Dear AirBnB,
With this letter we are writing to express our frustrations with your service after our host cancelled on us last minute. First, we will explain the situation, and second we will outline our demands for how you should remedy this situation. Evidence of communications will be attached.
The account in question belongs to Valle ** connected to Facebook with the e-mail address [email addresss removed] [personal information removed]. To confirm the account we will also tell you that the payment that this complaint concerns was over PayPal and through the same e-mail address.
The booking was for two nights in Fribourg, Switzerland with the following booking number ** and was made a couple weeks ago with much discussion with the host including confirming details such as arriving time the night before via WhatsApp. At 2 in the morning we received the following the message (roughly translated from French)
“I’m really sorry to bother you, but we have a big problem in the apartment. The current client in the apartment is making a lot of trouble with the permanent roommates. They threatened to call the police if I didn’t make the guest leave. I now must quit AirBnB and I’m very sorry but I have no other choice but to cancel the reservation. I tried to negotiate with them that you could be the last clients, but they were not willing to listen. …”
We saw this message at 8AM in the morning just before we left for a rideshare from Germany. It was really bad timing, but we are not necessarily upset with the host because we know that AirBnB has local people offering their space. HOWEVER, we are extremely disappointed in the service provided by your company in resolving this issue. We called immediately and spoke to a representative called Angelia W. who promised us that AirBnB would do their best to solve this situation, but first we needed to look by ourselves for a new host. Although we were really strapped for time we tried to send some messages, but this was without success. Angelina provided us with a list of other hosts, but these were mostly in the area of Fribourg (state) and not actually in the city. Important to mention that we don’t have a car, and are not easily mobile. We then had to leave, and no longer had internet or phone as we had changed countries. In our email we received a message from 12:15 our time from Angelina saying that she was leaving her shift but a colleague would take over and help us. We were never contacted after that.
Upon arriving in Fribourg, Switzerland we tried to call but all the centers were so busy that we spent at least 2 hours trying to contact someone who could tell us what AirBnB could do for us.
We ended up going to a hotel.
To resolve this issue we want you to pay our hotel bill for the two nights, and reimburse the reservation money not as a AirBnB coupon. Furthermore, we do not understand why we got reimbursed for 33€ eventhough the booking was 34€. (also seen in the attachment)
As a last side note, we have been a traveling expat for the last 5 years using AirBnb. My girlfriend’s profile (Karin **) was partly used as well. Furthermore, we always had good experiences with the service and recommended AirBnB to other travelers.
We hope this issue can be settled to our satisfaction. Considering that we lost 1 day of vacation, more than 150€ more on lodgment than we wanted to spent, as well as the possibility to cook. Keep in mind that Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries of the world especially last minute on a weekend in August. This last argument was one of the main reasons why we chose your service and we think that the service charges hosts and guests pay should cover these situations.
Sincerely,
Valenting ** and Karin **