Tag Archives: airbnb host liar

Airbnb Host Ruins Family Winter Vacation

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We booked our stay through Airbnb to stay in a “well kept house overlooking Park City main street” in Utah. The host was listed as Felicia. I was traveling with my mother, husband, twelve-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. The host acted completely crazy from the beginning. We should have cancelled our trip. We booked from December 28, 2016 to January 4, 2017. We thought we might have to leave a couple days early due to work but because of the cancellation policy we figured we would just have to absorb the extra days or my mother would stay on with my 3-year-old goddaughter. Regardless, the house was supposed to be ours until January 4th. The host said, “well I will get the next owners to come a day early and if you watch my dog I will knock off another day.” We said sure. Then she said there is no phone number for Airbnb and that she couldn’t get them to give us our refund via email. It sounded weird. She said she didn’t get paid from Airbnb until after our stay but she would leave us cash for the refund in the house. After talking to Airbnb they said they pay their hosts the day the renters arrive. The first lie she told; they just started stacking up.

We were driving from Los Angeles. Not a short drive. On our way into Park City, Felicia texted that her dog has major anxiety and can’t be left alone. Because of this, she would keep the dog for a couple days and then wanted to meet with us at her house to hand over her dog for the other four days and the refund, as she had promised. She had told us previously that she was going to Santa Monica the same day that we were arriving and so to be sure to get to the house in a timely fashion to take Jude, her dog, out. Why hadn’t she left to go to California? Why was she still there? She said maybe she should just keep her dog and not give us our refund for either day. We said this would be fine; at this point we were already thinking that this situation was getting weird and we really just wanted to stay clear of her. I do not like dishonest people and we had already caught her in several lies. When we rent we don’t want to meet hosts. We just want to have a family vacation.

We finally arrived at the house and it all began. I had to use the bathroom as soon as we walked in. I sat on the toilet and the whole thing started wobbling; it was not attached to the floor. I am not a big person, so for me to be able to wobble the whole toilet meant it was extremely unstable. I looked at the back of the bathroom door and there was a big hole in it. I immediately took a photo with my phone and texted it to Felicia. She said that she knew about it and that her maid had been there. She also said that the people before us were big partiers and had left the house a mess, so much so that the neighbors had to call the police. Nothing was adding up. She had told me on the phone that she had been at the house since June and needed to get away from the snow. It just went on and on as I went through the house. The house smelled like cigarettes. She said there was no smoking allowed yet there were no fewer than three ashtrays in the kitchen. There were exposed electrical outlets that actually pulled up and out of the floor when someone unplugged something, and both the balcony doors would not lock. We found those two things out because our three-year-old let herself out onto the 3rd floor balcony after we thought the doors were dead bolted. The host said she knew about that too but thought the maid had fixed the door. There was a cracked window pane.

Everything in the house from the floors to every single dish in the kitchen was filthy. Every dish, glass, and utensil was old. It looked like things that had been used in the 1970s. We started cleaning. We stripped the beds and the master bed still had clothes on it: a black shirt, pants, and undershirts. We got into the house at about 4:00 PM on the 28th and were cleaning until midnight. Nothing ever felt clean. Even the things we washed came out with hair all over them. The gas valve in the fireplace was all eroded. The master bath shower didn’t drain so you couldn’t take a shower very long or it would overflow. We documented everything and contacted both Airbnb and the host. The host offered to send over a handyman and she wanted to come with him. Why was the host trying to get in the rental so badly? This was the second time she tried to come in while we were there; it was extremely intrusive. We had just arrived. We really wanted to just have a family vacation. She had been there for months. Why were we supposed to wait around for the repairman and then the repairs on our dime?

We took pictures and sent them to both the host and to Airbnb. We said why don’t you just refund us our money $4700.00 (not cheap) and we will leave. Our vacation had already been ruined. We were uncomfortable and did not feel that it was a safe environment for our three-year-old or our twelve-year-old. They said we did not have enough documentation and would do nothing. The host called us liars even though she admitted to knowing about most of the things we documented. She harassed us by texting me constantly not only through Airbnb email but through her personal email. The final straw was on New Year’s Eve when my husband went to get wood out of the garage. He found mouse droppings and saw a mouse scurry towards the door into the house.

