Dear hosts,
I am writing this post to let you all know about my
experience as a host for over two years and how AirBnB has treated me
unprofessionally and has stolen monies from me!
Yes, they stole money.
Here is my
story -
In October 2016, I noticed that Airbnb just stopped sending
my regular paypal payments – I am used to seeing payments almost every day
since I’m a host for multiple properties.
I called Airbnb and was told it was due to a weekend or holiday but
everything was fine. I waited a few days
and still no payments and again I was told everything was fine and that someone
would be calling me. It took TWO WEEKS
and 20 calls to get an answer.
Apparently, my file was moved to the “special situation tax group” for review
and no one could give me a straight answer as to why or how long the review
would take.
I even asked my accountant to contact Airbnb but they give
him the complete runaround. For weeks I
was calling and emailing and here are the responses I got:
It
took almost three weeks to get someone to respond to me properly. I had to threaten to pull all my apartments
off the website and only then did Airbnb finally respond. It turns out they made a mistake and I got the following reply:
I finally started getting payments again but it took 20 days
and in that period Airbnb withheld over $9,000 from me.
I then started calling and emailing when I would get the
erroneously withheld monies. I made
dozens of calls and sent dozens of emails and this time no one would tell me
anything. Again, I had to threaten to
pull my listings off the site and finally I was told that a “manager” in the
tax department was reviewing the situation.
It wasn’t until Nov 15th that Airbnb finally responded.
They said as you can see that they would start sending the
reimbursements and they did but they only sent half or so. Its been months and I’ve been asking to speak
to someone or at least get a reconciliation or explanation but I’ve had no
reply.
I’m done!
All my
listings have been removed from airbnb.
I’m going to have to deal with this in small
claims court and even if they use the arbitration clause I'll make sure everyone knows how they mishandled this and stole my money.
The morale of the story.
Airbnb does not care about us hosts.
I managed seven properties and they treated me with zero respect and I
now know why. They are not liars or
thieves. However, they rely on incompetent
employees who otherwise would work as baristas if Airbnb hadn’t hired
them. For example the special tax specialist
(Frank Rizzo) was a barista supervisor and the regional tax manager, Lucas
Gockely was a bartender prior to their joining Airbnb.
Good luck.....
Mari
