Tag Archives: airbnb fraud

Airbnb Prepaid Reservation: Give me back my Money!

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As a guest, I made a pre-reservation for one night in another city in Poland. (As you already know, you have to prepay for it immediately, even if it is not confirmed). I’ve been waiting for an answer from the host for 24 hours. Unfortunately, the reservation expired. I received a message from Airbnb: the payment for my expired reservation will be in my bank account in 7 business days. As of now (10 working days after the fact) I haven’t received my money for an unconfirmed reservation! Contact with Airbnb in Poland is totally impossible! I’m so mad about it! Please help!

Secrets and Lies in Morocco: Sketchy Addresses

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I had been using AirBnb for a long time and actually, I was happy with it. Recently, we planned a road trip in Morocco. We booked a great place in Rabat, then two amazing places in the mountains near Dades Riad – both with local people – and finally a place in Marrakech, which was supposed to be a room with an Italian-Irish couple, Mattia and Erika. I scanned over the reviews and decided it had to be good as they are European so the standards will be up to par. I did not check how many properties and under how many addresses they advertised. I specifically said we were coming by car, asked if there was parking place, and asked for directions. They said that it was best to meet at Roti D’Or Cafe near their place. We were driving for hours, calling them (which cost us over 25 pounds) and could not find it. We asked them if they could come and meet us as we were not even 500 meters away but they refused and said we had to leave the car and take a taxi. Finally, after paying 10 Euro, a local person showed us where to park and directed us to the cafe, which was not accessible by car – it was a pedestrian zone.

We thought that was the end of our problems… how naive! We met Mattia at the cafe and everything seemed to be fine… (silly us)…. He took us to mews nearby and showed us the place. He said they didn’t live there. There were 4 rooms, and 1 bathroom (but 2 loos). All the rooms were rented, so it appeared to be a hostel! You had to wait 15 mins to take a shower after the previous person. When we said we rented a room in a private house, they acted offended. We left our stuff and went to eat something, trying to avoid a discussion when we were angry, tired and hungry. We calmed down and came back, but they were not there. The ceiling was falling down in our room, and we woke up with pieces of debris in the bed. We took photos just in case… As it was not what we booked, we cancelled the last night once we booked other accommodation. We thought, once again, that this was the end of trouble with this nightmarish couple… how naive, again!

In Morocco, when you enter the country they ask you for the address where you are staying. The hosts had sent us this information: “Hi again, At the airport you will be asked for information during the passport check; The custom police will want to know in which hotel you will be staying. They will expect you to write the name of a Riad/Hotel, but seing as this is our private home, you can write the name of the closest hostel to our house. Address in Morocco: RIAD MEDINA in derb Aadham/Kennaria. Call us if you have any problem. Cheers Mattia & Erika. Last Monday at 18:14.”

That confirmed it was their private home. Why did we end up in a hostel with one bathroom? But we wrote this address in the hotel we stayed before going to Marrakesh. We ended our trip around Morocco, and at the airport there was more paperwork… asking where we stayed, etc… Suddenly, the officer asked where we stayed in Marrakesh. We forgot what the fake address was and we said it was the hostel run by Mattia and Erika which we booked though Airbnb… Moroccan people are very nice and friendly, but not when you lie… We finally showed them the email from the couple telling us what we should write and they allowed us to leave after being surrounded by the police. Apparently, they check addresses where tourists stay (there is the reason why they want to know the address) and they could not find us. People from the plane thought we were smugglers… Not a great experience…

Unfortunately, I didn’t leave a very positive review before leaving Morocco, otherwise I would have written all about the fake address. I informed Airbnb about the hosts lying with the address and the trouble with local authorities at our departure. I also attached photos with falling down ceiling, etc. We received a 70% refund and… a super negative review from the host! I asked Airbnb to remove it as it was obvious revenge for the official complaint to Airbnb. Of course, they refused to remove it. As there are many websites I can book accommodation without being publicly insulted, I removed my account. I can’t understand why Airbnb did not react and although it was clear that Mattia and Erika do not comply with local legal regulations what might cause the trouble with authorities on departure, they decided that it was easier to delete my account…

Well, hello Airbnb competitors, pleasure to meet you!

FRAUD WARNING! Airbnb site may not be secure!