We left New Year’s Day and drove twelve hours back to Los Angeles. We had paid for the house until January 4th. I knew the host wanted to come back to the house because she had lied about leaving town. She knew that we might be leaving on January 2nd. She would not give us a dime back so I told her that she couldn’t return to the house until the 4th. She called me January 2nd like clockwork knowing that we may be leaving early. She called saying that it was obvious we had already left because there were no tire tracks out the garage and it had been snowing. How did she know that? Had she been watching us? When I said it was none of her business whether we were there or not because we had paid until January 4th. She called again lying about a window being open and that she wanted to go into the house and close it. There were no windows open. You couldn’t even open the windows. We were afraid to open the master window because of the cracked window pane. Which was the window she claimed was open?

She said she was going in with a police escort. She didn’t bring the police. She just went in and stayed at her house while we paid for it. That is theft; we paid for the house until January 4th. Why would she go inside and not at least give us back the money for the three days she is staying in the house? Airbnb said they would not respond to any of our questions or concerns anymore and that as far as they were concerned, the case was closed; they would not be refunding any money to us. We talked to three customer service representatives, all to no avail. Airbnb and Felicia are thieves. I was traveling with my mother, husband, twelve-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. This host is actually trying to blame all these things on us now. We started documenting problems within five minutes of entering the property. How could any of these problems be caused by us? She called us liars and said that she is putting us on some sort of renters blacklist. We have been manipulated, scammed, lied to and treated worse than I have ever been treated. We have been coming to Park City for winter break for ten years and used to love it there. I do not think we will ever be back. Felicia and Airbnb have not only ruined our vacation but our tradition.

Does anyone know of any recourse? We are so upset.

Albuquerque Host Takes Advantage of Widow

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I’m a widow who made a reservation to see family in New Mexico. As the sole caretaker for my brother, who is a disabled Vietnam Vet, I got hung up when he needed an operation at the VA in Georgia. It came up suddenly and I ended up having to contact Douglas, my soon-to-be host. I apologized heartily, told him I didn’t want to cancel, that I’d be back in New Mexico as I am there 3-4 times a year, and asked him what I should do. He told me I should cancel immediately and perhaps get some of my money back. I did as he said and I got nothing back. He refused my request for a refund of my $530, lied by saying he suggested I should have simply changed the date, and gave me a song and dance when I asked him why he asked me to cancel if he would have changed the dates. In reality he just wanted to keep the money I took five months to save to see family. When I asked more about how to work it out and expressed my dissatisfaction, he suggested I simply contact Airbnb. I will never rent from this man again (he has multiple properties) on my many yearly trips to Albuquerque and will do my best to make sure no one else has the same bad experience that I’ve had. What a total disappointment. He is a liar and a thief. I trusted this man. I suppose it was because the other Airbnb hosts I’ve had were so wonderful. I have documentation of my reason to cancel and it’s hard to know someone would take advantage of a widow. I do not recommend Douglas Lopez or his properties to anyone. Avoid him if at all possible.

Hosts Pressure and Lie to Guests to Cancel Bookings

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I am relatively new to Airbnb, but I’m already sick and tired of it. I have had two experiences from hosts who wanted to cancel the reservation, but are too disorganised and lazy to do so more than a week in advance. They concoct fake excuses to pressure the guest into cancelling the reservation themselves, saving the host paying a cancellation fee. My first experience was with Evelyne Chiarro in Saint-Quentin-la-Chabanne. About a week before I was going to stay, she asked me If I had a car. I replied that I didn’t, so she edited her profile description to say that a car was mandatory to reach her address, and if I didn’t have one, I should cancel. She then refused to give directions to her house, and ignored all my other emails. I requested she cancel, but she ignored that. Because it was so close to the non-refundable deadline, I had to cancel the reservation myself.

My second bad experience was with an Agnes Pingkan in Groningen. A week before I was due to stay, she sent me an email saying that she didn’t live at the address any more, she thought she had deleted the Airbnb account, and she was surprised it was still accepting bookings. I emailed her five times to cancel my booking, but she ignored them so I had to do it myself. Her room is still listed on the website. Needless to say, complaints to Airbnb were ignored too. Both these times caused me a lot of stress and I had to book expensive hotels in the area because of the short notice given. This makes me distrust Airbnb because I don’t know if my bookings are going to be honoured right up until the last minute. Unless Airbnb deletes these user accounts and cracks down on this sort of fraud, I can only recommend people avoid this website in the future.

