Bad host

[Sylvie1386]

My daughter had to find in a rush an Airbnb for one month because of water damage. Her landlord presse her to leave the appartement as soon as possible. 
So she rented a place, but she made a mistake and rented another Airbnb for $3000/month. She realized her mistake after 9 days after her host ask her how she was doing in her new appartement. 
So she ask the host if she could get a refund for the remaining 21 days because she never went to this Airbnb. 
the host refuses to give her a refund even after my daughter beg her to give her the refund telling her she is a student and doesn’t have the money to pay. 
The host is of bad faith because she knows that she will never find someone to rent in November and outside Montreal, Quebec. 
Another issue : the host only wrote her contract and communicate with my daughter ONLY in ENGLISH and we live in a unilingual French province. So how come we can’t communicate in our own language in our own country ? Is this acceptable ? Is this inclusive ? 
And the most important question : is the contract between my daughter and the host valid since it doesn’t respect the language laws in the province ? 

[Brian2036]

@Sylvie1386 

Interesting question.

I’m sorry but I don’t have an answer.

 I have a suspicion that a buyer probably has an obligation to demand that a contract is translated into a language they understand before signing.

[Anonymous]

@Sylvie1386   Airbnb is a transnational company with listings in over 200 countries and territories, comprising hundreds of languages. On both the mobile and desktop versions of the platform, listings and messages can be auto-translated in case there is any language barrier. Furthermore, host profiles indicate which languages they speak, so guests are free to choose listings hosted by people who are fluent in their preferred language if they want to. It doesn't matter where in the world you happen to live - a host in Tokyo can choose to speak only Spanish, and nobody's rights are being violated.

I hope you're able to help your daughter recover financially from the consequences of her mistake. I can hardly even imagine how that happened, but I'm sure you've been around in this world long enough to know that carelessness can be really expensive. But you know what really sounds in bad faith to me? Expecting the host to take a loss of income just because your daughter somehow couldn't figure out how to use a computer.

What's the lesson you want this young adult to learn here?

a) To pay attention to all the high-stakes contracts she enters into and take responsibility for her actions and errors, or

b) To act like an entitled princess and pretend to be some kind of victim whenever things don't go her way?

[Sarah977 · Accepted solution]

@Sylvie1386  Your daughter had the responsibility to read the terms of the cancellation policy when she booked. It's  a contract a guest agrees to by booking. "Begging" to get refunded isn't how adults deal with a contract. 

The host is running a business and cancellation policies exist for a reason.

The host has done nothing wrong. 

If your daughter had approached this differently, and politely asked the host if she would be willing to refund any days that she managed to rebook, the host might have been amenable to that.

I can assure you that if she booked a non-refundable airline ticket, she couldn't beg her way into a refund. 

And Canadian language laws are not applicable to an online listing service.

I suggest you let your daughter learn from her mistakes, rather than being a helicopter parent going to bat for her when she has not been done wrong, but simply been held to the terms to which she agreed. 

[Wendy1325]

I had a bad experience in Palm Springs. Boho Sanctuary Zen Casita anything but with host Amy as hipster woman who bait and switched me to a mean property manager. She was MIA and the heat in pool and house broke daily. Filthy kitchen, broken smoke detectors and I stayed trying to make it work. Big mistake, never use a property manager as middleman or woman with host. Airbnb let me down after I left four days early with watch out for Sunny Dunes. It’s a messy house trying to be zen and bohemian. Total misrepresentation. 

photos of mold, broken heaters total rip off daily emails didn’t help.  Power outages on heat from network.