After getting a break for almost a month, I started getting these scam inquiries again. This all started after Airbnb stopped requiring ID’s to open an account. It’s always the same basic format, so I can tell immediately that it’s a scam. Here’s how it goes:
- I receive an inquiry from an account that was just opened with no reviews or trips, no personal information. Usually the message sent is just “Hi” or “Hello” but this can vary.
- I have four rooms listed, but it’s always for the same room and the same four or five days, which is really creepy. I believe the goal is to get a booking worth at around $500 - $600 USD. The scam inquiries I’m getting are now are all for July 30 - August 4. If I block out one of those days, the next bunch of scam inquiries will be for the next contiguous 4-5 days.
- When I answer, the conversations go off in all different directions, from silly questions that indicate they never read the listing to, well, the latest one, the guy is actually hitting on me. I used to keep the conversation going until they eventually asked me to contact them outside Airbnb. Then I reported them. This was taking up too much time, so now I just respond to their initial inquiry with “Hello”, then ignore them and put the conversation into “Archive”. I have to respond to keep my response time average up.
This can be more than just annoying, especially when the inquiries come in during hours when I’m trying to sleep. I can’t turn off notifications because I’m currently hosting guests who may need to contact me for an emergency.
It appears Airbnb eventually catches on and deletes the accounts, sometimes. Even the ones I have reported remain active for quite a while.
Even though it’s clearly all different people from different parts of the world, the fact that they always contact the same listing for the same amount of days indicates my listing has been put on some list and is being distributed. Very disturbing.
I would like to know if Airbnb is aware of this and what they are doing about it.
