I booked a big bear house for New Years back in July of this year. A few weeks ago, I attempted to get in touch with the host to ask some questions before the trip. I received no response after sending a few messages. Last week I received a message from a cohost saying that the family can no longer rent us the house because of a family emergency and that Airbnb will give me a full refund. I responded asking if there are any other cabins they can suggest at my price point and I haven’t heard from either hosts since. This all happened 1.5 months before the trip and now it is too late to book anything within the price range my group had.
Later in the day I was looking up other cabins to potentially book on other websites and saw that the cabin that I had booked on Airbnb was on vrbo for 3 times the price for the dates I had originally booked!!
I called Airbnb and they apologized and said they can’t do anything. There is no protection on their end for their customers and any host can cancel at any moment with a small penalty of $50. Airbnb offered me a coupon toward my next booking and I asked how will I know that I won’t get canceled on last minute and the agent couldn’t give me a concrete answer and just apologized.
The house was listed on a different site the same day as the cohost messaged me canceling my reservation.
