Airbnb Hosting Account Deactivation? Filing Arbitration Against Airbnb or VRBO For Reinstatement.

Has your account on Airbnb or VRBO been suspended, deactivated, terminated? Well, look at— this is happening more and more frequently. My name is Enrico Schaefer. I'm an attorney representing hundreds of Airbnb hosts and property managers, and Airbnb does retain the right to remove you from the platform if you breach the terms of service, the policies, or the standards. However, in many cases Airbnb is deactivating accounts of hosts, Superhosts, who have done absolutely nothing wrong or whose violations were minor. Airbnb says you have the right to appeal, and VRBO as well, but they don't afford you any substantive right to actually— Tell your side of the story. So we handle these account termination and deactivation issues on an hourly basis, meaning we charge by the hour. And here's what you need to know: in order to get back on the platform once you've exhausted your efforts with customer support, which typically get you nowhere, your only option is to file for arbitration against VRBO or Airbnb under the terms of service. And that's with the American Arbitration Association. The filing cost The cost of that is $200. You can do that yourself. Many hosts don't want to because it does require a level of expertise and study and effort. For those hosts that want to simply engage in self-help and to go ahead and represent themselves in AAA arbitration, in the link below in the description, you'll find a resource called 10,000 Hosts. It's a 10,000 host community, and in there, there's some videos that help you understand how you can engage in self-help arbitration. If you want to retain our law firm to handle that, then look, it needs to provide a good return on investment. Often it does. Here are the 3 phases of arbitration and what the cost of that is in terms of attorney's fees for you, the client. The first phase is to prepare the arbitration demand, file the arbitration, get through the AAA process, and wait for Airbnb to assign an attorney. I know All the attorneys that they hire. Once they assign that attorney, then the attorney will get the file from Airbnb, and for the first time, we can have a real conversation with Airbnb about why you were deactivated and whether or not it was justified. So to get through this first phase of arbitration is typically about $5,000 in attorney's fees, and that represents the very first moment by which you can get someone to really provide you specific information so that you can respond to it, so that you could try and convince them to let you back on. If it turned out that you had a major violation of the terms of service or their policies, then chances are they're not gonna let you back on. However, if it was a minor violation or you can, you know, win the argument that guests are not at risk by allowing you to host on the platform, then we make that argument to the attorney at that first point. They can at that point decide that they're gonna let you back on the platform. And that $5,000, approximate $5,000 spend could get you back on. So that's typically good ROI for most hosts. They're making well beyond $5,000 per year. So getting back on the platform and being able to be on both VRBO and Airbnb is worth it. If Airbnb does not let you back on at that point, the next second phase is discovery and motion practice, in which we argue back and forth with Airbnb about producing your entire file, justifying why they removed you. Right? Dealing with a motion which Airbnb will file saying that your case should be dismissed. We argue the terms of service and California law. And one of the big variables is who is the arbitrator that gets assigned. Typically, we can get you by that phase, that phase 2, because there should be fact issues that the arbitrator needs to decide that are gonna put you into a final hearing. During that second phase of discovery and motion practice, that's the second point at which Airbnb or VRBO can decide, you know what? We're gonna let you back on the platform. If you don't get back on the platform at that point, you've probably spent something in the $10,000 range on average, depending on who the arbitrator is and how hard they make us work and how complex your situation is. But at about the $10,000 range, you could decide based on what the discovery reveals whether or not you wanna move forward to the final phase, assuming Airbnb doesn't settle at that point. The final phase is a hearing, a trial, where the arbitrator takes evidence takes testimony by Zoom, and decides whether or not Airbnb reasonably removed you from the platform. Typically, they're either going to argue that you breached the terms of service or standards, community standards, or that, that a guest is going to be at risk if they allow you back on. And if they cannot win those 2 arguments, if they can't show that you had a substantial breach of the terms, if they can't show you that they went through an appeal process that allowed you to tell your side of the story, or that that a guest is gonna be at risk because of a prior criminal conviction of you or what have you, then the arbitrator can order Airbnb and/or VRBO to put you back on their platforms. And we would also argue for damages at that point for all the canceled reservations, and an arbitrator can award damages as well. So those are the 3 phases, and they each on average cost about $5,000 in attorney's fees. So if you have to go all the way through to the end, that could be $15,000 On average, it could be a little bit more, could be a little bit less. Is it worth it for you to spend that money all the way through to the end? Well, you don't have to decide that right out of the gate. Typically, you're going to commit $5,000 to get you through phase 1, and then you're going to revisit the issue. Does it make sense for me to move forward? If based on what Airbnb tells you about why you were kicked off, whether or not you think they were justified, you could either, you know, cut bait at that point and simply lick your wounds and, and You know, stick with VRBO or Airbnb or one of the other platforms that you're still on, or you could decide to spend that next $5,000 to get through discovery and motion practice. And same thing at the end of phase 2. Once you know a lot more about the situation, you could decide whether or not you want to proceed to phase 3. So at each point, you're making this ROI decision. Is it worth it for me to spend another X amount on attorney's fees in order to give myself the chance to get back on the platform? That's the way this works. That's really your only option for getting back on the platform is to go through arbitration, either self-help using the 10,000 Hosts community link, go to the library, there's some resources there, either doing self-help or hiring an attorney such as myself to represent you, to, to help you through the process, to file your arbitration for you, to make the legal arguments under California law. Obviously, we know what we're doing, and so it's easier for us to navigate. If you believe it is worth the spend to retain us for phase 1, feel free to let me know and we will go ahead and, and put you through our process, onboard you onto our platform, and put you through the system of getting you into arbitration, getting that attorney assigned by Airbnb, and having that first discussion with Airbnb counsel about the fact that you Should be back on the platform, that they did not have the right to terminate you. My name's Enrico Schaefer. Let me know if you have any questions. We'll see you next time.