Dishonest Airbnb host using violence

[Neville16]

Hello. First of all, my mother tongue isn’t English. Sorry for my English at first. But I will try to explain as best as I can.

This is my first time to travel London, but I was threatened away and insulted by this host. I hope there would not be any next victim who travel to London. The address is ****

In the next morning, the host asked me not to come back before 15:00 because her landlord is coming back to check the flat. But finally she deleted this WhatsApp message.

Next day she said her landlord will come so kept asking me when would I leave. I replied “Your things between your landlord is none of my concern, sorry’, ‘if you don’t want letting your landlord to know, don’t rent it out..’ I didn’t know this host doesn’t own the apartment before I saw her message.

then she started saying something rude to me, and threatened me that she has another key to open my door as long as she want. Then, she opened the door and threw all my stuffs on the floor, my clothes, my jackets, my panties etc. She also lied to customer service because I was yelling at her place ,so she made this a reason to cancel my booking. She kept telling customer service that I was rude. 

I also have a video of her came into my room PULLING OFF MY QUILT AND THREW EVERYTHING ON THE FLOOR.

I called 999 to police but the police said if you’re not injured, we won’t come. Ridiculous. Not only swearing, insulting, she also using violence. I was shocked that bnb customer service was by her side and calling police are all useless.

*[Personal information hidden for safety reasons–inline with the Community Center Guidelines]

[Sarah977]

@Neville16   Did you contact Airbnb and ask them to take a look at this conversation and tell them how the host was treating you? As well as expecting you to leave the premises so their landlord didn't find out that they were illegally renting out the space? You said you didn't receive support. I'm surprised that Airbnb wouldn't support you in this case and isssue you a refund or rehouse you. If they didn't, I'd contact them again, and hopefully you'll get a more supportive case worker.

Do make sure to leave an honest, factual, non-emotional review (if you carry on, rather than just keeping it brief and factual, other hosts reading the review might see you as being the crazy one) and you can flag this host's account.

[Helen-And-Mario0]

I am sorry for your experience. Obviously this host is doing things behind the landlord's back. Remember to always use Airbnb message platform to protect yourself. And since she cancel your booking, you are not able to leave review for her. 

[Lisa723]

@Helen-And-Mario0 that's not true.

[Lizzie]

Hello @Neville16,

Nice to meet you and welcome to the Community Center. I am sorry to hear about your experience.

You may have seen that I have had to remove the personal information shared in your post and so I wanted to let you know why. It is fantastic to see that you are looking out for the rest of the community and want to warn others, however inline with the Community Center Guidelines, we are unable to include specific details for safety and privacy reasons. 

If you can I would really recommend contacting the Airbnb Support Team about this again. To add, in case you aren't aware you can flag a profile to Airbnb directly, if you go on to their profile page, you will see a button 'Report this user'. You can also see a similar report button in your Airbnb message inbox, incase you received messages that way. 

I really hope you can get this sorted and I hope you will visit London again, I am sure your second trip will be much better. 

Thanks,
Lizzie