Airbnb fraud

[Alex6885]

Airbnb sells map locations and phone numbers instead of real apartments. No guarantee from stealing your money by any criminal registered here. You just need a phone number. That's not surprising considering they get their commission from any fraudulent transaction.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Alex6885 Do you have first hand experience of this or is this just a random rant? If a guest finds a listing to be fraudulent Airbnb will refund all the guests money so they do not benefit and their reputation suffers.

[Alex6885]

I would have never mentioned this unles this would have been a first-hand experience or something I would have had any doubts about. I booked an apartment in Kyiv, but instead of that I was sold a phone number of some girl "who might help me find something". Such phone numbers are abundant on any crossroads in Kyiv for free, with much higher chances of accomodation.
I was just fully refunded for this incident, but it was also mentioned that this was kind of exceptional and one-time-only. As I understand, refund rules chosen by the "host" apply usually, so I would advise to take good care before booking apartments from people with low or non-existent feedback. Unfortunately, the system for filtering fraudsters is nominal at the very best, if existent at all.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Alex6885 Airbnb would always reimburse people in this situation. Have they taken down the fraudulent listing?