I made a reservation and paid for an apartment to a host (not sure if he gave his real name though because of what is happening now), and he said I should pay into a third-party account which was supposedly for Airbnb as they were the ones who would receive the money on his behalf. I paid a deposit and two months’ payment as he said the minimum stay was two months.
I was sent a link which generated an invoice. I have a copy of the invoice with the details of the account I was supposed to transfer the money into. After payment, we were supposed to receive an email with a contract attached; this never materialized until today.
We were supposed to be checking in today but instead the host with whom we have been talking to has just decided to block us on his phone after receiving our money and never provided us with the service. The link is no longer working. Is Airbnb a scam or has it been hijacked by scammers? I do have the other evidence that we indeed paid for a service that never materialized.
Hi, what did you do afterwards?
Airbnb are scumbags but one of the first things they tell you is never pay into a third party account.
That’s an old, frequent and widely-publicised scam. Sorry you fell for it.
The ‘host’ creates a fake listing, usually using another listings photos. If you view the site through which you booked, and check the URL you’ll see it’s not the authentic Airbnb site. If you’d booked through the actual Airbnb site this would not have happen and can’t happen, because of the way the payment system works.
So, it’s nothing at all to do with Airbnb. It’s just between you and the con artist whose con you fell for.
Truly how amazing it is you feel it’s AirBnB’s problem when you knowingly went to a 3rd party source for payment.