Tag Archives: airbnb robbery

Airbnb Puts Lives at Risk when Everyone has the Keys

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We arrived in Paris at 9:00 AM on November 22nd. We arrived at Urban Flats around noon and stored our luggage with them. They assured us they would be in a secure location. We returned at 4:00 PM and checked into our prepaid Airbnb rental. We had eight people in our group: five adults and three children under 7 years old. That night my son and daughter in law decide they would sleep on the sofa bed in the living room.

My son awoke to someone opening the front door. He spoke out and the person closed the door and left. My son got up, locked the door again and place furniture in front of the door. We thought maybe it was a mistake and went out sightseeing at 10:00 AM. We made sure the door was properly locked.

We returned at 6:00 PM. When I went to my room, I noticed my converter plugs and iPad were missing. We then realized everyone had all their electronics (three iPads, one computer, one smart watch) and chargers missing. Upon further search, we found that all the jewelry was missing. In fact, a carry-on bag was missing and I believe they used it to remove our property.

We went to the Urban Flats office and reported the break-in. The employee went to our apartment and found the spare apartment key in the lock box by the front door. He said that should not have there. He then proceeded to lie to us: first, he said he called the police, and next we had to walk to the police station. At first he said he notified his boss, then he said he could not call him. Lie after lie. In fact, he said we should not worry since travel insurance would cover it. He assumed we had insurance and could not understand why we were upset.

We did file a police report, but they said they could not help us. We called Airbnb and filed a report. The next day they acted as if we never reported anything. We personally notified the owners of the apartment. They were helpful and gave us a full refund so we could go to a hotel, which turned out to be more than we planned on spending. The first time we called, the Airbnb agent said they would give us $250/person for a hotel and then the next day we were told that was not possible.

As far as I am concerned, Airbnb put our lives at risk. This was an inside job since someone provided the robbers with the building code and key box code. I plan on posting on every social media website that Urban Flats is corrupt and dangerous. Airbnb has been no help. I plan on seeking legal counsel due to the fact that eight lives were put at risk.

Host Guarantee Means Nothing to Airbnb

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I will be talking about the devastating and very much time consuming that I have been through since August 1st until today. Almost 40 tiring days have passed with no result but that feeling of being very much ignored with many saved responses by the case manager from the resolution center remain.

I had a guest who robbed my apartment, taking an expensive Canon camera 50mm f/1.2 lens and an ironing machine. I overlooked the ironing machine and the fact that she had left permanent stains on the bed cover which I bought new right and I considered them collateral damage after the one-month reservation.

However, the 50mm lens was $1,472. Thus I have reported this incident to Airbnb support center on the phone and by messaging from August 1st until the 10th. I talked with tens of agents and case managers and I sent them all the photos and documents that they needed. They told me they would contact me soon.

Anyway, this was a lie from all of them and my first experience with such an incident. On the 11th of August I called again and a case manager told me that I had to request a refund from the guest who robbed my property. I have done so and she denied it, so I got the resolution center involved.

They automatically send you an email that it should take seven days to have your case resolved. It took until today, which is 25 days. This required all the patience that I had. I sent all the documents that they requested with every tiny detail and I waited and waited. Then they requested a police report which was a very strange thing to ask for after 25 days (I had four guests in my apartment since then). Why didn’t they request it when I called, messaged, and reported this incident?

I managed to go the police station and told them every tiny detail. They gave me the police report. By the end of that day I thought Airbnb would honor their Host Guarantee. I then resent all the photos, conversations, and documents.

Since then the case manager took five days to respond to my emails. He emailed me very strangely as if he knew nothing about my case. He said – and I’m quoting from his mail – “Thanks for your response. In order for an incident to be eligible for Airbnb assistance, the reported damages must have been caused by a guest or an invitee of the guest. You are free to pursue reimbursement from your guest directly. However, per this requirement, this case is not eligible for reimbursement. You may review the Host Guarantee terms here. If you have other questions about the Host Guarantee and what is covered feel free to respond.”