We Didn’t Clean Host’s House = Negative Feedback

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For my 40th Birthday we rented a house on Mallorca, Spain on Airbnb. The total for three nights was  1400 euros, including a 150 euro cleaning fee. I spent three nights there with family and a few friends. The stay was wonderful, but the beds were dirty and smelly. I didn’t report this fact to Airbnb, as we were overall lucky with the accommodation. Instead of giving negative feedback to the host, I just didn’t leave any feedback. After 14 days we found out the host had left following feedback for me:

“My guest, his family and friends celebrated a birthday party at the house. They were very nice and the communication was easy so we decided to offer them a late check out. Unfortunately, they didn’t invest this extra time in tidying up the house a little bit, as we found it very dirty and untidy. This is definitely not the way we consider it should be when you leave a property.”

The host offered the late check out, because this was more convenient to him. Also he had someone inspect the house at check out and the person said everything was ok. I felt very offended, giving my money to someone, and paying 150 euros for the cleaning. And he complains and expects me to have cleaned his house instead. If it was shared accommodation, things would have been different, but this was a commercial house rental. I wrote an email to Airbnb, asking them to delete my first review. They never replied, so I cancelled my account with Airbnb and I am note ever coming back.

Noisy Dog: Not What We Expected From Airbnb

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I wish we had been told the next door neighbour had a barking dog. We could not sit out in the back as the dog stood at the fence constantly barking. Opening the back door or having a conversation inside set the dog off early one morning. I opened the door and it barked so much. I tried to make it stop, but it woke up the other guests into house. I went to the clothesline and it stood looking over the fence constantly barking. When we first arrived we tried talking to it; usually dogs want to know you but there’s no way the owner tried to tell us how stressful it is being around it. It’s a bloody cattle dog – he has no idea how cruel he is to it. Paying money for a retreat, being rounded up by a cattle dog, and then having to clean the fridge, washing machine, a lint filter full of animal hair, and an unusable BBQ full of cockroaches made it one week of misery. From the last Airbnb, I know there are different hygiene standards but this place did not meet mine. Walking in to find caked stains in the fridge wasn’t a good start, the dog didn’t stop barking, and the host insulted my 19-year-old daughter asking her many kids she had.

Paris Host Trying to Steal Security Deposit

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My bad luck began when I found a really charming apartment in Paris on Airbnb and cancelled my hotel at booking.com. Apparently my host was very sweet, but time and again proved to be greedy. She demanded money for everything including early check in, a crib, and even an extra sofa bed which was listed in the property details already. Anyway, I paid and stayed there. I left yesterday and she knew I was in Paris for few more hours after check out and didn’t contact me at all. Now she opened a request for damaged goods demanding 500 euros. And what she listed doesn’t even exist in her apartment. Now she says her maid took pictures which she hasn’t shared yet, but reading stories here I’m not very optimistic. Should I block my credit card already? I have another booking coming up with Airbnb in two days for which I have already paid in advance. I’m not sure what to do.

Host Didn’t Deliver on Property and Refuses Refund

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It was my first time booking a place on Airbnb and I thought everything was so simple and easy. I made a reservation for seven nights over Christmas. The reservation was confirmed by Airbnb and I was sent contact information for the host. On the day of arrival I still hadn’t heard from my host so I tried to contact him without any luck. I finally got through to his phone and his first words were that I couldn’t have made a reservation because the room was already booked for three months, something that was apparently Airbnb’s fault, not his. Anyway, he wasn’t even in the same city but said to give him some time (this was after 4:00 PM local time on the day I was to check in) and he’d make something work. He called me back about an hour later and said that the room was available and that as long as I got to the house by 6:00 PM someone with a key would meet me there. Perfect, I thought.

