I have an upcoming booking in a few days in Toronto with an individual host. The condo looks nice, the host has 66 reviews with a 4.82 rating — I being a very paranoid person cross checked almost every review to make sure it looks legit and it did! I was initially concerned as the host’s picture looked fake-ish or a picture of a model which is why I was so insistent on cross checking.
but after messaging the host, everything seemed legit and I made the booking. I had to change the dates due to a change in my travel plans and they were nice and professional about it.
And now that my booking is coming up, I’m just a bit concerned about it being fraudulent. This is my family’s first time in Toronto so I was looking for a pdf of my booking for Visa purposes and noticed that the address on the listing and the address the host confirmed with me through messages are different.
She (my host) mentioned that the listing address was her old one and Airbnb wouldn’t let her change it… seems reasonable enough but why not just make a new listing?
she has good reviews, nothing seems out of the ordinary from her listing alone without prying into it more. But it’s the address issue and her profile picture that got me concerned.
so I decided to reverse image search her profile picture and it was a picture of a model. Now I’m at the non-refundable stage of my Airbnb booking and am unsure of what to do.
and I heard that some hosts change their display picture for privacy reasons so maybe this is legit but I’m being paranoid.
Could this be fraudulent?