As if I didn’t involve them after I requested the refund from the guest directly. I emailed him back and he didn’t answer of course. Then I called Airbnb and after a very long conversation – thirty minutes – in which I had to tell the whole story from the first detail, I requested that they change the case manager who is investigating my case. He responded shortly by email: “After a thorough review, we have decided to uphold our original decision. We determined that a payout could not be processed in this instance. We consider this decision final.”

I will unfortunately be un-listing my Airbnb apartment. Although I met with many great guests, I would never have done this if I hadn’t been that ignored.

Men Break in at Night while we are Asleep

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This summer, my girlfriend and I stayed at an Airbnb in the South of France for three nights: a one bedroom apartment in the heart of the old city of Aix-en-Provence. We arrived around 6:00 PM. The young guy who greeted us hadn’t finished cleaning up the place yet, so we just left our bags there and went out for dinner.

Fast forward two days. It was around midnight and we had just gotten back to the apartment after a long day. We went to bed, exhausted. I woke up around 9:00 AM, walked into the living room to grab my laptop from the couch – no laptop. I looked around; no phone either. Maybe I left it in my bag? No bag. My girlfriend’s bag was also missing.

I noticed large black footsteps on the tile floor (looked like a construction worker’s boots). I noticed that the window was wide open. My girlfriend still had her cell phone; she kept it in the bedroom during the night. We did our best to stay calm and focused.

We called the host who said he would be there in about an hour (he lives in neighboring Marseille). Meanwhile we went to the local police office to file a report. When we got back, the host was there, searching for any damage to his property. At first he said it didn’t look like there was a break-in. I showed him the footsteps.

Then he blamed us for leaving the window open. I pointed out to him that it had been 110 degrees out, that we were up on the second floor, and that the apartment had no AC. I also pointed out to him that the other window in the living room was broken, and also the window in our bedroom (though that one has bars). He shrugged and blamed the damage on previous Airbnb guests.

Then his tone changed a bit. I think he realized that we were still in shock and at a loss about what to do next. He admitted that when we called him he suspected we were lying, but that he believed us now. He assured us that all would be taken care of, that he had insurance, as does Airbnb. That we would get compensated for our stolen goods (computers, wallets, bags, phone, etc.). He promised to help us as long as we didn’t mention anything about the break-in in our review.

Awkward pause. Then, more gently, he asked us to please check out as soon as possible, since new guests are coming, and he needed to clean the apartment. Another awkward pause. My girlfriend reminded me that we still had lots of stuff to take care of (calling our banks, credit cards, my phone company, getting cash somehow…) so we may as well head out anyway.

Once we started packing all our stuff, she also reminded me that he was a Superhost so he must know how to handle everything with the insurance. I expressed to him my concern about the next guests – maybe the burglar is targeting this apartment? He reassured me it was all fine, and that he would just tell the next guests to lock the windows before they go to bed.

Once we were out on the street, all the admin stuff took us longer, and we ended up having to stay in Aix for one more night. We called the Airbnb host in Avignon (the next town on our trip, where we had another booking for three nights) to tell him what had happened, and that we would only arrive the next day. He said no problem, but that he must charge us still for that unused night. We understand. It’s not his fault that we were victims of a break-in, after all.

It is at this moment that our vacation officially ends (not on paper, as we are still in France, but for all other practical matters) and the saga with Airbnb’s customer service begins. It was the usual progression of “we will call you back” then “please send us the police report for the Nth time” then “please send us all the receipts for the stolen items for the Nth time” then “sorry we can’t help you” then “we can offer you $100 as compensation” then finally “we can offer you $500 out of our goodwill and the case is now closed.”

It took three weeks of constant calling to get to that point. $500 barely covers 10% of what was stolen (not to mention the stay itself, the extra night in Aix, and the lost night in Avignon). That aside, what shocked me most was how little Airbnb seemed to care about our overall experience and about the safety of future guests at that specific Airbnb.

The host, on his end, was always “on vacation” or “busy” when we tried to reach him. He never filed a claim with his insurance (does he even have insurance, we began to wonder). He continued to rent the apartment to guests nonstop through the Airbnb platform.

