How I found Love on Airbnb

‘My name is Love,’ typed the help assistant, ‘and I’m a member of the Airbnb community support team.’

I was using one of those chat boxes, where someone from the company you’re grappling with, embodied in a flashing cursor, interacts with you in print on a live chat screen.

I am kind and polite, I thought. No one has ever really given me credit for that before

Now, I’m a big fan of the chat box. The chat box works when all other forms of customer service fail. Chances are you will get much better service if you stop expecting companies to speak to you on the phone, and start letting them do what they do best, which is to solve your issue without speaking to you, because speaking to you is where all the problems start, let’s face it.

I like the Airbnb chat box almost more than any other, because they have a particularly stringent policy that they must resolve your issue, no matter how difficult it is.

This means their operatives will come over all harakiri if they can’t resolve your issue. There is a danger of telling them your issue is resolved even if it isn’t, just to make it stop. But if you do let them carry on deluging you in compliments and apologies, all given in slightly strangled syntax while they’re tapping away like mad at their end, they will resolve your issue.

I had been trying to list our new B&B rooms at our house in West Cork and the too-clever software had me accepting suggestions I didn’t mean to, so I ended up with a listing that referred to a town an hour’s drive away, which I couldn’t seem to amend. I typed my issue into the help chat box and up popped Love.

She or he – I don’t want to assume anything – was so polite that I was not convinced Love was real, which is a sad indictment of our world today.