Airbnb host issues

FernyFern

Hi
i was encouraged to become an Airbnb host and have been managing a small barn for an elderly relative.  The barn was previously let as a holiday cottage, then given to a Ukrainian family for 18 months.  It’s been tidied up and put on Airbnb.  The guests have been lovely, the cleaning and laundry isn’t a problem, but Airbnb ‘help’ is the worst I’ve ever come across.
The host who suggested doing this is my elder sister.  She sent me the link so we’d get a signing bonus and we set it up together.  The signing bonus was never paid and they’ve said we didn’t use the link, despite us both seeing very clearly that we did. The calendar didn’t display properly and they gave me incorrect advice according to the experienced host. We have entirely 5 star reviews so far from the guests that have stayed. 

Now Airbnb are hassling me to ‘verify the property’.  Their process for doing this does not work.  They acknowledge that it doesn’t work but cannot do anything about it, apparently, because ‘the process is automated’. They will block bookings unless I somehow manage to sort this out in the next couple of weeks.  They then want the property owner to verify that they are the owner.  Understandable, but he’s done this already as a co-host and is currently desperately poorly in the ICU.  This means nothing to Airbnb ‘help’
I’m currently so angry and frustrated with it and am looking for alternatives  as I’m not putting up with this nonsense any more.  Other hosts have said that Airbnb has really gone downhill. 

My advice is to think very carefully before going anywhere near hosting using this platform 

gwynlas

Rather than airbnb why not pull out and go to another company? We had three who were interested and initially we chose the one with a rep who lived locally. We have now moved to another who appear to be better managers and achieving good bookings. They have numerous subsidiary companies but all our bookings and their admin are centralised with again a local manager we can talk to.