I became a little paranoid: who knows how many times that apartment has gotten broken into? Who knows how many other former guests now wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about a man breaking into their apartment? Airbnb knows, but not the rest of the Airbnb community, because we were cheated into not mentioning it in our review. I’m angry with myself for agreeing to that deal. I’m angry with Airbnb for not caring about anything or anyone excerpt for their own profit and growth. Let the truth be known.

UPDATE: Now at nearly four weeks since the incident, we managed to get a hold of the host. He began by apologizing that it didn’t work out with his insurance in the end. He assured us that he did his absolute best. The reason the claim was rejected? We left the window open.

We told him we had done our research on the topic – that an open window voids insurance in France only if the break-in happens on a first floor/garden level apartment. He insisted that his insurance told him otherwise. We asked for the type of insurance policy he has, but he refused to tell us.

Finally, clearly angry at this point, he told us the name of the insurance company, then hung up the phone. We tried calling him back, but he wouldn’t pick up.

We then called the insurance company he had just mentioned, gave them his name and address, explained the situation, and they informed us that a claim was never made. They also told us the type of insurance policy has has: the most basic policy (what in France they call “Assurance Habitation”), which only covers his own belongings in the case of a break-in. Definitely not the insurance policy one should have for a full-time Airbnb rental.

As we had suspected by this point, his whole promise of helping us get reimbursed for our stolen belongings was a charade – a way to manipulate us into not mentioning the break-in in our review during high-season.

As for Airbnb? They know the full story. We’re still waiting for the promised email from their elusive case manager.

Robbed in Lisbon Apartment, Only Hosts Helped

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We have just come back from a nightmare of a vacation and only sharing this with you all so everyone can be safe and secure themselves as everyone is traveling for the summer holidays.

We were in Lisbon June 10th-14th. On June 12th as we returned from our day out, we unlocked the apartment door. To our shock, we had been robbed. All valuables, personal belongings including clothes, shoes, purses, etc… everything of ours was gone.

The police didn’t cooperate as we were tourists and Airbnb customer care did not bother to respond to our urgent calls until the afternoon of the 13th. There was not a scratch or any forced entry in the apartment and the 13th being a public holiday in Lisbon we could not reach the right authorities. So it was well planned.

Travel insurance has shrugged themselves off our liability as it was a theft in a foreign jurisdiction at an apartment and not on us in person. Airbnb stopped responding to any of our communications as soon as we were out of Lisbon. We are calling them but not getting any conclusive assistance.

I’m only sharing so everyone is much aware of your belongings and be safe as we Indians tend to travel with cash and still believe in foreigners and their safety procedures, while they seem worse than one can imagine.

Airbnb has a community center for its hosts to discuss their issues and grievances. I want you to write your grievances with the hosts or any experience with Airbnb as a guest. Together we can make a difference.

I have managed to restart the correspondence after much pursuance with Airbnb since June 18th. I’m still pursuing the matter with Airbnb and to write a review for the host on Airbnb. The hosts are the only who helped us with our language barrier and pursued the police to lodge a complaint four hours after the incident by going to the police station.

Valuables Stolen from “Safe” Paris Airbnb

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My mom and I just went trough the worst trip ever, less than a week from her birthday. The story goes: I left from Berlin (Germany) and she from São Paulo (Brazil) to meet in Paris to spend Mother’s Day together and also because it was my university trip.

The host’s apartments had two doors with passcodes, one right off the street and a second that accessed the stairs. On our third night, Monday, May 13th, we returned from our day out, typed the passcode in and to our surprise it didn’t work; for some reason they changed it. We tried to get in touch with the host countless time through my mother’s phone and… nothing.

After a while we decided to check into a hotel, and finally she answered saying that she sent the new passcode through the Airbnb platform. Since my cellphone had been stolen on our first day I wasn’t able to see that message, and she didn’t make much effort to confirm if we had received it.

Anyway, after having been locked outside the house, the next morning we got back to the house, had some breakfast and I left for university (the main purpose of the trip). After that, my friends and I went to get my mother for lunch, around 1:00 PM. We enjoyed our time together and the girls and I had to go back to our university duties, while my mom got back to the Airbnb, around 3:00 PM.

