Maria A.

I am extremely disappointed by the handling of this situation by your company, Airbnb. Not only about the low quality of the customer service and the super slow time to respond to my concerns, but also regarding the company's overall response to the pandemic. This company's position seems to be one of the worst in the travel industry! To expect someone to travel to a very dangerous "hot spot" FLORIDA after being notified that the person you are coming to see has been in direct contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, is unbelievable.
I cancelled the reservation around 2:00 pm on June 25th, we were supposed to arrive on 7/2. I marked COVID19 concerns as the reason for the cancellation. I did not know that if my host denied the request for a full refund, my cancellation would be null and void and that I would have to cancel again citing a different reason. I thought that if the full request was denied, then I would get the 50% refund as per the cancellation terms. I never received a message, email, or call from Airbnb or my host notifying me that my cancellation request had been denied and therefore I had to cancel again. At around 4:30 PM that same day, I contacted my host to see if I could work out some kind of arrangement to get credit for the 50% I would not get back if the full refund was denied. During this call she informed me that they had denied my request for a full refund and that I had to cancel again. I contacted Airbnb immediately to find out what I should do since COVID19 was the reason for my cancellation and my host had denied the request. After being on hold for 45 minutes, the customer service representative told me NOT to cancel anything until I received a call back from Airbnb. She assured me someone would call me back that night. That call never came. I called Airbnb back again the same night around 9:30 pm. After being on hold for 1 hour, the customer service representative, at that time, told me to go ahead and cancel. I did so, but by then the refund amount was $247 instead of $917( which was half the amount of the reservation). The representative told me not to worry. She said she would hold the refund until the case was solved. She did not. The $247 refund was issued instead. After calling Aibnb numerous times, waiting on hold for hours and writing several unanswered messages and emails, I finally got an email two weeks later. After a couple of emails back and forth, they informed me that they were not going to issue ANY refunds. Not even the 50% which I was entitled to since I started the cancellation process before the deadline.
I wrote to them again over a week ago and nobody has responded yet!