Holiday Mooloolaba Disasterous experience

[Leon115]

In short my experience is as follows:

My wifes mother passed away on the 29th Dec and is very upset from this experience. Going further, I had to organise flights, accomodation and car hire to organise the funeral on the Sunshine Coast.

We engaged AirBNB and selected a property at 18 Camfield St Unit 14 Alendandra Headlands for the period 31 Dec 2018 till 6 Jan 2019 and payment was taken by AirBNB on the 29th December 2019.

On the 30th Dec at 1101am I missed a call from 0753536044 and I attempted to return the call with three misses. 

I received an email requesting a change in booking but I declined the request and assumed my booking was remaining unchanged.

In fact, my itinerary has not changed according to AirBNB.

After arriving into Brisbane and driving up to the Sunshine Coast at around 2pm for check in - we discovered that we could not contact the host Holiday Mooloolaba either in person or by telephone.

In fact we attended the address to find that the occupants were in the address till the 3rd of January 2019.

This experience has left my wife even more distraught, stressed, upset and more likely to never use AIrBNB ever again. We now face the risk of losing our money due to this experience.

I urge AIrBNB to take this matter seriously as Holiday Mooloolaba have let us down.

[Leon115]

Further, I am going to cancel my booking as there is no point holding on to the unit as we are not going to use it. Better that other people use it.

[Helen3]

@Leon115

I am sorry this happened at such a sad time. 

Please don't cancel the booking. Call Airbnb now (this is a community forum of hosts and guests not monitored by them).  Tell them you arrived to find someone else occupying the accommodation you have booked. Confirm that you received an alteration request from the host but declined it as you hadn't changed your plans.

Ask them to cancel the booking on the hosts behalf, so they face penalties.

Explain what has happened and your circumstances. Ask them to pay for you to go to a hotel for the night while they help you find alternative accommodation. They should provide an immediate refund plus at least 10 per cent credit to help you find something else.

[Gerry-And-Rashid0]

@Leon115

Bad experience - remember you dont have to take on the stress of getting your money back if you paid by credit card (as an example). You simply phone your bank or credit card company and tell them it is a disputed transaction, that you never got the service provided. In  many countries banks and card companies are then legally obliged to sort out the mess and get you a refund - in fact in the UK in a sitation like this you would get an immediate refund from the card company or bank and they would sort out the mess with AirBnB.

Good luck