On the bus, my friend turned to me saying my mom was calling. I answered and she said “Come back now! Someone broke in the apartment, the lock is broken, they took my computer, your Macbook, please come!”

We spent the afternoon with the police. I called Airbnb for help and assistance; they didn’t even offer help to call or communicate with the police, same thing goes for the host. Airbnb didn’t assist at all. The next morning we went to the police station to do the report all by ourselves. The day of the robbery they also didn’t offer any help – nada.

It’s been a week now, and the Airbnb team hasn’t given us any response to our loss. We got in touch with them a bunch of times, and they still haven’t taken any responsibility on how to resolve this situation, not even the police report they asked for. Furthermore, talking with the neighbours we found out that the building has been broken in before, about a week before we got there.

How can they make this kind of place available for us to stay? Additionally, this is not what the company sells. They promote “great experiences, not only a home”, but how can you feel at home and have a great experience if you’re not safe? And if the company who sells that idea doesn’t even help you when you need it?

Malicious Damage, Drugs, Theft, and a Lot More

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We have just had guests who booked our house to set up a $60,000 theft from a nearby property. We met them when they moved in and immediately felt they were suspect. You know how your hair stands on end when you know it’s just not right?

We were straight onto the phone to Airbnb, who assured me they were verified guests. Unbeknownst to me, one hour before my call to Airbnb they had received a report from the house these people had just left where they did $20,000 damage in a drug craze. Never once did they contact me to advise what potentially could happen at my house with these bad guests.

They left us when the police raided the house. The male stole $60,000 worth of jewelry, firearms, and ammunition. He also stole two 10-week-old pups to sell for more drugs, and kept it all at our house. They stole from us, did not follow the house rules, and Airbnb never let us know they had done this at the past two houses.

They have been gone for a week, changed their profile picture, and are no doubt staying at someone else’s house doing damage and stealing property. Airbnb knows the police are involved but have done nothing. It’s a farce.

Now I am trying to get the security bond back. Two calls and one email every day with being told it is being escalated and nobody has contacted us. I posted a review saying I would not have them back, but it has never been published on their profile; other hosts can’t see what they are really like.

Do not ever trust the Airbnb reviews: they are fabricated. If it does not feel right, do not let guests stay. It’s wrong, illegal, and unsafe. What else is Airbnb hiding while they continue to take our money?

Airbnb Can Cancel Whatever They Want at any Time

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I had been renting out rooms using Airbnb for about three years and had very good ratings. Five months ago, an Airbnb guest left an external door unlocked and my house was robbed. In order to make it safer for me and my guests I installed an external security camera system which is very common at many accommodation places in Australia. I informed the Australian Government of an Airbnb guest overstaying their visa.

Airbnb responded with limited information notifying me they will lop $180 off my next guest. Shortly thereafter they cancelled my account. Beware, as most of the guests wanting accommodation have no ratings. The cancellation policy is meaningless as Airbnb can arbitrarily cancel a guest’s booking at any time and give you almost no information as to why they are cancelling it.

Based on what has happened, I doubt the bond system by Airbnb is worth anything. As a host, you and the Australian Government do not know who the guests staying in your house are. Airbnb doesn’t even know who the extra guests are. As Airbnb is getting more hosts, the room rates have dropped a lot so it is definitely not worth putting up with garbage like this.

Trapped inside Airbnb Bedroom at Knifepoint

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Almost a month ago, my boyfriend and I suffered a terrible experience in an Airbnb. On Sunday, September 1st, at 4:00 AM, while we were sleeping, two men entered our Airbnb. They broke the window lock, opened the window, and managed to open the door and get inside the apartment.

We woke up because of the noises, and when I turned on the light one of the men was at the entrance of our room. With much fear, my boyfriend tried to confront them, but he noticed that the second guy had a knife and that to do anything was too risky.

We shut the room door (that didn’t have a lock) and my boyfriend struggled with one of them to prevent him from entering the room and hurting us or stealing more things. We were inside the room for the duration of the robbery, the longest and most frightening six minutes ever. They stole everything but our phones that we managed to hide under the bed. Suspiciously, only our things were taken.

