Tag Archives: Airbnb hell

Horrendous Airbnb Stay at Hong Kong Brothel

Posted on

What a nightmare! First of all, I’m the kind of person who rarely complaints and would just let things be in order to avoid unnecessary trouble, but my experience with Airbnb at this particular “inn” was so bad I had to share so others can take precautions or maybe think twice before booking. We arrived at the place early and the host told us beforehand that if we did come early and if there was an empty room we could either leave our luggage there or rest in an available room first. We arrived early and found the building where the room was located very dodgy, but at that point we didn’t suspect anything. Then we went up to Level 7 which is where the so called inn is, and we saw several lots with pink neon lights and immediately thought that this looked somehow familiar – like where people look for prostitutes in dramas; we couldn’t confirm this as we never thought it would be that bad.

So we called up the host, Grace, and told her that we have arrived, and she just gave us the pin to the main door (mind you we hadn’t seen her until now). We then entered the “inn” and this is where the adventure begins. She told us to look for the keys under the tissue box and some other items that I can’t remember in the common area. We have two key cards and she told us to enter Room 1. So we entered Room 1. It was a very narrow room but we already expected that. The air conditioning did not work and we called the host again. She gave us instructions on how to use the air conditioning but it did not really work. So she told us to go to another room and said that we could switch if we preferred the other room (still communicating over the phone at this point). So we went to Room 5; the space and toilet there looked better than those in the first room so we switched rooms. Then we decided to freshen up and then head out but – guess what – we could not get the toilet bowl to flush! So we called the host AGAIN, and she instructed us over the phone again. We still could not get the toilet to work. She sent the cleaner in to check and the cleaner said that we should not dispose of toilet paper in the toilet bowl, as it causes it to clog (I mean, what kind of toilet bowl can’t flush toilet paper?).

Fast forward to the second day. As we were waiting for the lift outside, we saw advertisements providing sex services stuck all around the “pink houses”. We felt a little bit weird and disgusted but didn’t put much thought into it. We went down and then I remembered I left something in the room. So we went back up to the room. This time, a man entered the lift with us and gave us the weirdest look which made us so uncomfortable. He exited the same floor as us but didn’t enter any of the units and instead used the stairs, which was so weird. Whenever we returned, we would see different men leaving or entering the same floor as us. That’s when we realized something was really wrong: we were literally living on the same floor where people were seeking SEX SERVICES! I’m not going to talk in circles saying “special massage services” because it was literally a building of prostitution!

We couldn’t take it and left after two nights to go to a proper hotel as it gave us so much anxiety entering and leaving the building. I didn’t even bother telling the host and didn’t even ask for any refund because, as I said, I don’t like trouble. She didn’t even call and ask what happened but I’m actually glad she didn’t because I was so mad I don’t think any good words would have come out of my mouth. I definitely do not recommend staying here if you are a female or with a bunch of female friends for obvious reasons. In fact, just stay in a proper hotel even if it costs a bit more; there’s no point saving some money and risking your own safety.

Don’t Expect Airbnb to Honour your Booking

Posted on

We requested the 19th to 23rd of July for 16 people. The booking (and the money) was accepted. After confirmation, the host messaged that they had mistakenly double booked the property. The host offered us instead a choice of three sets of dates. We contacted everyone in our party to find which dates would suit them. We selected one of the dates (24th – 29th July). As there was an extra night and the property was larger, we asked for confirmation that the price already paid would be honoured. The host confirmed that the price would remain the same and confirmed the booking. We made travel arrangements (not cheap). After all the confirmations, the host said that the property would not be available on the first night – the 24th of July. AirBnB let the host cancel the reservation – without any repercussions – despite the host messing around with us twice! The accommodation looks amazing but don’t expect your booking to be honoured. Proceed with extreme caution – no matter how many are in your party!

CANCELED TO AVOID PSYCHO RENTER – AIRBNB TAKES $100!

Posted on

We accepted a booking from a young college student. Our rates are based upon number of occupants. Upon restating our occupancy rules in our acceptance email, the renter became rude. She wanted to know if we had cameras in the rooms or how else would we verify occupancy? She then stated in her next email that we were rude and had bad customer service skills. Well, that did it for me. If she was going to be that rude, pushy and obnoxious there was no way I would let someone like that into one of my properties. I sent her an email stating that we were not comfortable renting to her now and that she needed to cancel her reservation. She went ballistic after that. Airbnb penalizes the renter if they want to cancel and they penalize the owners $100 if they want to cancel. So, you see, no one wants to cancel their reservation. Even after I told her that I would refund her entire amount the lady refused to cancel. I told airbnb the situation and told them I WAS UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE GUEST they charged me $100 and said it was my fault for wanting to cancel!!! Airbnb has you by the balls. They control the money. They control the payouts. They control the security deposit. They control the contact information. You have all of the risk and they make all of the money. What a scam!!!! I never go thru this with VRBO because I am in control.

