I was looking to rent a flat on Airbnb. My girlfriend was dealing with the queries which she believed were from Airbnb agents, as the site they were using looked exactly like Airbnb’s. I believed they were genuine users. However, someone had taken details from Airbnb and used them to scam me.
I am so disappointed that this happened to me as that was all the money I had saved to put a deposit on a house to rent. I was living in a room in London and wanted my own place to live. Now I have lost £2,200 and have no choice but to stay in the room until I am able to save for the deposit again.
I am not happy of how this was handled by Airbnb. I have attached everything and you can see that all the invoices and ads had all their information and criteria on them. I have sought advice and understand that this has happened on other occasions on the Airbnb website.
As this is still happening today Airbnb should be doing more to protect genuine users’ names and profiles and also protecting customers like me. I spoke to Airbnb and they told me that the host was a genuine user so I had every confidence that he was one. I never received any warning emails stating any suspicious behaviour. You can also see on the invoices his name as the host and contact details.
I would request that Airbnb refund my £2,200. Otherwise I will have no choice but to post all of my information on social media to warn others not to use Airbnb, i.e. Twitter, Facebook. I will also go to the major newspapers. All I want is my money back.
I have just had the same thing happen to me. The scammer has taken £1800.00 from me. I had the same emails and same invoice. I’m so upset as I cant get the money back. The site looked real and so did the link. It turns out they have copied all the information from Airbnb and made a false invoice and a fake website. Airbnb said they would never ask for money to he transferred from one account to another.
Good morning. I’ve just read your story regarding the scam with a fake Air BnB agent in UK. I’d like to talk to you but I don’t know how to contact you. I’m living in UK and I’ve just got the same kind of scam..
How could you possibly expect Airbnb to pay you for this when it has absolutely nothing to do with them? This is a classic phishing scheme, and it is absolutely not Airbnb’s responsibility to pay you back. You are very specifically advised in the Airbnb terms of service that all payments are to be made through Airbnb: just based on that, you have no leg to stand on.
This was a double mistake
1. You got the phishing scam, apparently you used an airbnb listing replica, this is the URL on your image: http://airbnb.com.rooms-4619.rentals/
2. You made a bank to bank transfer , which is not how airbnb works.
So, yeah, I’m pretty sure that money is gone for good.
Hah hah hah. What an idiot.
You paid OUTSIDE Airbnb so you got no leg to stand on