I found on the weekend that I couldn’t actually get into my Airbnb account as it had been hacked. After the most bizarre few days, there was nobody from Airbnb dealing with it as of this morning. They do not have a customer service outfit that can cope with demand. The only way a guest can complain is via a phone number that I eventually found (for UK users): 0203 318 1111. This number is not available on their website. I found it by Googling and finding angry people who posted it on their own Community Forum.
Any guests with account issues must stay on the phone line until the problem is resolved, as they promise to phone you back and then don’t. I have phoned them again and again. The telephone line wouldn’t so expensive for a decently timed response but depending on how long you spend getting a human being… my average suggests at the very least five minutes to talk.
That’s not so bad as some of the people on here but I’ve now been around at least a couple of hours on the phone and that is not a free number. British Telecom charges around 3p per minute to connect to an 0203 number from my landline and Airbnb charges 7p, so 10p per minute. That is an obscene thing in itself. In the UK they make money out of folks’ misery. Why?
The issue is that for a guest, once your email and password no longer work due to hacking, you have no access to customer service. You are behind a wall… it feels rather 1984ish. You are locked out of any access. The only thing I felt able to do was open a new account with a different email address and using their online customer services “contact box”, I sent a note on the day I found I’d been hacked: “URGENT – MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED” at the top of the contact form.
Three days later and I have not even had a reply to that yet. After the relief of actually talking to someone, all I now get are emails from that link to my online Airbnb account, which won’t open as I can’t get into my account. The Customer Service manager finally dealing with my problem must be a moron as I have told them five times on the phone “my account has been hacked and I can’t gain access to your emails using my email and password.”
When I realised that nobody was responding to their consumer web page “contact”, during one of my first telephone conversations yesterday, the consumer department suggested that if she gave me the email that the hacker used (and she could see that email address), I could then gain access to my account. I very nearly did just that, then thought for a second about the risk of using it in order to get back into the account without their new password.
I’ve now found all sorts of scams written on various websites frequently happening as a result of this. People’s accounts are hacked in order to pay for bogus rooms in China / Russia / South America where their recipients receive the money. Many grim stories were also found on this site. It’s been three days and and there has still been no responsible conversation with Airbnb customer service. I still have no access to my account and no idea what is going on.
A very similar thing happened to me! My account was also HACKED and Airbnb was a complete nightmare to deal with. When I told them about my account being hacked, the person on the phone said “hm, maybe your phone numbers were the same and the accounts got crossed.” So, putting in the wrong phone number gives strangers access to my credit card company and the ability to make $2400 bookings under my account and to change all of my personal info on my account? Seems reasonable. And then the only way they would help me was through Twitter. How on earth is that acceptable? I literally had to sign up for a Twitter account so I could get customer service on Airbnb. As you mentioned, there was no way to find a phone number to call anyone directly and I kept getting redirected and no one kept any record of any of the separate calls I made. From start to finish, it was a nightmare and I deleted my Airbnb account and cancelled all of my credit cards as a result.
Airbnb accounts are hacked on a regular basis and thousand of accounts are being sold on the black market. Airbnb is perfectly aware of this but they will never admit it. They put on a great fight to prevent it (so does and did Facebook) – but until it is disclosed and made public they will never admit the hacking as that would cause a big blow on social medias etc. The Facebook scandal is an example of this. It only became public because a big newspaper ran the story. Airbnb will also remain the stand that a hacked account was “compromised” by something the user did. However, Airbnb don’t care about you (as one user) they only care about the masses (the big number of users) and loosing a thousand users a year is nothing when you gain millions by keeping the secret that you in fact are a bad company, putting your users in risk every day without telling and without the intention to help. Keep in mind that helping could be interpreted as admitting responsiblity – and they will never risk being held responsible eventhough it’s their fault and that they are making billions. It’s all about the money and they don’t care how they make it. Only how much they make. Everyone should just turn their back to Airbnb (same goes for Amazon and Facebook by the way).
Your Airbnb Account was compromised, not hacked. The only hacking was that of your linked email account.
You need to go to that email account and check carefully for any changes, additions, etc. Then change that email account’s password.
As you have found, you can call Airbnb Support. You can also use Twitter to contact @AirbnbHelp