My group had been looking for a beach house in Thailand for a three-day stay for days and finally found a reasonable option for all sixteen members of our group (do you know how difficult that was, logistically?). We booked our stay and they took our money. We thought we were good to go.
The owner emailed us the next day and lied, saying that we had misled her about the year we wanted to stay. She kept saying we wanted to book for 2018. Under no circumstances did we say that. Our reservation was cancelled and now all the other options are over $1000 more than the original price. We can’t be spending that kind of extra money. When we called Airbnb, all they kept saying was sorry. They said they would help us rebook but then reneged on that real quick. That does not help with the money problem.
They also reassured us that the host had to pay a cancellation fee but it’s Airbnb that gets all that money. If we were able to use that money to get a comparable rate then I would be happy to keep using Airbnb, but they get the profit and we have to spend extra money because they did not have it together. Absolute nonsense.
Laura – you’re wrong. Hosts cancelling in most cases will receive a financial penalty. Do read up on how host cancellations work on the Airbnb Help Centre.
Never heard of hosts getting a monetary fine for canceling… They can have penalties like lose their SuperHost badge, but we (I’m a host) never pay any fines to Airbnb under any circumstances. Unless it’s different in Thailand, but that sounds really weird to me.
Report Airbnb to BBB. HELP to get a truthful rating, not the A+ which is most definitely not true. File a complaint!