Hello, Friends! It's 2017 and my travel blogging has been, well, non-existent. Between a postbac program to prepare for grad school (read, no money, no travel) and a crazy busy year (that has included some awesome travel to the Caribbean an Central America), I have not had an opportunity to blog.
I got, well...inspired might not be the right word, but let's say indignant recently about a few experiences that we have had while traveling. Most of my travel has thankfully been very easy and the problems have been minor until 2017, in which I have had a string of travel disasters that have, frankly, reshaped the way I travel.
But let's go back.
First, I have been a huge Airbnb apologist since the very first time I stayed with them in a gorgeous downtown bungalow in Asheville, North Carolina in the spring of 2016. It's such a perfect model! Locals hosting people in their homes, interesting suggestions and properties not filled with the douchebaggery that I have come to loathe in my older years. I have stayed in a total of 5 Airbnb properties (and had my parents stay in one as well when they visited last year), and all but one of them has been a great experience.
So let's talk about that one and why I will not be staying with Airbnb again in the near future.
We arrived in Tulum, Mexico (paradise. Seriously, please go there) in April of this year. We arrived to our unit which was very reasonably priced at less than $100/night to discover a persistent sewer smell coming from the bathroom. Now I have lived in Asia, traveled in India, used a squatty potty in all of these places, and let me tell you that the smell was incomparable to anything I ever experienced abroad, even in developing countries. The unit was nice enough, but there was no way in heck we were going to continue to stay in a unit with obviously raw sewage below us. Thanks to my Microbiology studies, I now know too much.
I figured intense sewage smell would warrant a response from Airbnb, so I called them immediately when we figured out we couldn't stay. Couple this with only 8% of listings being available in Tulum, and I realized that if we were going to move, we needed to do it, and now. So, while on the phone with Airbnb, I made a reservation for us at an alternative location, which turned out to be ahmazing. But I digress.
We moved, and went about our vacation. The fun started when Airbnb refused to get in contact with us for 1 then 2 then 3 days. I eventually spent many monies using International Roaming to call them on day 3 of our vacation to make sure that we had done everything properly and they assured me that I had. Spoiler: #lies.
When we returned home, we did not hear from Airbnb for several more days. Each time I called I was told that "our case was being elevated to the highest levels of customer care". Which is Airbnb speak for, we don't give a crap and will call you when it is convenient for us. 10 days later, I finally heard back, and a nice guy told us in an email that we would be getting a $616 refund. Hey, I thought! That's more than we paid! But of course, it was just another instance of Airbnb's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. After 10 days of no refund in our account, I called back and got the worst customer service representative in America, named Kandice. Kandice brusquely informed me through a series of 15 emails back and forth that no refund would be coming and that my request to speak with a manager was denied, oh, and they were going to "disengage from further discussion on this topic" (see photo).
I became seriously irate after calculating that I had spent a cumulative 10 (yes 10) hours on the phone with Airbnb trying to resolve this to no avail. So, I got smart. I was able to find the Airbnb CEO and Global Head of Customer Experience's emails online, so I wrote up a short summary of our situation and sent it to them. An hour and three minutes later, the Customer Experience VP had gotten back to me and referred me to a senior specialist. Through a long conversation, she acknowledged that Airbnb had been totally in the wrong, that the 8 customer service agents I had spoken to had given misleading and directly contradictory information, and that they would honor the $616 refund promised. I received it 7 days later.
Moral of the story, #NeverAirbnb, and also, if at first you don't succeed, email the freaking CEO.
I got, well...inspired might not be the right word, but let's say indignant recently about a few experiences that we have had while traveling. Most of my travel has thankfully been very easy and the problems have been minor until 2017, in which I have had a string of travel disasters that have, frankly, reshaped the way I travel.
But let's go back.
First, I have been a huge Airbnb apologist since the very first time I stayed with them in a gorgeous downtown bungalow in Asheville, North Carolina in the spring of 2016. It's such a perfect model! Locals hosting people in their homes, interesting suggestions and properties not filled with the douchebaggery that I have come to loathe in my older years. I have stayed in a total of 5 Airbnb properties (and had my parents stay in one as well when they visited last year), and all but one of them has been a great experience.
So let's talk about that one and why I will not be staying with Airbnb again in the near future.
We arrived in Tulum, Mexico (paradise. Seriously, please go there) in April of this year. We arrived to our unit which was very reasonably priced at less than $100/night to discover a persistent sewer smell coming from the bathroom. Now I have lived in Asia, traveled in India, used a squatty potty in all of these places, and let me tell you that the smell was incomparable to anything I ever experienced abroad, even in developing countries. The unit was nice enough, but there was no way in heck we were going to continue to stay in a unit with obviously raw sewage below us. Thanks to my Microbiology studies, I now know too much.
I figured intense sewage smell would warrant a response from Airbnb, so I called them immediately when we figured out we couldn't stay. Couple this with only 8% of listings being available in Tulum, and I realized that if we were going to move, we needed to do it, and now. So, while on the phone with Airbnb, I made a reservation for us at an alternative location, which turned out to be ahmazing. But I digress.
We moved, and went about our vacation. The fun started when Airbnb refused to get in contact with us for 1 then 2 then 3 days. I eventually spent many monies using International Roaming to call them on day 3 of our vacation to make sure that we had done everything properly and they assured me that I had. Spoiler: #lies.
When we returned home, we did not hear from Airbnb for several more days. Each time I called I was told that "our case was being elevated to the highest levels of customer care". Which is Airbnb speak for, we don't give a crap and will call you when it is convenient for us. 10 days later, I finally heard back, and a nice guy told us in an email that we would be getting a $616 refund. Hey, I thought! That's more than we paid! But of course, it was just another instance of Airbnb's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. After 10 days of no refund in our account, I called back and got the worst customer service representative in America, named Kandice. Kandice brusquely informed me through a series of 15 emails back and forth that no refund would be coming and that my request to speak with a manager was denied, oh, and they were going to "disengage from further discussion on this topic" (see photo).I became seriously irate after calculating that I had spent a cumulative 10 (yes 10) hours on the phone with Airbnb trying to resolve this to no avail. So, I got smart. I was able to find the Airbnb CEO and Global Head of Customer Experience's emails online, so I wrote up a short summary of our situation and sent it to them. An hour and three minutes later, the Customer Experience VP had gotten back to me and referred me to a senior specialist. Through a long conversation, she acknowledged that Airbnb had been totally in the wrong, that the 8 customer service agents I had spoken to had given misleading and directly contradictory information, and that they would honor the $616 refund promised. I received it 7 days later.
Moral of the story, #NeverAirbnb, and also, if at first you don't succeed, email the freaking CEO.
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