There was some kind of renovation in front of the apartment, and they saw us go in and out everyday. We are concerned that the information that hosts were in the property was passed to the criminals. I will never forget the face of the man, surprised that we were there. The night before we went partying, so at 4:00 AM we were not home.

To this day, the response from the hosts has been as follows:

• Reimbursement of the Airbnb reservation.

• Reimbursement of taxis and a meal.

I am really angry and wanted to share this situation. I accept any advice you can give to try to get compensation from Airbnb and the hosts.

Airbnb Hosts from Hell and a Break in

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My boyfriend and I were travelling around Europe for a month over summer. We decided to finish our trip in Florence and booked an Airbnb for three nights. In the listing on Airbnb, the apartment appeared larger than it actually was and said it provided wifi, AC, and necessary toiletries, e.g. shampoo, conditioner, etc.

When we arrived we realised the apartment was much smaller than that shown in the pictures, the AC barely worked, the wifi constantly disconnected and was very slow, there was no hot water or bins, and the toilet didn’t flush properly. We contacted Airbnb and our host immediately. There was no reply from the host. Airbnb said they would forward my message along to the host.

We contacted Airbnb everyday about these complaints and were told they could do nothing about it unless they could get through to the host. On our third day the apartment was broken into and our money stolen. We called the police and filed a report, contacted Airbnb and called the hosts. The hosts did not respond, despite three of them being linked to our apartment on the app.

Airbnb said they would also contact the hosts and could not get through to them. We asked to be relocated as the apartment was not safe, due to the door not being able to lock anymore and a chunk of the wall being missing. Airbnb said they would pass it along to their trust and safety team and call us back. We were also told they could not relocate us and would only subsidise the fee of somewhere else by 50% if we found it ourselves.

We called a total of 13 times that day and were repeatedly told to wait for a call back. We were never called back. A member of the trust and safety team emailed us about the matter the following morning around 4:00 or 5:00 AM. However, this was too late as it was our last night and we ended up leaving at 6:00 AM to go home.

Whilst on our journey back home we were contacted by the hosts, after hearing nothing for our entire stay, and blamed us for the break in. They told us that they had the right to ask for compensation for the damages caused by the break in and that our complaints about the hot water was pretext. They stated that they needed to get a professional in to fix the wall and we should have to pay for it. They also refused our request for a refund.

We argued back and forth for a while and eventually they said they felt sorry for us and had decided it wasn’t our fault but that they shouldn’t have to blame whoever broke in? The lack of response or willing to accept any fault from the hosts and the horrible customer service from Airbnb made us feel completely abandoned. We are in the process of arguing for a full refund.

New Hosts Beware: Airbnb will Change your Listing

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We are writing this in the hopes of saving other new Airbnb hosts the trouble we have had in our first two weeks as hosts. So, far we have encountered two major problems – three if you count Airbnb’s arrogant, incompetent, inadequate, and totally unacceptable response to our problems. I hope you keep reading because this stuff is actually hard to believe and you need to know it if you are going to try to become an Airbnb host.

In our first week as hosts, we encountered two major problems. One was disappointing. The other amounts to fraudulent representation and downright theft in my opinion. I’ll try to make this as concise and informative as possible.

Creating a listing is not hard. It is tedious. The Airbnb help system does little more than guide you through the screens. No insights, no explanations and absolutely no flexibility. But, with the assistance of the many hosts who posted their experiences in the Airbnb online community and other Airbnb informational websites, we got our listing up and running.

Our listing is a private home. We have two private (each with its own separate entrance) guest suites available. We set the price for our listing at $125, thinking we would be renting each suite for $125. We made sure to disable Smart Pricing and Instant Booking. We got our first booking at our set price of $125 minus a 20% discount as our first guests. The disappointment was learning from our first guests that although we made it clear in the text of our listing that we had two separate guests, that was not the way Airbnb presented our property.

Airbnb applied the pricing we set to the entire listing – i.e. “both rooms” not “each room” – resulting in us getting half as much revenue per room as we wanted and thought we were going to get. Furthermore, we learned when one room was booked, Airbnb marked that date as unavailable on the booking calendar, so no one could even see we had an additional room available. We were surprised by this (and monetarily penalized… keep reading).