Hosts take advantage of family w pregnant wife – no refund for simple mistake!

Posted on

Husband & Pregnant wife +19 month old baby girl look forward to a last holiday before newborn arrives…… WRONG!  It was a disaster staying through Airbnb with FABIO & CHRISTINA. Looking at the beautiful photos of Byron Bay & all the options on airbnb, I booked ahead looking forward to a well earned rest before our new born arrives in December.  We headed down from Queensland to New South Wales forgetting about the 1 hour time difference(NSW 1 hour ahead). We were asked to let them know when we would be arriving so I said 2 pm, approximately, when we arrived there was no one there as we had the times mixed up! No big deal I thought just an error in judgement. When I called Fabio, I asked when we could be given access, he started getting angry & did not seem to want to remedy a solution. Eventually I passed him onto my wife to let her work out a solution!   We managed to get him to agree to come to the houses an hour later.   If he had explained/communicated that we had to be there at a specific time as he would be waiting specifically for us, then I could have understood his annoyance, but he did not!  His partner I guess, Christina, was there and did all of the talking, he said nothing, not an apology, not a peep, which I did think was odd after he had been so angry on the phone. We all stood in the kitchen, I checked the room out, It was ok, the bathroom was ok, then I thought that I had better check that the bathroom was just for us.  The reply was “no it’s a shared house with 4 room”, & the kitchen to was shared. I explained that was not what I was expecting as my understanding was that we had booked a self contained unit!!  Christina then offered for us to cancel/ not stay & “she would not be offended” along with the fact that she did not have the money, Airbnb had it, & we could get it back from them if we wanted.  I gave my pregnant wife the option to make the decision to stay or not.  She chose the latter. We said goodbye & left, trusting what we were told regarding the monies/refund! We were left at 5pm Halloween evening on the side of the street scrambling around frantically to find accommodation, we ended up sleeping in a caravan/ mobile unit, not the holiday we were expecting sadly.  Then we moved out and stayed another 2x nights somewhere else. When I returned to Brisbane I followed up with airbnb & Fabio & Christina for our refund…………. We are told by airbnb that Fabio & Christina HAD received the monies in full & they could/would do nothing as they could not force them to give the money back as per verbal agreement…… When I asked the Rude host Fabio he said that it was all our fault & we should have gone online on the day we left to get our monies back!! Fabio & Christina are using airbnb to scam/rip off money out of unsuspecting customers who do not know their rights & are lied to in order to take advantage of in this kind of situation! I wonder how many other people have been caught by this couple & others using the same tactics. In the end I gave them the option to play fair & give the money back or I would have no choice but as my duty to warn there people wanting a cheap holiday NOT TO BOOK THROUGH AIRBNB. “BUYER BEWARE”, THE OLD SAYING GOES! IF SOMETHING SEEMS IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE THEN IS PROBABLY IS! A VERBAL AGREEMENT FROM HOSTS MEANS NOTHING, AND AIRBNB WILL DO NOTHING TO HELP YOU!

Host Account Hacked and NO Help from Airbnb

Posted on

I started hosting a few weeks ago with Air BNB. Since then my account has been taken over by hackers, bank account details changed. I can’t login to my own account anymore. I have not received payment for my first guest who left already and I don’t know what to do about the next guest who is due Wednesday. I have called C Service every day for a week but they can’t help, only note my issues. I received one mail saying they would look into it and since then I keep getting emails that my bank account has changed, email etc again.. My account has now been closed and my listing removed from the internet. The communication from AirBNB has been atrocious, ie. leaving me hanging with no answers and not even the decency to reply to my 15 emails. I will be filing a police report and contacting my lawyer on Monday.