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On Friday, 2/19/16, I tried to make a reservation on airbnb with Valorie in Santa Clara for a room. For some reason in making the reservation, I could not use my paypal account. I closed out of airbnb to try to investigate what was going on in paypal and everything was okay. There should have been no reason why my transaction would not have gone through. On Friday, the same day, I got a text from airbnb security with a 4 digit pin code to complete the transaction. I resumed trying to make the reservations for the room, and attempted to use paypal again, without success. Getting a little bit desperate to get this reservation completed, I entered my chase credit card number and continued trying to make the reservation, but I still needed to complete more information. The website asked for permission for me to verify myself and they wanted the following: Your e-mail account, access to your e-mail contacts(!!), and a picture of your drivers license, which I took a picture of and uploaded to the airbnb website. For me, to get an airbnb reservation for $50 a night, it was not worth revealing so much personal information including a picture ID which i did submit. When it requested my facebook, link’d in, e-mail and access to my e-mail contacts, I had to log out. I then logged back in and deleted my account. I will attempt now to contact technical support on airbnb’s www/https:// website. It is not secure!

UPDATE:
Two days later, on Sunday, February 21st, I got a chase credit card fraud alert with 6 new charges amounting to more than $879.00!! It seems obvious that these events are related! I had to cancel my chase card immediately.

Be warned your information may not be secure when using the Airbnb website!!

Airbnb FRAUD cost me 1460 Euros, & it was preventable!

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Airbnb fraud cost me 1460 Euros! They aren’t doing enough to protect their community from fraudsters. I have had many happy trips with airbnb, but after this I will never use them again. They simply aren’t doing enough to protect their customers. I went to book accommodation in Amsterdam for new year, when I saw a message in the description of the listing offering 20% discount through ‘instant book’ (on the actual airbnb.co.uk site), I just had to email the host and they would enable instant booking to make the payment. ‘Fair enough’ I thought, they want to get people in quickly. Makes sense. So I emailed the host with the dates and a request to instant book. I then received an email from Herman (the host) with a link to instant book. The URL is still active https://www.airbnb.com.book.srl/instant/rooms/5913502?checkin=12292015&checkout=01022016&currency=&guests=8 You’ll notice the URL is airbnb.com.book.srl, which at the time i believed to be Airbnb, which it evidently is not. (these links are no longer active after I brought it to airbnbs attention!) So screenshots are attached. Once you click instant book and enter payment details the following page appears with a slightly confusing error message (images attached). https://www.airbnb.com.book.srl/instant/rooms/status?accepted=false&hosting_id=9652369 After a bit of back and forth with Herman (perfect English I might add) I requested the invoice to be sent. I then received the attached email (too long to put here) and stupidly made payment through transfer. I then received emails from a very a very convincing airbnb finance team representative (express@reply-airbnb.com). Emails written as though from one of Airbnb’s real employees, here’s the linked in profile… but i don’t think this poor guy has anything to do with it. At this moment, I started to realize I’d made a mistake! I called my bank who said you can’t stop a payment like this, also notified Barclays (where the money was being transferred to), seemingly to no avail. During this entire process Herman was continuing to email and reassure me that everything was OK and the payment hadn’t come through yet. I also contacted airbnb who said that they had removed his profile and very annoying then decided to tell me never to make a payment away from airbnb (which I didn’t think I had), until they specified bank transfer. I have now followed the link where the initial listing was and it’s still live, this is after airbnb said that Herman’s account has been blocked! It has the same reviews the same host, but different apartment pictures and is on the actual airbnb.co.uk site. So unfortunately it’s inevitable that this will happen again to someone else. https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1125879?checkin=29-12-2015&checkout=02-01-2016&guests=3&s=R92_NDn9 I really feel Airbnb could have done so much more to protect me during this absolute nightmare. Not only have they allowed the fraudulent account to continue, but make a bigger play on the fact that no payments should be done offline rather than display instant booking everywhere. They say “At Airbnb, we do everything we can to create a safe and trusted marketplace.” I don’t think this is true. I’m now completely skint 2 days before Christmas with a cancelled trip for the New Year. Thanks Airbnb, but NEVER EVER again.

Fake Airbnb website, don’t be fooled!

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I found a nice apartment in Oman on the olx.com.om website and I contacted the owner. He replied to me and said that he is currently in London cause his contract in Oman has finished in 2011, he has the keys from flat in Muscat with him and he will fly to Muscat as soon as he finds reliable tenants. I was interested in a long term rent, the apartment was very nice and I was ready to talk with him on skype to convince him how good and neat couple me and my husband are. I got a long letter from him, his passport copy and not even a single answer to any of my questions… it was like I got the answers from a robot. Then he sent me an email saying: “I had bad experiences with prospective tenants so that it happened for me to travel to Muscat for nothing which involved a complete waste of time and efforts. Having received proofs from tenants according with them being interested in renting (passport, job contracts showing their earnings, bank statements) proved to be ineffective for my certainty. Some tenants tend to put additional conditions even if they had not been discussed previously or worse, they sometimes still try to negotiate after traveling back to London. Some of them also asked me to wait until the end of the month for them to get paid. I hope my explanation is enough for you to understand my point of view and why I chose Airbnb. My apartment is listed on airbnb.com and I have more good reviews. Let me know if you know about airbnb and I if you are ready to rent the apartment for the first month. That is my certainty guarantee and the only way I can come to Muscat.” I said I don’t mind to rent his apartment through airbnb for the first month and asked him to give me the link. He said he will send it to me shortly and I only got it the next day.

