Tag Archives: airbnb fees

Host Took Over $2000 for Immediate Cancellation

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An Airbnb host is stealing over $2000 from me (50% fee) and there has been no answer from Airbnb for days. A “dedicated case manager” is just a waste of time and a way to make time thinking you can “forget” or maybe settle for much less. This must be a scam in which both Airbnb doesn’t care (makes a profit too) and some hosts steal from customers (especially first time users like myself) on a regular basis.

I am a first time user coming from a difficult situation where a host had just canceled a rented property (still waiting for a refund on that too) and needed a house ASAP for seven people including seniors and children. I explained this to the host and he agreed that I needed more than two beds for seven people (his information said sleeps “up to 16”). He then claimed that because of the five minutes from when my transaction occurred between booking, texting, and canceling, as per his claim, he was free to charge me for a cancellation. That five minutes’ processing time is now going to cost me over $2000 right before Christmas. I’m filing a BBB complaint and I want to start a class action lawsuit against Airbnb after reading lots and lots of complaints.

Host’s Tardiness Keeps me from Getting a Refund

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We did not see our Airbnb hosts with the key for hours; they were working. There was no A/C. There were no curtains in the living room or bedroom; those above you could look in. The patio door opened at night for air and noise. Daytime hall door open for air. Garbage left behind. Did not know where the garage was so was not able to use it. Bedroom to small for suite case to come into. I was standing outside the building waiting to get in, I had no wifi and I was from out of country with no phone service. In the end, I was very unsatisfied and went home.

I was finally able to reach Airbnb about a refund. I was told that because I did not contact them within 24 hours I was not entitled to one. I told them I was not able to find my host. As of today, I was not able to contact anyone in reference to my $100 credit, which means I was not able to use it. Airbnb is a very difficult service especially if there is an issue. They are not there for you. The rental property I wanted was priced $80 plus a service fee. Why are we paying for a service fee? Should that not be part of the host’s fee? Not again. This is not worth the hassle.

Guest Trashed Flat and Told Doorman about Illegal Airbnb

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I was constantly sold by Airbnb and third-party management companies that the “bad stories” from Airbnb are rare and that I had nothing to worry about. I have a water facing Manhattan condo in a doorman building. Manhattan and New York have banned any Airbnb listings. However, I noticed a Superhost from my very building who was making a ton of money and getting away with Airbnb. I figured I would give it a try. I contacted a third-party NYC management company, MetroButler, which handles everything for 25%  of the cost: cleaning, guest communication, and guest screening (not sure how much of a “screening” there was).

I had only reached my sixth guest when I walked into my apartment after a guest left and observed the mess. There was human feces on the bathroom mat, sugar spilled on the coffee table, dishwasher liquid in the dishwasher, and stolen items. This guest deliberately did all of this. He even forwarded MetroButler’s check-in instructions email to my doorman, to which my building fined me $1,000. This guest had the audacity to trash, steal, and go the extra Satanic mile and complain to my front desk. I complained to MetroButler and was able to get some sort of money for my stolen goods, but nothing else. I cancelled my bookings and paid the fine. Never will I allow my place to be abused by childish entitled guests, especially on Airbnb. If I do choose to sublet, it’ll be to someone I know and trust. Do not use MetroButler and do not allow guests like this.

Airbnb Host with Terrible Customer Service Skills

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I stayed at the Crown Point Hotel Tobago (an Airbnb host had an apartment there) back in June 2017. My mother made a few local calls on the landline phone. I had an early check out the next morning. I spoke to the front desk staff the night before to find out what to do with the key. No mention was made of the calls; there was no billing set up. The front desk knew I had an early check out. I wasn’t even thinking about the calls. Months later, I see a nasty message from the host saying that I didn’t pay the phone bill and that the front desk clerk had to pay it. I didn’t intentionally not pay the bill. I was never billed and I wasn’t thinking about it. My contention is this: why didn’t the host just notify me privately? I would have paid the bill then and there. I think the host was being very low down and petty posting his comments on Airbnb as if I had no intentions of paying. I only happened to see the nasty message because I was going to rebook. Never again. Airbnb was difficult to reach to take down the nasty review.

Ridiculous Airbnb Service Fee Never Refunded

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I wanted to reserve a room in Bar Harbor so I did a search and some places came up that said Winter Harbor, which I assumed – yes, I know – was a neighborhood around Bar Harbor. After booking, I went to a map to see where the place was. It was close to Bar Harbor, but only if you had a boat. Within a few minutes I called the owner and he immediately agreed to allow me to cancel. He tried to cancel, but emailed me saying that I had to. After figuring out how to do that, Airbnb stated that I wouldn’t get any money back because the owner had a strict cancellation policy. I wrote him back and he did agree to refund my money, thank goodness. However, Airbnb still wanted to charge me their service fee, which is significant. All this trouble for a mistake or error caused by them because they listed a home more than an hour away from where I was requesting and I realized what had happened within two minutes of them taking my booking. I have used Airbnb quite a bit before and this kind of thing has never happened before. I guess I’ll have to be extra careful with them before I book another place or use them again.

