Scam house listing, Airbnb keep putting it back up, Help!

[Rose1944]

I do not list my rental property on Airbnb. A few weeks ago my rental property was put up on Airbnb by a scammer and Airbnb, after much arguing with them, finally took it down. It is back up again and we are going through the same rubbish with this awful company! The advert is removed for a short time, then it pops back up again and they won't remove it again.

We have had people who have booked the property through Airbnb call to get directions and hand over details, only to be told they have been scammed and Airbnb simply don't seem to care.

How do I stop this? 

This is the listing:

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/686280622066061179?adults=2&children=0&infants=0&check_in=2023-07-07&...

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Rose1944 I just don't get this scam. Airbnb don't pay the 'host' until 24 hrs after check in so as long as guests report the scam immediately the scammer will never get any money.

Sorry but I have no solution for you other than to ring Action Fraud and see if they will approach Airbnb on your behalf via the police contact method.

[Rose1944]

Thanks, that is good advice. I have been on the help chat for ages and they are very nice but nothing gets done, the listing is taken down for an hour or two...then pops back up again, presumably because it has been checked by an expert who has confirmed it is genuine, when it takes 2 minutes of google searching to discover that it isn't.

[Rose1944]

Once again the solution by Airbnb is for me to hand over personal details demonstrating that the property is mine, which they will share with the criminals. This will apparently solve this situation. All I can assume is that the scammers are Airbnb and the whole company is a joke! It is very upsetting. 

[Anonymous]

@Rose1944   Well, you're not far off. Airbnb has no viable process for vetting new listings before they go live - even a user who has been previously banned can simply create a new account and start the process over. If you call customer service, the rep you speak to is an outsourced contractor who has no reason to even pretend to care. It's probably no consolation that the scammer can't actually profit from the scheme, as their motivation in duplicating your VRBO listing (easy copy/paste job) may well be to besmirch your reputation as a competitor.

I trust that @Mike-And-Jane0 knows much more about British consumer protection laws than I possibly could, so I hope their suggestion proves to be a good lead. But the underlying problem that allows these spoof listings to happen in endemic to e-commerce in general, so you might be playing whack-a-mole for years to come, with or without Airbnb in the mix.

[Rose1944]

I have had it before with other sites, and a very brief email has been all that is needed for the listing to be removed, never to return.

Airbnb are the first to demand this bonkers idea that I am going to let them have personal details that they are going to share with the criminals. 

[Amanda660]

I can only think that the guests are being asked to pay off platform or to send a deposit.  There’s no other way they could access funds as they won’t be released.

[Rose1944]

  Indeed they are, I contacted the host, and they gave back an automatic reply saying that if I wanted to book that I needed to contact them via Whatsapp.

  So far 4 of the people who contacted me directly, thinking the listing was suspect, have reported the listing as fake, and it is still up! Airbnb obviously don't care if their customers are scammed.

[Louise0]

How do people contact you if your contact details aren't attached to the listing?

[Rose1944]

  The house is listed at a very cheap price for the size of property so quite a few people have realised that it might be a scam and googled the house, my website is easy to find and has all my contact details on it. Or they find the Facebook page or listings on other sites.

  Sadly a few have only tried to contact this way after getting no contact from the Airbnb host and are looking for directions as we are quite hard to find...only to be told they have been scammed.

The listing is currently down...fingers crossed it will stay that way!