This is the address that I saw in my browser after I clicked on the link he sent me: http://airbnb-rent-booking-apartment-verified.ashanti.ro/rooms/2367933?View Which looked exactly like airbnb and had the payment system in it. Of course it was clear for me that this website is fake airbnb and someone was just trying to get a 1500$ transfer from me. So be very careful and make sure you deal with real airbnb 😉

FRAUD and SCAMMERS INSIDE AIRBNB!!

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This is my sad Airbnb story.  Me and a group of friends planned a trip to Amsterdam, we found the house we wanted on the site Airbnb, the host was a registered user with good reviews from the apartment, apparently all normal. We contacted the host through the Airbnb site, who responded to our request via email were we exchanging information to confirm the reservation. Back to the site of the apartment, to proceed with the booking, and once again all normal, or the site was a perfect copy of Airbnb, or even was the original, because everything was equal, logos, fonts, layout,etc. I proceeded with the reservation and confirmed the same, then I get an email at the following address airbnb@reply-booking.com (again equal to the sent by airbnb), to pay for the booking to a bank in the UK, Barclays Bank PLC; Payment due: 3 days IBAN: GB73BARC20077473958027; Bank address: 35 Frederick Street, Birmingham B1 3HH, United Kingdom). Unfortunately payment has been made, we received a new email confirming that he had been transferred the money, which the reservation was ready and safe, the host confirmed by email that Airbnb was informed that he had been paid the booking, saying that on the day of our arrival bound us to mark the delivery of house keys. With the approach of the trip, and no Host answers, we began to get suspicious that we were fraud victims. We contacted airbnb, who just informed us that there was no reservation for that number, and asked for payment and other documents, and it was all sent to them.  More than 48 hours have passed now and no response from airbnb, which forced me to make a complaint to the facebook page of them, which by sheer miracle, made them immediately send an email, saying it had been a fraud.  They apologized but said they can not do anything. It is amazing how a company with the size of airbnb does not help victim users of these crimes and take their responsibility for a scam that happened on their website! with a registered user, using their platform to catch the victims. The first contact of fraud is done on the Airbnb website, they have responsibility for it, I did not ask airbnb to give me back the money I lost, but at least to help me better and provide host information and method that was used in fraud . I believe it is an inside job of someone who works in airbnb along with another person outside the company, because all the initial contact, is always done in the airbnb site, where they “fish” their victims.

Airbnb, never more!

1099 Tax Fraud

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My ex-wife added me to her Airbnb account and somehow got the tax authorities to believe that I have received all the rental income from her properties and owe back taxes on it, which they are now trying to collect from me. This is a total fabrication and amounts to some kind of identity theft and fraud on her part. When I reported this to Airbnb, I asked for help in straightening this out, including things like reviewing and correcting the 1099 form they presumably send out each year to report income, and taking my name off my ex-wife’s account. Airbnb has been of absolutely no help in this. The customer service rep offers only sympathy, says they are sending the issue to the fraud department and that I should be patient. This has gone on for a month with no progress and no communication from them. My partner and I call almost daily. We get promises from the customer rep that it’s being taken care of and that this is an “urgent” issue, but there is absolutely no communication from their fraud department. The issue should take an hour to resolve. Look up the account of my ex-wife, review the payout method, revise the 1099 form accordingly and tell the federal tax authorities that they made an error. Then take me off the account. This has not been done and no one will tell me why. It’s rather stressful to have the tax authorities after you for money rightfully owed by someone else, and when you can’t get the help you need to fix the problem, it’s even more so. Airbnb appears to be rather unprepared to handle issues like this, surprisingly, so I’m posting this simply as a warning to others. Thanks.

