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.

• Moreover, Airbnb has canceled all existing bookings in Russia and Belarus starting on or after April 4, 2022. Users from other countries will also not be able to make new reservations in these countries — listings in Russia or Belarus will no longer have availability on their calendars.
• At the same time, the company has frozen all current and future payments and refunds to Russians and Belarusians for tens of millions of dollars, as told by Oleksii Nasiedkin, Finance & Analytics Principal at Airbnb.
• Previously, Airbnb reported the suspension of all transactions in Russia and Belarus.

However, to limit scams, Airbnb has canceled donation bookings in Ukraine with no explanation that confused a lot of users who wanted to help Ukrainians, Wired says.

But the platform has not completely canceled this option for making donations. It is still possible to help Ukrainians by booking their apartments on Airbnb.

• According to Wired, some “hosts” created fake advertisements for renting apartments in Ukraine. In some cases, the “hosts” did not even live in Ukraine.
• Even though the money was intended for humanitarian purposes, the publication of fake listings runs afoul of Airbnb’s policy. After investigating such cases, the service canceled the bookings and returned the money to the renters.
• Moreover, in mid-March, Airbnb stopped allowing new hosts to create listings in Ukraine. The company has also said that it is “closely evaluating” all listing activity in Ukraine.

Earlier, the company’s CEO Brian Chesky has also announced that Airbnb would provide free accommodation for up to 100,000 Ukrainians.

As The Washington Post reports, there have been a lot of cases where an apartment owner has installed hidden surveillance cameras in bedrooms, bathrooms, and other inappropriate places. This article contains tips for detecting such devices.

Check suspicious electronics

When you arrive at your rented accommodation, experts recommend paying attention to smoke detectors, radios, outlets, and any electronic devices placed in the private areas, like the bedroom and bathroom. Particular attention should be paid to those devices that have a view of the bed.

The spy cameras are often hidden inside ordinary objects such as alarm clocks, chargers, smoke detectors, and other electronics, the presence of which will not be suspicious to the guests. There are several ways to find the hidden cameras:

• Shine a light onto the suspicious surfaces, like a watch face. This will help you see the lens usually hidden behind black matte plastic or a two-way mirror and invisible to the naked eye.
• Turn off lights in your room and use the front-facing camera on your smartphone to look for the infrared LEDs used in night-vision cameras. The main camera will not do that because it is equipped with an IR filter.

Scan WiFi networks

Another important part of checking your apartment is to scan WiFi networks for suspicious devices. This method is not very reliable because the owner could change the name of their camera or not connect it to WiFi at all, but the check will not be a waste of time.

You can do network scanning using specialized software such as Network Scanner, Network Mapper, or Angry IP Scanner. There are hundreds of similar apps not only for computers but also for Android and iOS.

As a result of the scanning, the user gets a list of all devices connected to WiFi. But even if there is nothing with the name “IP camera” in it, it is better to check whether all devices are yours.

Thomas Ham, a founder of the professional TSCM company Spy Catchers, says that travelers can turn off an accommodation’s WiFi and router on arrival. If the host calls you about a problem, you can ask if there are any cameras in the room that you haven’t been told about.

Facebook

In the 1990s, it would have had the same name as it had originally in 2004: The Facebook. Its news feed would have looked simple: events, photos, groups, pages, and settings. To edit a profile photo, you would have had to use Paint.

WhatsApp

You wouldn’t have sent selfies on WhatsApp in the ’90s, but you would have easily chatted with MP3 messages, photos, gifs, and emoticons. There’s a 99% chance you’d have a cartoon character as your avatar and an illogical combination of numbers as your name.

Twitter

It’s easy – run the program and start tweeting. There is always something to write about.

YouTube

There would have been a thousand (not millions) different videos on YouTube in the ’90s: about skateboarding, with people listening to cassette tapes in their car, Internet guides, and, obviously, cat videos.

Spotify

Today’s popular music streaming service would have probably looked like the old Winamp player with a touch of psychedelia and no images, only band names.

Twitch

Everyone loves Fortnite, Minecraft, and Counter-Strike nowadays. In the ’90s, racing would probably have been at the peak of popularity, and yes, only with 2D-looking graphics.

Airbnb

The color scheme of the platform would have been called Barbie’s Dream House. In addition, other classic 90’s elements would have been present: flashing and rotating stars and arrows – how else would you know about a super offer?

Mykyta appealed against the review, indicating that it contained hostility on a national basis, but the service did not delete the review and instead blocked the account of the Ukrainian user. Mykyta described his situation on Facebook. An editor of AIN.UA contacted the user and found out the details.

How the accommodation was rented

From January 4 to January 8, Mykyta rented the accommodation in Phuket. For trips abroad, he always uses the Airbnb service, which allows renting apartments or houses directly from the hosts. Before this incident, Mykyta has booked accommodation for about a hundred times, his account had about 50 positive comments from the hosts.

But this time it has turned out in another way. After the guests left, the host, registered as Nik Maximov on the service, left a devastating review in which he mentioned spoiled mattresses, a dirty toilet, late check-out, and refusal to pay the deposit.

The owner also added a hidden review to this comment, visible only to the user, that the guest (Mykyta) “was wound by a greeting in Russian” (while Mykyta communicated with him first in English, then in Russian).

According to Mykyta, the hosts themselves behaved inappropriately from the moment they had found out that the Ukrainians would rent a place: “The conflict began from the moment the host’s wife called the guests Russians. My girlfriend replied to this that we are from Ukraine and that is a different country. Since then, there have been a lot of problems in correspondence and calls. They constantly demanded something from us: either a deposit on the 3rd day or an overpayment for electricity.”

As Mykyta told AIN.UA, all accusations from the host were untrue, including ones regarding the deposit: “We were ready to give a deposit even for 2 or 3 days, it was peanuts, 400 baht, less than $13, and the host wrote that we did not have that amount of money for three people.”

What happened later

At the end of January 2020, Mykyta tried to dispute the review through the support team of Airbnb. He was told that they would make an inquiry and contact the host. On February 5, the service replied to the user’s request that it could not disclose the details of the inquiry:

Mykyta applied to the support team again, asking for his case to be considered not by the support from the Russian Federation.

After the support stopped responding, Mykyta commented on the host’s review, indicating his bias towards Ukrainians.

On February 18, an employee from the Russian support team contacted him again and informed him that his account was being blocked because of national discrimination.

The user hopes that by telling the story in public, he will draw attention to the problems in the work of the Airbnb support team.