Tropical cozy villa was a tropical cozy dump

Posted on

The only good thing about this villa is its location (provided you like noise and feeling unsafe given it’s located down a dark alley with no security).
I booked Villa Rumah Damai for the month of July, having had a number of emails back and forth with the owner’s wife on the Airbnb website. After the owner assured me that it was an ‘amazing’ villa to take my toddler and confirming that aside from a staircase and stairs to the pool that it was ‘family friendly’, the beautiful photos of the villa had me sold so I stupidly paid the owners directly – as per their suggestion – therefore losing any (non-existent) rights I would’ve had on Airbnb(no doubt a ploy used by the owners to ensure they can keep your money no matter what).
Upon moving into the villa after the villa manager was an hour late collecting us (leaving us waiting in the humidity with no contact or explanation) it was evident just how old the villa was. I was shown around and everything in the website photos that appears ‘white’ – linen, mosquito nets, day bed etc – is actually a dull, dusty grey. The photos are incredibly deceptive, so don’t be fooled! It soon became VERY clear that the owners keep this villa in a state so it’s barely rentable and that’s it. The kitchen tap wasn’t just dripping, it was streaming water. A number of light bulbs were blown. The fridge freezer was frozen over. The lock on the upstairs bedroom broken (and I specifically asked about lockable bedrooms PRIOR to booking the villa of which I was assured that “all bedrooms have lockable doors”). There was no advertised wifi (told by the villa manager to ‘use next door’s’ which involved standing in a corner, holding phones up to the ceiling). The toaster was DOA and the kettle looked circa 1974 given the build up of calcium inside and the foul, floaty white particles in the consequent boiled water. The real kicker occurred after a night of rain when the pool flooded and filled with dirt. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the pool filter was working, but of course, it too was broken. The pool was unusable for 6 days with maintenance people appearing in the backyard at all hours (they had been given a key without my knowledge and appeared one morning, banging around at 07:30!) coming to ‘look’ at the pool. And more often than not, that’s exactly what they did. They would ‘look’ at the pool and then leave. Honestly, this villa was a disaster. I sent ‘nice’ text messages to the villa manager outlining what needed to be fixed (after 4 days of darkness in the upstairs bathroom due to no lightbulbs, I went out and bought lightbulbs myself) then escalated it to emails to the owner’s wife who was – conveniently – traveling. I booked the villa for 28 nights, but after just 12 nights of disruption (maintenance people coming and going, villa manager coming and going, us being asked to be there to let the internet people in, the villa being a filthy, dysfunctional dump etc) disappointment and despair overtook the situation (not to mention having a pool we could not use and no internet) I simply had to move out. Oops, I neglected to mention the giant knife left outside my bedroom door where I was sleeping alone with my 18-month old toddler – of course I freaked out when I found it the next morning given it wasn’t there the night before, but the useless nanny confessed that she left the knife there for the gardener!!! Seriously, what kind of nanny leaves a giant knife where a toddler can get it? Then we discovered the final insult. $320 had been stolen out from under our noses. I personally had IDR 2,200,000 stolen from the safe in the downstairs bedroom and my friend another US$100 from her bag in the upstairs bedroom. Both thefts occurred when we were in the villa and it was being cleaned. We – I had a friend over from Australia visiting us – waited until bank statements and money exchange receipts had been checked before we made such serious accusations, and when we were absolutely sure we’d been robbed, we informed the owner via email. In the email I stated that given the top bedroom had a broken lock, the owners were liable for the theft, to which I received the reply: “I’m afraid the lost [sic] of your money caused by broken lock isn’t relevant either. You mentioned yourself that it happened when the cleaning is being done — meaning the room has to be unlocked, correct? So I don’t see the correlation between two” . This pretty much sums up the attitude of the owners. Out to make a quick buck. I also went to the Balinese police to lodge a report, however, in true Bali style, when everything was said and done, the police were asking more in bribes that we’d actually had stolen!
I had noticed when providing the nanny/cook with money for groceries (she was thrown into the rental deal for free, not that we ever wanted her), that small amounts – $5 here, $2 there – would be unaccounted for in receipts, and I paid the villa manager IDR 60,000 to purchase an Indonesian SIM card for me. When I didn’t return the SIM card with the phone handset she’d lent me – after all, I’d purchased the SIM so it was mine – she slipped up and asked for the SIM, telling me that it was a SIM she’d had for years and lends to all her guests. All these little amounts of money added up and no matter If it’s one dollar or the three-hundred and twenty dollars, it’s NOT their money to take. I have the right to give MY money to whom I choose.
I informed the owner’s wife that I would be leaving the villa 16 nights early based on all the reasons above – stressing the point that the ‘broken’ pool was completely unacceptable given that every time it rained, it became unusable plus reiterating all the other faults and flaws with the dump-of-a-villa – and requested a refund for the nights we did not stay there. The owner’s wife then proceeded to direct me to the cancellation policy of the Airbnb website that I DID NOT book through! So, they kept my money for the nights we did not stay and sent ridiculous emails with ridiculous explanations as to why it was so poorly maintained, going as far as to tell me that my expectations were too high and that I should be grateful for the great monthly rate they gave me ($4,000, originally advertised as $2,500 but they conveniently did a ‘bait-and-switch’ scam on me) So, I ended up having to rent another villa as I had more friends flying out from Australia and this meant I was paying double rent for 16 nights. Not. Happy. About. That.
When I left Indonesia, I sent a pleasant email to Airbnb telling them all that had happened. I admitted that I had been foolish to pay the owners directly, I said that I understood and accept that all my rights in regard to payment/refund were null and void given I had paid the owners directly, I clearly stated that I was not ‘after them’ for a refund, but that I simply wanted them to consider the facts:
– that the villa is an old dump and nothing like the photos they use to advertise it (deception on the host’s part)
– that they are using the Airbnb website to attract business but then taking transactions off of the site (highlighting the fact that Airbnb lose their 18% commission on bookings)
– that they ‘bait-and switch’ by luring renters in with a cheaper rental rate than they actually charge
And all the twit ‘Helen’ on the Airbnb team could focus on was the fact that I (stupidly) took the payment transaction off the Airbnb site:
“Unfortunately the reservation was taken off-site. This is not allowed per our Terms of Service. We can not do anything about payments not made through our secured payment system”
I kept replying and reiterating that I knew they couldn’t do anything about the lost payment and that they should remove the listing given it’s nothing like what is promised on the listing, they (Airbnb) are losing money in commissions/fees via these hosts as they make people pay offline and the hosts are ‘baiting-and-switching’ rental prices. No response from these Airbnb idiots. Oh, but they managed to send through a questionnaire on their ‘service. Ha. What a joke. Just like Airbnb is a joke. Honestly people, DO NOT USE Airbnb. Pay the extra to a property management company/agent who actually has to work for their commission/fees.

