After renting an Airbnb in December, I received an email stating that my email address had been changed and to notify customer service if we did not make that change. We emailed them and didn’t receive a return call or message. We contacted them again after attempting to log on to our account (we could not access our own account to shut it down and still cannot to this day). There was no return call or email. About four days later, I received a random call telling me that if I needed additional towels, to please let them know. I then waited for over thirty minutes for a customer service representative over the phone. She confirmed that my account had been changed and that a rental in Brooklyn was active. $867 had been charged to the credit card linked to my account.
I felt great after speaking to her; she assured me that I would receive a call within four hours from the Trust and Safety Department to gather the details for the investigation. She also told me that she “placed a hold” on my account so that no additional charges could be made. Three weeks later after many phone calls, emails, wasted time on hold and additional charges on my credit card, and I have never received one single call or email from the Trust and Security Department. I continued to receive calls about my “stay” and even received a direct email from the Brooklyn host telling me that she gave me a five-star rating. Airbnb did not even notify the host that she had a renter that had stolen all of my information and was using my name and credit card. I received requests in the middle of the night for codes to be entered to change additional information on my account, which I’m assuming was the same person that originally stole my information. Airbnb was notified of all of these events and has never done anything to investigate or help us in this situation. It’s absolutely unbelievable that a company can function in this manner and stay afloat.
Something similar has happened to me yesterday on March 7. My airbnb account was hacked. The hackers changed my phone number and email, so I no longer have control over it. I was charged $1014 on my visa. I canceled my visa and still dealing with the airbnb trust and safety team.
The exact same thing happened to me, though because of this post (discovered while googling around for the right phone number to call) I caught it before the charges hit my credit card. Trying to deal with it now, but “Trust & Safety” haven’t been in touch in three days. Called customer service today. They’re helpful but told me the Trust & Safety team only operates by email and there’s no way to know when they’ll address it, though they tagged it “Urgent.” Completely outrageous and unacceptable.
By way of update, it took five days and as many phone calls, but my password was finally reset this morning and I recovered my account. The trip that had been booked while I was hacked was not actually canceled and is still on my account, but they refunded the charges. Hopefully it doesn’t impact my guest rating.
Also, I had a message from “me” to the host, and a reply from the host, that both had terrible spelling. Looks like somebody is hacking guest and host accounts, booking trips and not showing up, and paying themselves the money. I explained this to customer service and suggested they relay it to the Trust & Safety team, though who knows if it will actually happen.
After the first failed attempt to stop this, I would have called my credit card company to cancel my card effective immediately. I would also have gone on Airbnb’s facebook page (assuming they have one?) and made some major complaints. These days, there is no faster way to get a company to pay attention to you.