Fraudulent booking and paypal charge

[Christos63]

On the 28th of May somebody booked from my Airbnb account a property in China and my paypal account was charged with £441.99, non refundable.

I keep on ringing Airbnb sinceafter on a daily basis and I am promised each time that a "specialised team" will look into this the soonest possible.

Three days later this has not happended yet.

I am getting desperate now becasue I need the money back to my account asap.

[Helen3]

Contact Airbnb on Twitter and FB and contact the owners of Airbnb on their twitter accounts too. That should help get things moving @Christos63 

[Christos63]

Thanks Helen.

I tried Twitter to no avail. I never got a relpy.

I am trying FB now.

[Lisa723]

@Christos63 Why don’t you dispute the charge with your credit card company?

[Christos63]

I did.

It requires 60 days for the claim to be processed and they advised me to solve the issue with Airbnb directly.

As a matter of fact, the payment went through paypal as a "pre-authorised payment", paypal declined my claim and asked me to settle this with Airbnb.

If Airbnb does not respong I will have to go to the financial ombudsman.

All the above will take time and I need the money back to my account asap.

[Lisa723]

@Christos63 Ugh... maybe a reason not to use PayPal. In my experience when you dispute a direct credit card charge they credit the disputed amount to you until the dispute is resolved.