The past couple of days have been a nightmare in dealing with Airbnb. My account had been compromised, but Airbnb never notified me. Someone had even changed my email address, but I was not notified of the change. They recognized that my credit card would need to be verified for security reasons, but again, I was not notified and had to discover this for myself when I went to make a reservation. I complied with everything asked of me to verify my credit card. The message I received after submission was that the issue would be resolved within 24 hours and “there’s nothing else you need to do right now.”

I could not make a reservation until then, even with a different credit card. Due to the popularity of the place I was trying to reserve, I contacted Airbnb to see if I could hold the reservation. They told me I would need to contact the host. They also assured me repeatedly that my case would be marked as “urgent” and that I should “keep the lines open” to hear from someone from the security department shortly. No one from Airbnb contacted me that night. Luckily my host was kind enough to put a temporary hold on my reservation for 24 hours. This was a relief as the issue was not only originally promised to be resolved within 24 hours, but the representative from Airbnb said she was marking it urgent to be expedited.

Nearly 22 hours after my initial submission to have my card verified, I still had not heard from Airbnb. I called two more times and was told that my case had not in fact been marked urgent despite the fact that each time I was incessantly promised by the representative that is would be. My issue was not resolved until 26 hours after my initial submission – two hours after the “regular” maximum wait time and after calls to over a dozen representatives and three supervisors. As I feared, my reservation was no longer available. I immediately searched for another, but the comparable reservations available were now twice as high. I lost about $130 in value of my reservation. Airbnb offered a measly $25 as a “thank you for waiting.”