 

-Editor’s Note: The story above was written about this airbnb listing www.airbnb.com/rooms/1025330.  Thank you for sharing your experience!

Party city

Posted on

When it comes to AirBNB you can do all the research in the world but you have no way of knowing what the neighbors are going to be like.
My husband and I stayed in an absolutely gorgeous unit and for the first night it was lovely. It was when the second night came around that the problems started. The people that live above the unit we were staying in decided to have a party and at first we weren’t too worried – we aren’t that old, we understand the concept of fun.
It was when it got to the third continuous day and night of partying that I thought I was going to lose my mind. We had two nights left of our stay and I rang AirBNB to see if there was anything they could do to arrange alternate accommodation because the party obviously wasn’t stopping. They wanted me to prove that there had been constant noise.
How silly of me! I should have known to record every second of the last 3 days to “prove” that there was noise. Or perhaps I could have run upstairs with my phone and asked the guys throwing the party to have a quick chat to AirBNB to confirm that they had indeed been partying?
We ended up leaving anyway and staying in a nearby pub just so we could get some sleep for the last 2 nights.
What a bloody joke!

Unexpected Airbnb Guests

Posted on

When we went away last month for an engagement party, we got a few friends together and booked an entire house through AirBNB for three days.

The hosts were in another country so we were pretty shocked to see someone else there when we arrived. Apparently, the son of the hosts decided that him and his mates needed a place to crash and used a spare key to get in.

There was plenty of room but that’s not the point. We paid for an entire house we should have gotten it. It was awkward staying there with complete strangers!

AirBNB were called and they told us they would contact the hosts but we didn’t hear back from them until we got home which was useless. And then they denied our refund. I won’t be making that mistake again.

Thieves

Posted on

I have been an Airbnb host for a couple of years now and up until last month, I was reasonably satisfied.

I had a middle aged couple interested in staying in one of my units and on paper, they seemed like the perfect guests.

That is, until I saw the state of my unit after they left.

Practically everything that wasn’t attached was stolen, including linen, pillows, cutlery and crockery. I was in a bit of a state of shock when I called Airbnb but their reaction to the situation shocked me even more.

They told me that I would need to supply receipts for all the things that had been stolen. Obviously they weren’t expecting me to have them, because when I said I would fax copies through they backtracked and said that there was really nothing they could do.

I will NEVER be putting my property at risk again by hosting through Airbnb. Very bloody disappointed.

blank

AirBNB Hosting NIGHTMARE!

Posted on

I’ve hosted many rooms on AirBNB for almost 2 years and always had a 100% perfect rating, but then I caught two of my guests sneaking in their friend and having him stay with them without telling me. I was annoyed but I very reasonably said that he could just pay $10 per night for the 3 nights he stayed, and we would call it even. They agreed to my face, but secretly they made up a story about mice and bugs being in the condo and filed not one but two complaints directly with airbnb! I thought, wow that’s annoying, so I promptly responded to the claims with lengthy explanations about what REALLY happened, expecting that airbnb would naturally see through the lies of these two young kids. Instead, Airbnb gave the kids HALF of their money back for the three week long reservation even though they had already stayed 18 of the 21 days before making a complaint! Even better than that, the kids damaged both of their rooms, stole money, wine glasses, and other kitchen items, yet when I filed security deposit claims against both of them including photos and witnesses, airbnb literally ignored the claims without so much as a response and refunded the kids 100% of their security deposits!

Long story short, I’ve had enough of terrible service by large companies that just don’t feel like they need to give a crap about their customers, even a long-term host with a perfect rating.