I arrived at the property by 5:30 PM and the people there (there were two students) had no clue what I was talking about. Obviously, the host hadn’t contacted them. The house was dirty and the room for rent was barren; the bed wasn’t even made up. I told the host, over text, that I wasn’t impressed but I would still take the room if they could get it ready for a guest. The host decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and suggested I find somewhere else. I thought, “Could I find something at the last minute on the night i want to check in?” I did, but my problems with the host continued to grow. I asked for a refund and the idiot just repeated what his policy said, even though he never even delivered on his accommodation promise (availability and readiness for use). I’ve submitted a complaint and now have to wait for the host to get back to me before Airbnb will step in. There’s got to be more protection for guests when hosts misrepresent themselves and their property. I want all of my money back and this idiot to be blacklisted by Airbnb so no one else has the pleasure of dealing with such a corrupt person.

Sometimes, All That Matters at Airbnb is Wifi

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Let’s start a hashtag #airdoesntcare (I just did on Twitter). Beware Airbnb. My host lied on his listing about several things but the Internet was the biggest problem for us. We are a party of four business associates in Costa Rica on business and have already been here a month. We moved to this place on December 13th and immediately realized the host and his property caretaker had lied about the Internet connectivity (among other things). The caretaker also lied about speaking English. We told him the night we arrived that we would leave. We stayed two days while looking for a new place. Our booking was for 32 days. Airbnb refunded me less than $250 and refused to escalate our case, regardless of the extensive and very specific email trail of problems and obvious lies documented.

Here is one of the first emails:

Your listing says you have Internet and wifi. Internet means you are supposed to have a working router. There was no router at all, and you would have known that. But we came prepared for the internet challenges in CR. We all have Kolbi chips in our phones but could only get service if we stood in your yard. Even that didn’t work all the time; the service went in and out. We also bought a Claro “hotspot” box to use in Costa Rica a month ago. That usually works when the Kolbi doesn’t but it did not work at your place. We had no service at all. We were depending on your Internet availability which you listed on your Airbnb profile. Also, when we first met Jacinto your caretaker, he said he didn’t speak English. My son speaks a little Spanish so he tried to communicate. Jacinto pretended not to understand but conveyed to us through mostly hand gestures that there was no Internet available. He pointed all around the neighborhood, indicating there was just bad service in the area. In fact, there was no router at all in the house.

Then today Jacinto called me and spoke perfect English (what a miracle – the guy must be a genius!) and said that we could use the neighbor’s wifi, providing the login name and password. This is not acceptable for business people. Even that option didn’t work; the neighbor probably changed the password. Why did you lie to us? We had to make plans last night to find a new place. Sorry, but we cannot stay there. We are working here. I had to move to a hotel last night because I had meetings all day today via Skype. I can’t sit in the middle of your yard getting some sporadic wifi signal. I am still in the hotel tonight. But it is very expensive here – during the very high season – and I have to move tomorrow because they are booked up. This problem has cost me and my group a lot of time and money. I rented your house based on what you said in the listing and we don’t like being told one thing and then – after we move in – being told something else. You also said in the listing that the neighborhood was quiet. The boys were there and told me it was very loud last night – some sort of major appliance tear-down situation with a truck arriving at 6:00 AM dumping dozens of refrigerators and washing machines in the yard next door for them to dismantle. Are you kidding me? If I would have been told this, I would have cancelled the reservation.

The bottom line is you shouldn’t trust hosts or Airbnb to make things right. Rent with them and you take your chances.

Little White Lies Lead to Big Bad Airbnb

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I booked my very first (and very last) Airbnb reservation in October 2016 and have had one problem after another with it. When I was first charged, the Airbnb system calculated the total amount and applied it to my credit card. Soon after that I was contacted by the host, John, and was told that the amount was not enough since there would be three adults staying in two rooms. I pointed out to him that I paid the amount that I was given as per Airbnb’s calculations, that I had entered all information correctly, and if there was a mistake in his listing then it was his mistake, not mine. He kept coming back and saying that it hadn’t been listed correctly and he was losing money over it. I finally agreed to pay him an additional $135 for the 7-night stay and that I would give it to him in cash when I arrived on December 3rd. I didn’t know at the time that this isn’t allowed by Airbnb. He contacted them and tried unsuccessfully to fix his listing.