Cancellation Policy Defrauds Guests of 50% Payment

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I put a question to a host about her apartment directly on the beach in Tavernes de la Valldigna, Valencia, Spain including booking dates. She came back with the answer stating the dates were a little difficult and provided dates that would be better. My dates were still showing as available on her calendar. I was just replying to say those were our only dates when I received two more emails offering a discount if I booked by a certain time that day. The website was showing my dates for the booking and nothing about the dates not being available or “difficult”. I naturally thought she had solved her problem and paid for the dates which were only three weeks away. I then received an email from her saying I had not replied to her email and she was shocked at receiving my booking payment as she had offered alternate dates. When I checked the cancellation policy it said if cancelled more than seven days before booking I would receive 50% of my payment; that’s a good way to fraudulently get money for no work and hassling tenants. If I did not use the refunded money for another booking I would charged a 20% administrative charge for Airbnb to refund it. That is 50% of the total then another 20% of the remaining half… 60% of my money with no booking. Is this fraud, or what?

Airbnb has Standards for Hosts? What Standards…?

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Let me start with the link to the luxurious, custom and tastefully decorated house we rented in Union City, California. Whatever you do, don’t believe anything you read concerning this house on Airbnb and don’t rent this house. If you do, you won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you.

We rented this house because it was big (for seven people), it seemed nice, it was well situated for us, and the comments of past renters were all good. The stay started with the host saying that the house was not ready for us when we got there, one hour and a half after the check in time. The host then told me that he was told by the last renter that she might have heard a mouse during the night. We later learned that this was a lie because when the comments of the previous renter was posted, after our arrival, the mouse traps were already there before she got there.

The next morning we went away early for the day. We had time to see that the place was not very clean. We ate out that night and got home around 10:00. To our disgust, we killed two roaches in the kitchen. That was when we first contacted Airbnb. To our surprise, Airbnb replied immediately. We said we were disgusted and we wanted out. They told us we had 24 hours upon our arrival to file a complaint so we could get out of there with a refund. We had been there 28 hours.

To make a story short, here is a list of all the issues we experienced with the house and Airbnb:

1. We saw a mouse, we killed two roaches and we found many other bugs in the house.

2. The stove was out of order, the BBQ grill was disgusting, and there was supposed to be a gaming room with pinball machines, foosball, and pingpong table.

3. The house was not very clean: curtains were stained, the BBQ grill was disgusting, the doors to the bathrooms were dirty, the windows were filthy we could barely see through, and on the side of the house we found a dozen empty old paint containers.

Attached you will find a few pictures to show some of the nice things we had to live with. You should also know that these three points contradict two of Airbnb’s standards and regulations. However, Airbnb doesn’t care about their own standards and regulations and their customers. Like I said earlier, Airbnb were very quick to respond and seemed very helpful. We had constant contacts everyday. I was on vacation and the last thing I wanted to do during my vacation was run after Airbnb customer service.

In fact, they were not helpful at all and they were all but productive. I had seven case managers involved in my case, all seemed very understanding of my situation but none of them answered my questions. When our trip was finally over, I asked for a refund. After a few exchanges I was told that I could get a partial refund by one of the case managers involved. He changed his mind because the host sent him a copy of the invoice of a pest control company that supposedly visited the house during our stay and it said there weren’t any traces of vermin in the house.

I didn’t believe a pest control company came to the house so I asked to see the invoice or the name of the pest company, but Airbnb told me the host didn’t want them to share that information with me. Talk about transparency. If you have nothing to hide, show me the invoice, right? Not with Airbnb. The host did not want them to share it with me. I didn’t believe that a pest control company came because the host told me that when it came it didn’t find traces of vermin.

That same night we found traces of mice in two different places in the house. Then the host told me that the bag in which we found different bugs under the fridge were long dead according to the ‘pest control company’. In fact, I had killed the bugs myself the night before their visit. Lastly, we found rolled up paper coming from the mouse traps on the counter after their ‘presence’. It is not very professional for a company to leave their trash on the counter after they left, isn’t it. One last thing: my reviews, that were very negative, were never posted on the site. Maybe that is why we see few negative comments concerning the houses we can rent on Airbnb. Transparency…

Changing the Number of Guests for Airbnb in Okinawa

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I made a reservation from January this year for my family trip to Okinawa, Japan in October. Upon making the first reservation, I only paid around 43,000 yen for five of us. However, my oldest daughter couldn’t join us so I needed to change the numbers from five to four so as to save money. I had to pay about 18,000 yen for this change. I have tried to solve this stupid problem with the host and the host agreed with my complaint that I didn’t have to pay. He also said he didn’t understand why should I pay more and did not know how to make the change. He advised me to contact Airbnb directly. However, Airbnb insisted that the host had to agree to give me a refund. Is it normal to pay more to decrease the number of guests? What a horrible policy! I wouldn’t use Airbnb again.

Airbnb Steals Your Money And Then Makes You Angry

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We just found that Airbnb didn’t transfer our money a few days after the client paid until we contacted them about this issue. Later, they cancelled one payment from another guest who actually already checked in and was not entitled to get any refund; we had a strict cancellation policy. We charged a very low fee under Airbnb’s instructions because they told us that our listings would not be found if our fee was higher than Airbnb’s lowest rate. However, Airbnb will take any comment against a landlord seriously and punish him or her without any investigation or fairness. Even though I have had my place listed on Airbnb for just a few months, I have felt very stressed and offended because Airbnb staff kept bugging me all the time as if they were the police with complete authority; this is ridiculous because everybody knows Airbnb started as a small website and is now getting bigger by coddling landlords while pissing off small ones.

I will never use this stupid website anymore and we will not have to because there are many other better ways. I think the reason Airbnb would like to get rid of small landlords is now they have bigger bosses in and they would not make much money by keeping small landlords and small tenants. Please remember that Airbnb never works in your best interest but by sucking as much cash as they can out of your pocket.