Host Never Showed up for Check-in and Phone was off

I am a Cypriot who traveled to Hungary with my family and wanted to make a complaint about an Airbnb case as they are failing to accept their responsibility regarding cancellation of a reservation and failure to deliver an apartment. This left me and my family – including my six-month-old daughter – on the streets without notice in the early hours.

We arrived in Hungary on September 4th at 11:55 PM and found out that host’s phone was off. They didn’t appear to give us the keys to the apartment we paid. We contacted Airbnb and they were wasting our time promising that they would resolve the issue and get back to us. They said that they found us room at two different hotels and sent us there to find that they never called the hotels and that there was no available room.

After complaining again at the call center and asking to be assigned a new case manager because our first one was lying and playing with us, we were assigned a new case manager. He only found us a room that we paid for at 10:30, spending all the night with a six-month-old kid on the streets calling the international center’s number and using mobile data over roaming. The reservation was done through their website for one day less now but we had to pay even more this time because the apartment that they suggested and was available was a higher price per night. I paid again with my credit card.

Initially they wanted to refund us just for 71 EUR which was the additional money (to return to my card after a few days) but after I asked for compensation they proposed giving me 200 USD maximum, including the 71 EUR. Airbnb wants to refund us for this (including the extra money we paid for a more expensive room through their website) with the ridiculous amount of 200 USD.

I explained to them that this was disrespectful and not acceptable as compensation. After this I asked to escalate the issue and was told that someone else took over our case; he is not responding. In the chat box it doesn’t show the name of the person to whom you are talking so I can’t know if the issue was really escalated or it’s just the same person who served me as case manager who is pretending to be the supervisor.

In similar cases when there is a flight cancellation the airlines compensate passengers up to 300 EUR while on this occasion we were not waiting in the lobby of a hotel or an airport lounge but on the streets, including my six-month-old daughter. We didn’t know where we could sterilize her bottles, charge our phones, etc. In addition we were played by this case manager and sent from hotel to hotel. He lied, said that he called the hotels, and said there was room available; when we arrived the receptionist told us nobody called and the hotels were full.