Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen Airbnb become America’s destination darling, only to go off the rails when hosts – who should’ve never been hosts to begin with – got greedy with fees and forgot what good customer service is all about.
But, a new study claims that while the company still encounters some unhappy campers, it may have turned the corner in eliminating gripes and frustrations and getting back on its balance beam again.
Getting the right stuff in the right place
The new study, commissioned by Photoaid, found that there are still some things that irk Airbnb guests. The top three are issues with refunds or cancellations (74%), noisy surroundings (73%), and misleading photos/descriptions (72%).
The refunds/cancellations issues are a sore point with many ConsumerAffairs reviewers like Denny from Seattle who claims he spent days trying to get an answer from at least half a dozen people about their cancellation policy. Angela from Sunnyvale Calif., suggests that the company may be playing games with its cancellation policy, too.
“They only grant a full service fee refund if you cancel within the free cancellation period. Otherwise, you're left with zilch. When the host chooses a percentage refund, one would assume that the service fee would align with that percentage refund,” she wrote in a ConsumerAffairs review.
However, most Americans had a positive experience with Airbnb. All told, 80% rated their experience as satisfactory (45%) or very satisfactory (34%). Nearly 83% reported choosing Airbnb over hotels at least some of the time in the past 24 months. And a significant 92% of respondents are likely (54%) or very likely (38%) to use Airbnb in the future.
Failing forward fast
Airbnb didn’t share its priority list with ConsumerAffairs, but it did note that out of the 430+ upgrades it made in the last several years, many of those were designed to specifically improve quality and reliability.
For example, it updated price tools to make pricing more transparent and has tried to verify every listing in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, and France to weed out hosts who aren’t holding up their part of the customer service bargain.
Airbnb CEO and Co-Founder Brian Chesky even reached out to users on X to get a handle on what people think about the product and what they would change.
Getting the right person on the phone looks to be the company’s next challenge. Airbnb’s current goals in this regard are to answer calls in 10 different languages within two minutes and clean up its customer service act so that when guests call, they’ll get matched with the best agents to resolve their specific issues, faster.
The cancellation issue? Don’t hold your breath. When ConsumerAffairs asked Airbnb about the complaints our readers are writing, a fix for that wasn’t addressed.
So, until that happens, following Airbnb’s cancellation instructions to a “T” and keeping a record of everything you did – calmly and politely – is in your best interest.
Photo Credit: Consumer Affairs News Department Images
Posted: 2024-02-27 12:55:00