Four days before my sons and I were expected to arrive he texted me and said that Airbnb needed to speak to me; he gave me a phone number to call. I spoke to a representative and was told John wanted an extra $135 and an additional $100 cleaning fee. I declined, saying I had made a deal with him for $135 and was not going to pay another $100 to clean one bedroom. He finally accepted that and I thought we were good to go. My sons and I arrived at the property around 7:00 PM on the 3rd and were greeted by John and another man by the name of Tom. So far so good. The next morning we also met another man by the name of Emilio. It shouldn’t have been a problem but I had been told that my sons and I were going to be the only guests during our stay; it turned out the other two people were long-term guests.

In all fairness, the home was as described in the listing, and fairly clean. John even gave us a healthy fresh continental breakfast each morning. However, when I booked he told me we would have a queen bed and a king with ensuite bath. What we ended up with was two queen beds, one per room. Of course my sons were adamant about not sharing a bed with their mother or each other. Two grown men will not share a queen bed, brothers or not. So my oldest son, who is 46, ended up sleeping on the floor with a comforter and a pillow. On the third morning my youngest who was using the bed came to me and showed me a bug he had found on the comforter that my oldest had used on the floor the night before and had thrown back up on the bed. It was a live bed bug!

I took the bug and showed it to the host and he acted and stated that he was totally shocked that we had found a bug. After getting down on hands and knees and searching both rooms we found solid indications that there was a bed bug problem in the house that had been previously treated. So we went to talk to John and his response was to suggest that my sons and I had brought them in on our suitcases. My oldest son pointed out that since there were so many dead bugs in the rooms around the baseboards it was impossible for them to “fall” out of our suitcases and stick themselves to the baseboards. John then proceeded to blame the bed bugs on his previous guests. The gall of the man knew no bounds.

It later came out in conversations that included Tom, that the house had indeed been treated for the bugs and that Terminex had said the infestation was under control. This had happened two days before we arrived. John had never said one word to me in all of our conversations in the previous month about having bugs in his home. This was the biggest lie of omission of all. Just an aside: we also found other irregularities during our bug hunt. There was marijuana in one of the drawers in one bedroom and a container on the dresser that contained multiple brands of a large number of condoms. We spent the remainder of our day spraying our suitcases with spray that Terminex had left at the house and several hours washing and drying our entire vacation wardrobe.

In the small amount of fairness that I feel I can give, John did contact Airbnb and they refunded every dollar I had been charged. John paid a local resort for accommodations for the remainder of our stay. The downside to all of this is that Airbnb listed the reservation as cancelled by me. Hence I have no way to leave a review of my experience. I would have been fair about it, most likely would not have mentioned all the times John lied, and definitely would have given him credit for paying for our hotel. I don’t feel it is fair that Airbnb didn’t give me the opportunity to leave any kind of review at all. I guess that’s their attempt to protect their business name. I will never use them again as I feel they have no oversight on the condition of their guests’ homes or rooms and really don’t seem to care.

Airbnb Hoarders: No Room for Anything

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We arrived at the apartment in Montreal at four o’clock in the afternoon, as had been arranged. We had trudged through a snowstorm and were looking forward to what was described in reviews as a clean and comfortable apartment. What we found was that absolutely no provision had been made for guests. In fact, we thought at one point that perhaps a mistake had been made. There were boots and shoes everywhere, with no room for our own. The wardrobes were full of the young woman’s clothes with no space (no hangers) for our things. Every surface in the apartment was covered with the owner’s trinkets. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was overflowing with no possibility of putting anything of ours away. We had to remove items that were left on the toilet seat and on the toilet tank just to be able to accommodate a few of our own items. We’ve never liked the habit of Airbnb guests (or hosts) leaving opened containers of food in cupboards and fridges. In this case, the fridge, freezer, and cupboards were full. The bottles of liquour in the cupboard might have been for us to use but we weren’t sure that we were supposed to partake. Personal items were left in the apartment with no appearance of expecting guests. The money left on top of one of the dressers wasn’t even tempting – just one more example of the negligence of the hosts. If someone shows up at the door tonight offering to remove dresses, shoes, lipstick, booze, frozen bagels, etc, I don’t think I’ll want to speak to them.