Dear Airbnb hell friends,

This happened to us last week:

NEVER, NEVER EVER BOOK ANYTHING THROUGH AIRBNB !!!!!!! PROTECT YOURSELF AND DO NOT DO IT.

We were scammed in the most sophisticated way through identity theft and a hacked account of a host on Airbnb.com. The communications with the scammer cannot be distinguished from official Airbnb communications. So, instead of arriving in our booked studio in Geneva, we found out the money for 2.5 months of rent was gone (almost 5000 Euro) to a Polish account and we had no place to stay.

Airbnb has been EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY UNHELPFUL and almost impossible to reach, trying to avoid all liability. AIRBNB WILL NOT HELP YOU IF YOU ARE IN TROUBLE, even if you are scammed through their very own website. DO NOT EVER BOOK WITH AIR BNB. The scam listing remained on their website until we urged them to take it down.

We found out that there are many more scam/hacked listings, like these https://www.airbnb.at/rooms/2136974?s=kZsZ ,https://www.airbnb.it/rooms/267245 and https://www.airbnb.ch/rooms/642750. Airbnb has not taken these down even after notifying them.

IF THINGS DO GO WRONG WITH AIRBNB, YOU WILL REGRET IT VERY MUCH after you find our how UNHELPFUL and UNCOOPERATIVE AIRBNB is. Their standard reply was: “Yes, there are indeed some safety issues with this account. We are sorry for the inconvenience.” And that’s that.

How long are Airbnb.com able to keep their head in the sand? It’s a major and known problem, see for instancehttp://www.thisismoney.co.uk/…/Airbnb-scammers-1-000s-briti…. We found it out the hard way. Airbnb are not doing enough to protect their customers. This has to change! The number of sophisticated scam listings on their website is countless and they are not doing enough to tackle it. They are putting their customers at great risk and you are not doing anything about it!!

I wish people who went through the same as we did could unite so we could start a class action against Airbnb. Please share.

All the best,

Anna