My guest spent his first time in Airbnb at my place and I paid someone to clean and give him the keys. He claimed that he didn’t like the place and had to pay $500 for a hotel. He clearly expected a hotel and he didn’t cancel the reservation on the biggest holiday weekend of the summer, which was also the busiest. All I know is that he didn’t cancel, kept the keys the entire weekend, and now claims that he will post a bad review if I don’t give him a refund even though he made it impossible for anyone else to book the property. On top of that, my wine glasses were broken! It is a classic lose-lose situation for the host. Beware: do not rent to first time Airbnb guests and stay away from creeps like this guy who try everything they can to scam you!
Tag Archives: bad airbnb refund
Airbnb Policy on Refunds Leaves Much to be Desired
I am a foreign student studying in Canada and used Airbnb for my one-month holiday to the US, switching from one accommodation to another during the process. The hosts and the listings were fine in general, but AIRBNB DOES NOT HAVE A COMPREHENSIVE REFUND SYSTEM. During the trip, I had two bookings that were cancelled by the host, totaling a refund of about $600. The cancellations were made early and did not cause me much inconvenience. However, the issue is that I had just finished my studies and closed my Canadian account before leaving for the US; hence, the refund was made to a closed account. I thought that this would have been a small issue, since all Airbnb has to do is to retrieve the cash and transfer it to an alternative bank account.
How wrong I was.
1. AIRBNB HAS NO WAY OF RETRIEVING CASH THAT IS RETURNED TO THEM. The standard procedure for a cash refund in Airbnb is this: “Your money can only be refunded to the account you used for the booking. Your bank will issue you a cheque if your account is closed.” You cannot refund your money to an alternative account that you didn’t use to make your original payment. The bank does not always issue you a cheque. I have made numerous calls to the bank and found out that my bank’s policy on closed accounts is to return the money to the source, and Airbnb has no way of retrieving this amount.
2. AIRBNB PROVIDES NO WAY OF COMMUNICATING WITH THE PEOPLE WHO DEAL WITH MONETARY TRANSFERS/TRANSACTIONS. The people in Airbnb customer service center know very little about where your money goes. All they know and can do is to give you standard replies to standard questions. When questioned about what happens to the money that gets returned to Airbnb, the customer service center gave me the same response that I posted above (1). Want to talk to higher-ups? Want to discuss compensation? NOPE! All they have to do is to repeat this same standard answer again and again until you give up and put down the phone! So, that’s the tale of how I lost my refund and Airbnb lost a customer.
Horrendous Experience with Airbnb Customer Service
Update: Still accurate but this very minute they have come up with the refund they promised.
My experience with Airbnb was atrocious. I tried to book a holiday cottage and the host tried to send me an offer. According to the host, the button on the website did not work and she then asked me to book the cottage from my end. When I tried to do that the listing had disappeared. Later our dates appeared as unavailable. I then panicked and put in a request for another place which was accepted immediately. In between, the original host mailed me saying that the dates are still free for us and would we still want to go ahead. We then tried to cancel the second transaction, because we wanted to stay with the original host. After a day of frantic email exchanges between Airbnb and the two hosts and myself, I rang Airbnb (cost: £17) and they agreed to refund the money they had taken from me for the second host (minus their service charge), so I could proceed with the first host. I agreed to that. They confirmed everything in an email. A day later nothing was cancelled or refunded and the whole email process started again.Eventually they refunded me £98 out of £223 for a double booking that was not supposed to have happened, as their website did not allow us to stick with our original host. Talking to hosts is not possible, as Airbnb deletes all phone numbers and email addresses until they have taken the money. I am unlikely to be able to claim my money back through my credit card company because they retracted their refund confirmation email a day after they had sent it and I was stupid enough not to have printed it. All in all, a truly horrendous experience.
Location so horrible we couldn’t even stay and might not get our 889$ back!!!
Here is my mom’s and my family recent Airbnb bad experience in London and we didn’t even end up staying at the property!!! This is our letter to Airbnb Corporate. “Dear Airbnb, I am writing this letter to file a formal safety complaint against the Airbnb listed property: 1 Court Street, London, E1 United Kingdom. My family of 4 and I had a reservation for the property for 4 nights (June 17-June 21st 2015). I booked the property because the pictures looked nice and clean and it stated it was fairly close to the Tower of London. This was also an expensive property, totaling at $889 for 4 nights. Never being to London before, I did not know what areas of London were nice and safe and was trusting Airbnb and the Host that the area the property was in was going to be safe. When my family got out of the tube station (Whitechapel), we quickly realized that this was not a family friendly and safe area at all. We walked down to where the property and realized that there was no way we could stay there and feel safe. The apartment was down an alley way that was having construction done. The area was extremely noisy and crowded. The property in London was in the middle of a street marketplace. It would be very noisy and difficult to move in and out of the property. The whole purpose of getting a property via Airbnb was to get a “family friendly” property, not sleep in a high crime street marketplace. I did text the owner saying that an emergency had popped up. I cannot believe that he never called or responded back to us. Due to this, it completely disturbed our whole London trip. Since it was last minute, we could not find any reasonable accommodations in London and ended up having to travel to south England to my daughter’s apartment in Bournemouth, England. My husband and son had been very sick for days and needed to be in a safe and comfortable environment. They also needed to see a doctor the day we arrived. They had to travel to Bournemouth to see a doctor and ended up having to go to the hospital. We can provide documentation from the hospital if necessary. Later, I researched the Whitechapel area in London and found out that it is one of the top violent and sexual crime hotspots according to the LessCrime Report ( http://lesscrime.info/londons-violent-crime-hotspots/). I also looked at the official London Police website and found out that each month this specific area has one of the highest number of incidents and crimes in all of London (http://www.police.uk/metropolitan/00BGGN/crime/). I am very upset and disappointed with fact that Airbnb allowed this property to be listed. Airbnb should have a description of the local area. Airbnb needs to send someone to check the property out personally and they will see for themselves the security concern. My daughter used Airbnb several times across Europe to travel and recommended this to me. She had no safety concerns or major issues at the properties that she stayed at. We also had a bad experience with an Airbnb property in Paris. After this horrible experience that messed up our entire London trip and we paid the whole 889$!, I do not believe that I will ever use Airbnb again. Know that I will be sending this letter to every corporate Airbnb email I can find, will share it on many social media sites, and will make sure that none of my family and friends use Airbnb. I do believe that we should receive a refund because we booked the property under false pretenses and we did not stay at the property at all. I do not want what happened to my family to happen to another. Please send someone to this property or have it removed from your site so that this never happens to another family.