After reading through the community forums we discovered we were just one of hundreds of Airbnb hosts who were both surprised and disappointed to learn this. We found out that if we wanted to rent each guest suite separately we had to list them separately. This cost us money with our very first booking. If our first guests would have known they could have booked our other guest suite, they would have booked another family member to stay with us.

We learned our lesson. We will list both guest suites separately, but why did we have to find this out the hard way? Nowhere is this made clear in Airbnb’s guidelines for setting up and creating a listing. We have noted hundreds of complaints going back more than five years about this particular issue but Airbnb has done absolutely nothing to address it. In fact, Airbnb appears to deliberately obscure this critical fact in its listing guidelines. That’s bad. What happened next is far worse.

Within a week we got our second booking, which we accepted. Big mistake. To all hosts: never accept a booking until you have examined every little detail. Here’s why: we had set our price. We made sure we turned off Instant Booking and Smart Pricing. We weren’t looking for bargain hunters. We were looking for folks who wanted a special experience in a magical place and were okay with paying a little more to get it. Airbnb cares nothing for that. If they see a new listing that isn’t getting enough action (making Airbnb money) then they will take action and arbitrarily lower the price without even notifying the host. That’s right – they will cut your listing price without even telling you. Little did we know Airbnb had lowered our price from $125 to to $60 for both rooms, i.e. $30 per room/per night.

Now, we are stuck with a booking that is paying us less than our set price, because as a new host we don’t want to cancel the booking. That’s not even enough to cover our costs. We reset the listing price, using the Airbnb hosting interface, to no avail. The host interface reports the price we set, but the listing continues to show on Airbnb’s website at much lower prices that on average are less than half of the price we set.

We thought this must be a glitch in their software. We spent hours on the phone with Airbnb support, who were absolutely no help. They could neither fix the problem nor explain why it occurred. They said they had to escalate it to “IT”. The bottom line is that Airbnb’s customer support people are essentially script readers. If the problem is not covered in their script then they are useless.

This problem is now a week old. Calling back Airbnb tech support is a waste of time. They just say the incident has been reported to IT and there is nothing they can do. They can supply no time frame as to when or if the problem will ever be resolved. Are you kidding me? I’ve worked in high tech for almost 40 years. I’ve run customer service departments and development projects. I worked in development at Microsoft. This is the most incompetent, arrogant, and totally inept customer service I’ve ever encountered. Microsoft’s customer support (of which I’m not a fan) is a 10 by comparison. Airbnb’s support doesn’t move the needle on the scale. It’s worse than nothing. You think it can’t get any worse? Nope. It can. Keep on reading…

As I said, this problem is now a week old. In that week, we’ve been doing lots more reading and research on Airbnb. We’ve read hundreds of online posts from other frustrated hosts. This is what we’ve learned: this pricing issue is apparently not a glitch but corporate policy. Many, many other hosts have had the same experience. Clearly, what’s happening is that Airbnb is using an algorithm (an automated computer program) to set whatever arbitrary price they think will net the most bookings (meaning money for Airbnb), totally ignoring, and in fact actively circumventing, the wishes of the owners of the property.

In my opinion this is fraudulent misrepresentation and essentially amounts to Airbnb stealing our money. We aren’t looking for bargain hunters. We have a special and beautiful property that is worth every penny and more. All we want Airbnb to to do is turn off their pricing algorithm and leave our pricing alone. That’s where we are now. We have had to snooze (temporarily disable) our listing because we don’t want any more bookings at the prices Airbnb is setting.

Airbnb is literally stealing money from us and apparently brazenly plans to continue doing so to us and others if we allow them to. Airbnb is the most unresponsive and arrogant company with the worst customer service of any company we have every dealt with. They are a multi-billion dollar company. They need to be held accountable. They need to support the folks that are making them money not abuse them.

P.S. This is just the tip of the iceberg. While researching our problems online we read of many others, including those from hosts who have had their listings suddenly disappear and their bookings drop to zero. Beware!