My Airbnb account was hacked on May 17th. Six simultaneous bookings were made, my account settings were changed and the account closed. It was impossible to contact Airbnb as they like you to login to contact them, which is impossible if your account is closed and all of your details are not recognised.
Luckily my credit card company was swift to close my card and will refund the £1500 of fraudulent activity. However, I had a booking in place, for which I have paid a 50% deposit. As the account was closed the booking was cancelled and deposit lost.
I finally managed to contact Airbnb by the phone number above (not sure what country that goes through; I am in the UK). The guy who answered was really unhelpful and did not understand my issues so I insisted on being given a UK number to call (+44 8000315680). I have called that number three times and each time they inform me my case is under a ‘Case Manager’ and that they will call me back, promising it will be the same day. Surprise, surprise, no one has called me back.
They refuse to give me a case number or the name of the case manager. I contacted the host of the place I had booked via email from a different booking site for the same property and he informed me the booking was cancelled and therefore the deposit kept and someone else has now booked the property for those dates. This money appears lost as I can get no answers, and my husband gets no romantic birthday getaway.
Shocking customer service. I will never open another Airbnb account and I will raise this case with the financial Ombudsman to seek further advice. Fuming doesn’t even cover it.
Hacked here also. They changed my phone number to an Indonesian I believe started with a 68 I got emails for confirmation in cirasua??? Indonesia. For June 21 2019 and I called Airbnb on the morning of the 20 to tell them I didn’t make it and to cancel but THEY DID NOTHING. Got an email from Allen saying it was a good reservation so not gonna give back money. Called two more times was told a return call top priority blah blah blah… nothing yet. My bank was awesome cancelled card and returned charge to me!! Unbelievable how much they suck
My Account was hacked during the early morning hours, EST, on Wednesday, May 15th. My reservation for a lovely 3/2 Condo in Kissimmee, checking with my daughter and her hubby on on the 16th for 3 nights was cancelled, and only partially refunded. However, Surprise – I now had reservations to Constanta that I’d paid a few hundred for, checking in on the 15th. Really? Oh – no – wait – those reservations also cancelled – and there were no refunds. This much i was able to determine by reading a series of emails that hit my account all within 10 minutes.
Uh – what’s this? I changed my email address?? I didn’t change my email address!!! And closed by AirBnB Account?
Well – someone certainly did – because i was – you guessed it – unable to log in to my account. It had been shut down.
So within 10 minutes my reservations to Kissimmee cancelled, I made, paid for and then cancelled reservations to Constanta, and then changed my contact information on and then cancelled my AirBnB Account…. Someone was really good!!!
So i did what all good hacked AirBnB guests do – and started the painful journey to AirBnB Customer Service. I kept notes – and in truth it was ugly. I was lied to. I was escalated. I was demeaned. I was lied to again. I forwarded copies of reservations – and emails – and notifications to a handful of front line customer service persons who said they were sending the case to “resolution”. Resolution doesn’t talk to people – ever!!!
They send emails – at their convenience – or if they need more info.
And nobody, over the course of several calls, could give me a clue of how long, or when, or if there would be any resolution!
So lessons learned – in no particular order:
– AirBnB doesn’t like to be told their system was at fault.
– AirBnB will not allow for refund of their ListingFee/ServiceCharge, even when it’s requested by the Host! They will retain the Listing Fee/Service Charge, even when the situation is CLEARLY a hack and at no fault to either the host or the guest!
– AirBnB will blame the guest/user for anything they can to deflect blame from themselves – including crappy passwords, for not having multiple authentications turned on, accusations of sharing the account, and my personal favorite ….
– berating the user (ME!) for leaving the authorization to debit PayPal active once the Condo was Paid in Full. Now that’s a New One on me – and is a lesson learned~!!!
– They were “understanding” of my concerns – to the point of being annoying as they told me how they understood. Meanwhile – they’ve not told me anything! or answered any questions! or committed to anything!
I dogged them. I called every 3rd day. I contacted PayPal and my bank where the CreditCard Payment came from – and got them engaged as well. I brought everything to bear on this that i could.
It took 2 weeks till i got something in email from “resolution”, and another 3 days to get it all straightened out. My account was eventually restored – notification of the same via email. It took multiple password changes and turned on all the extra security I could to get there.
They did reimburse, in full, for the charges to Constanta. They allowed for reimbursement of the original charges for the Condo, except for their Listing Fee/Service Charge.
As a side note, hubby opened an account on Wednesday night when i was breached, reached out to my host for the reservation I’d had for 8 months, explained the situation, and re-reserved the Condo for us. Check in notes were the same as i’d already received – and daughter and her hubbs and myself were able to check-in on Thursday as planned, and had a great time while we each attended various expo and convention events in the greater Kissimmee area.
And the Punch line????
So for the first time since returning from the expo in May, i went out to AirBnB on Tuesday – And yesterday afternoon i received 2 emails from AirBnB telling me my payment for my reservations to Constanta didn’t process – they’d been rejected by PayPal. And to please click <> to process the payments.
This is ABSOLUTELY an AirBnB issue – and someone should hold AirBnB Accountable!!!
My airbnb account was hacked on June 14.
Somebody logged into it from Montreal 25 days ago. At that time, they made several unsuccessful attempts to book accommodations. Since they were unsuccessful, I got no notifications. However, he remained logged in. On June 14, my inbox lit up with a bunch of reservations in places like Warsaw and Amsterdam.
I called up Airbnb’s support, and they said they will sort this out. At this time, there are still three “pending” charges showing on my credit card.
A couple of suggestions: Go to your Airbnb account, check account/security/login history, and see if there’s anything there you don’t recognize. If there is, just changing your password might not help, if they are still logged in. Second, if you don’t use Airbnb very often, remove all your payment methods. (I got a lucky break on this; one of my payment methods was a credit card I cancelled 1 1/2 years ago.)
As someone with a whackload of IT experience prior to retirement, I say that allowing a hacker to stay logged in for 25 days is a design flaw.
I am a Superhost from Dorset UK. My account has been locked for security reasons on 28 May 2019. I followed instructions to reset password. I received an email with code to enter, which I did and put in a new password, but airbnb message came back device not recognised. I have not changed my mobile or email address. Tried several times with different codes sent, but none accepted and I keep getting emails saying account locked for security reasons. Tried to reply to those emails but system blocks it being sent. I can not contact guests that have booked next week. My current guest says her account is also locked. Tried calling airbnb but no answer. Tried sending email to Help Centre but only get automated response directly me to online help centre, which I can’t do because I am locked out of my account. Starting to get frustrated and concerned airbnb are not communicating with hosts and guests to update them on whether this is an internal techical glitch or more serious web crime.
Same boat! I’m lucky because I didn’t have any current bookings, but the lack of help I got from Airbnb was appalling. Like, this has clearly been going on for MONTHS and they are doing nothing for anyone. I was promised someone would email me, and of course I’ve heard nothing.
Make sure you change all your passwords, apparently my amazon account had the same password as Airbnb, so they tried to hack that too. Luckily Amazon is much better at catching fraud, so it was fine.
This EXACT same thing happened to me on the SAME day! I’m in California is the U.S so something happened with their security they aren’t telling people about. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this also, so frustrating!!