Ukrainian hosts complain about the Airbnb service, which has just stopped paying their money. At the same time, guests are charged the total amount for booking and rent, but owners cannot get it.
Olha, who has been working with Airbnb since last year, told AIN.Capital that complaints to the support service are useless. Airbnb blames the bank, then Payoneer, but you can clearly see in a personal account that there was no payment at all. Most likely, this problem is related to the sanctions against Russia and its occupied territories, but for some reason users from all over Ukraine stopped receiving payments.
Ukrainian host cannot receive their payouts
Since the end of May, Airbnb has stopped making payouts to Ukrainian hosts, while still deducting the total cost of booking and renting from guests. Although the problem does not affect all users, there are dozens of people at least who have lost their source of income due to the strange Airbnb policy.
When you contact the company’s support service, it blames the banks or Payoneer, but there is actually no problem with them.
“At first, Airbnb refuses to give any explanations. Then it says the issue may be related to my bank. Then, when it turns out the bank is working fine, it says that something is wrong with Payoneer. However, the stats section of the user profile clearly displays that no payouts were made. And many users, including those whom I personally know, note that changing the method of receiving the payment did not help,” Olha shares.
Some hosts even receive penalties from Airbnb when they try to deal with the situation
Airbnb’s Community Center already has dozens of similar complaints from hosts who do not receive payments for their services. Many openly state about being forced to stop cooperating with the platform because they have to spend their efforts and money on organizing their business, but they simply cannot profit from it. Some hosts even receive penalties from Airbnb while trying to deal with the situation.
“The support service is a team of absolute inattentive and indifferent non-professionals. From June 3, they stopped contacting me. New disputes are easily closed and sent to the one who stopped answering me on June 3rd. Now in that correspondence, if you can call it that, there is only my diary, in which I sometimes write, but do not receive an answer.
They lie to my guests that I receive all payments and my information is not true. The next day, when I asked for help in a new dispute about what to do with a new guest if I did not receive payments for old bookings, I was waiting for advice and asked for at least some guarantees for payments — I received a tough answer that on my behalf the guest’s booking gets cancelled, and a bunch of information that I’m violating the code of conduct, I get a fine for this, a corresponding note in my account, and a warning that if this happens again, then Airbnb will take appropriate action against me,” a user with the nickname Наталья157 writes.
This issue affects the whole country, regardless of the location of accommodation
Some foreign users suggested that the issue could be related to the sanctions imposed on the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and advised to check the UK sanctions lists.
Judging by the fact that some hosts manage to solve this issue, it could indeed be the reason. Airbnb does not want to accidentally send funds to the occupied territories and get accused of supporting Russian aggression. However, the problem affects all regions of Ukraine — there are complaints from Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and other cities.
In her comments, Olha also mentions that Lviv is not under Russian control and has never been occupied. She also says that other hosts from her city have a similar situation.
At the time of publication, the editors of AIN.Capital sent a request to Airbnb, but have received no response.