NEVER Again Will We Use Airbnb

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NEVER Again will we use Airbnb. You THINK you are getting a better deal than staying at a hotel. NOT THE CASE. You can literally find yourself not only paying for commission charges from Airbnb, and the per-night charge from the ‘host’, you leave yourself wide open to a ridiculous security deposit, and claims of all sorts by the hosts of the place you might stay. We were using airbnb since 2013 and we have had fantastic experiences with many hosts, but it was only down to pure luck. If a lunatic / neurotic host decides to ruin your holiday, they can! They claimed that we destroyed (with shower steam ) their baby’s paper planes that were hanging above a changing mat it the bathroom (that should not be left there at a first place) , stained two of their towels with some dirt they couldn’t remove and apparently spilled something on the floor and damaged the laminate. (No one of us remembers anything of this). Nonsense!!! ..airbnb sided with the host, and wants to charge $600 the security deposit to my Visa card. They didn’t even bother to show me the pictures that the host presented as ‘evidence'”. We were not even allowed to dispute their decision!!! I called my bank and spoke with a supervisor, and I hope to be able to stop this totally unexpected and unfair charge out of nowhere!!! . I totally lost my trust to this company. Would you valued me as a client , you would have to compensate me, for putting me through this hellish nightmare! My previous positive experience with other airbnb hosts made me believe that this was a trustworthy company. Alas! They are NOT worth your trust! This would have never happened with a holiday park, a hotel or a proper B&B. This Christmas our holiday will be with a holiday park in the Netherlands. NEVER Again will we use Airbnb.

Airbnb host lies about accommodations, guests denied refund

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Here is my complaint to BBB Business Review and my story: I used Airbnb to book an apartment for a four night stay for a family vacation. The rental was advertised as accommodation for 8 people with 3 bedrooms, it tuned out to have 3 single beds in 3 bedrooms to accommodate 3 people maximum. One of the beds was small child’s bed, smaller and shorter than regular twin bed. We never checked in as when we saw the apartment, it was clear we will never fit in, never got the keys or brought the luggage. The person that showed the apartment to us agreed that we can not stay there unless we sleep on the floor. The Owner has apologized, called around to see if he can get some extra mattresses and after he didn’t succeed, he offered the full refund if we cancel. We had to book the hotel for just 1 night while sending requests for other apartments through Airbnb. We cancelled the original reservation through the website, but refund was declined. We spent 3 days talking to Airbnb representatives that refuse to give refund saying that the number of beds is correct we have no right to refund based on number of sleeping accommodations. All hotels are fully booked in Barcelona in August, Airbnb didn’t refund $1000 and we needed a place to stay, we had no choice, but to try settle for this apartment even we would sleep on the floor. But the owner has already re-booked it. So we paid for it with NO refund and NO accommodation available that we were charged for. We never checked in or got the key. So we ended up with no money or apartment while the Airbnb and the owner got paid twice as they rebooked our dates. I would like a full refund. The apartment was newly listed and had only 1 review, so I couldn’t see if other visitors had found the accommodation capacity to be as misstated as I did. I contacted the host using the phone number on my reservation to ask about the refund or possible stay if there is no refund, but received no reply to my calls or texts for 2 days. Eventually he wrote to me that the matter of refund is out of his hands and up to Airbnb and the he re-rented the apartment to another guests for the days we booked it originally. So the “host” got paid twice and my family and I were left without the money $1000 and without the place to stay. I began the complaint process with Airbnb immediately on the fist day and I was told to cancel the reservation formally through the website. Ultimately Airbnb didn’t issue a refund, but instead offered a coupon for future stay in an amount less than one fourth of what I paid Airbnb for the rental. They denial of refund was based on the fact that the number of beds matter, not the number of guests advertised. Also, it was noted that I should have taken pictures of the issues I raised in my complaint. I was in the apartment only 15 minutes, never been given the key, the owner agreed to refund and I didn’t think to stop and snap some pictures. Is my testimony and the testimony of my family not enough? Why would I lie about this? Would pictures of three tiny beds really add anything to the complaint? And now because I was advised by the Airbnb customer service associate to cancel the reservation, I am unable to post an honest review of the space and warn future potential guests to stay away from this rental. To me this is the most egregious trespass ** all since the whole foundation of the Airbnb model and the so-called “sharing economy” is the customer review system.

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Fake hosts..FAKE listing!!

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I lost out on £2910 thanks to Airbnb. They had allowed a person to upload a FAKE villa, under a fake hosts details!! They don’t even check that the host is real…this is basic stuff here??! They offer the “option” that a host can verify themselves? this is SICK! I was communicating with the host, and told to wait until I had a confirmation from air bob before i went ahead with the booking. Guess what…I got the confirmation, which was from a AIRbnb email address. the payment details were at the bottom and i paid it! It was fake!! I called the police, air bnb and the banks immediately. Air bnb didn’t appear to be bothered and didn’t help AT ALL! Even though they cover hosts by £600k each in property damage, they don’t have the time or money to help the people whose lives have been upset because of them! The banks looked into the account and shut it down immediately, although the money had been spent, barclays offered my £27.00 as a good will gesture? Good will… damn insulting!! The police can’t track down the man in question, so have closed the case! I would feel a lot better if airbnb would admit they DON’T take their security seriously, and if they would help me out…but no! I have and am still in talks with solicitors, they cannot get away with this!!