My Experience with AirBNB Customer Support

This is an actual exchange between me and Airbnb that occurred over the last week. I appreciate them giving me blog material, not that there is any shortage of this kind of incident.

Jim Jun 27, 2019

Due to an error in your app I had two reservations on the same night.

Air BNB Support

Thanks for your message. Air BNB support is connecting you to a chat agent. Your chat session will begin in 1-2 minutes 2:20 PM

Please wait while we are routing your case 2:20 PM

AirBNB Support, 2:22 PM

Hi Jim my name is Mohammad A and I’m with Airbnb Support. I’ll be helping you today. Please allow me a few minutes to investigate.

Jim 2:22 PM

Super

HMABE*****FX

Here is the reservation number in question

Airbnb Support 2:23 PM

Jim I am sorry to know that two reservations were booked due to error.

You want this reservation to be cancelled?

Jim 2:24 PM

Yes, the date on the reservation is already passed

AirBNB Support 2:24 PM

Jim, Thanks for reaching out to us regarding this issue. I’ve forwarded your inquiry to a member of my team who can better assist you. They’ll be getting in touch with you soon.

In the meantime, please feel free to respond to this message with any further questions or Concerns

Jim 2:25 PM

Please text or email. Thanks

June 28, 2019 Air BNB Support

Hi Jim this is Florence, a Case Manager here in AirBNB

I received your escalation concern about the reservation you booked for June 24, 2019. As per checking, the reservation HMABE*****FX (which you did not take) was booked first. After 2 hours, you booked the other reservation HMA******PW (where you stayed).

Can you give us a screenshot or an error that you had when you made the reservations?

Any refund outside of the policy would be at your host’s discretion. If you’d like to make a request, please reach out to your host (host email)

If you would like to formally request a refund from your host I recommend that you open a Resolution Center claim, where you can message directly with the host, upload photos, and involve Air BNB after 72 hours. To get started, follow the link below

www.airbnb.com/resolutions

You can find more information in our Help Center article:

www.airbnb.com/help/article/767

Should you need further assistance please don’t hesitate to let me know. I am just an email away.

Jim 7:01 AM

I cannot give you a screen shot where this error happened. I got all the way through the booking process then the app froze and a message appeared briefly that the property was no longer available. After some time passed the original reservation showed up in my account.

Naturally I am disappointed in the AirBNB App which cost me an extra 100 dollars. I don’t see this as the fault of the property owner.

Since I stay in 50 hotels a year, incidents like this are very disturbing.

I just won’t stay in any more Airbnb if that is your attitude. You will lose much more than this 99 dollars.

If you are making the business decision to tick off a frequent traveler feel free to do so. I suggest better to find a supervisor, get authorization to find my money and send it to me.

Alternately I might accept an apology and a $100 coupon for a future stay if you had thought of it, and that would make me less mad. From your point of view, with your marketing department trying to promote business travel that would make much more sense.

Business travelers have very low tolerance for this type of thing.

Let me know what you decide

Jim

Air BNB Support, 11:56 PM

Thank you for the response, Jim

After checking with our back end team, we did not experience any issues with the app or the website at the time you created these reservations

Emails has been sent in a timely manner as well, confirming the reservations you have booked

The refund now depends on with the host Eric. I have contacted him on your behalf asking for approval in providing a refund for this reservation.

At this point I cannot guarantee anything yet but I will surely get back to you as soon as I know more.

I will be out of the office the next 2 days. I will get back with you Monday late afternoon.

Air BNB Support 5:37 PM

Hello Jim, I hope my message finds you well. My name is Florence, one of the Case Managers from Airbnb.

I want to let you know that I already processed the cancellation of the reservation with Eric and the full amount of refund has been processed for this. The refund of $99.79 USD will be posted to your account in 5-15 business days, depending on your bank’s processing time

I hope you have a nice day ahead. Keep ahold of this email for your own records. IF you ever need help, or have questions at all, reply to this email. We will receive it directly.

Jim 9:22 AM

Hi, Florence: I am slightly happier that I got my $100 back but I am worried about your “back end people” that don’t have a metric that captures the incidence of that error message vs. no shows. Since nothing happens in isolation, I am sure this happens hundreds of times a day in a big operation like yours, and you aren’t detecting it in your systems.

Also you went to a lot of work to resolve this issue. 4 emails to me and at least a couple to poor Eric who as the homeowner is your means of production. It might have actually been cheaper to resolve it right away.

I know that AirBNB has a hard job, because you are trying to transition from an app builder to being in competition with Hilton, but one of the things you need to know is that we business travelers have long memories and zero tolerance for this stuff. Understanding your customers is an important element of targeting a given market segment.

One of the other things you need to have is alignment between your marketing department and complaint resolution department, because corporate is saying “take care of business travelers” and your complaint resolution department is saying “resist sending cash if possible.”

I hope it all works out for you. You ought to know I am a quality systems consultant, and I am featuring this episode in an upcoming blog.

Thanks for the material. Let me know if you need me to come out to SF and lay this all out for your management who appears to have been brilliant at one thing (app development) but now needs to transition to another thing (being customer-driven and understanding the hospitality business).

Have a great day.

Jim