Preferred currency changed and fake full refund

[Ning182]

A few days ago,  I used my canadian credit card to book a place in Vancouver. I was charged in USD.

I found it out right after I paid.  It says the full refund in 48 hours so I apologized to the host (his place was so nice, but over my budget!) and clicked to to the refund. AirBNB DID give me the FULL refund very fast with a confirmation email. However, the FULL refund is in USD as well, I lost 82 CAD for FX fees from the bank. I  called Airbnb, they told me the fees from bank is not their reponsibilitie to refund.

I am the customer of Airbnb, I thought using the payment method AIRBNB provided should truly give me FULL REFUND. Whatever agreement Airbnb has with the bank should it not affect to the customer? Everything should be on the table and full refund should be that I will receive the amount of money I paid.

## Please be careful when you checkout and don't trust your preferred currency setting in your profile! ##

[Debra300]

@Ning182,

This time the Airbnb CS rep was correct, transaction and foreign exchange fees are not their responsibility.  When this has happened to me in the past, I called my credit card company to request the refund of the fees, and it was granted, because the transaction was refunded.  

[Alex479]

It is your fault for not using the same currency as the booking. So you deserve the loss. Sorry.

[Muirne1]

Disagree. Basic transparency is lacking when it comes to foreign transactions on Air Bnb - 100% it is for the company (Air BnB) to possibly profit. EU law does not exist in Canada/North America so people seem to accept lack of consumer protection.

[Muirne1]

To illustrate what I mean by this: the final page should highlight clearly that you are paying in USD (or CAD) dollars; your payment card should it be in another currency would also be recognized as such and prompt a warning to the consumer that they may (will)  incur fees by either Air BnB or their bank; a warning that the host us charging another currrency. It's that simple and that is what I am used to outside of North America. It is misleading on Air BnB here (I have seen similar on PayPal North America), it clearly implies one currency is being used and what you see is what you get charged. I switch between Canada and Spain / Scotland frequently and it takes more effort than is acceptable for me to determine what I am paying at the time I agree to pay AIr BnB.

[Angelika208]

This is not the whole truth!

There is a Bug in airbnb (app and Web side), which causes automatically changes in `Account =>Global Preferences` when you log in. This depends  on the circumstances - where you are and the (language) setting of your device. 

And then it can happen that CAD is changed to USD in global preferences and you dont recognize...

If you dont believe:

1. Have 2 Devices - Laptop and Smartphone- with possibility to log into airbnb

2. With Laptop open 'Account => Global Preferences ` and change the setting

3. Log into airbnb with Smartphone and your normal setting

4. Refresh the `Global Preferences ` side of your Laptop and see that it changed with the login with the Smartphone

If you now think, that this is not a big thing, you are wrong

.... as long as you dont leave your country or use VPN it will probably not affect you ....

In other cases your global preferences can change.

In my case it was a terrible thing, as due to automatic changes from language= espaniol /Mexico to German and currency MXN to EUR when i was in vacation in Germany, my mexican tax payer Status also changed and the 16% VAT / IVA was not anymore collected from the guests. I had to pay the VAT .... 

My workaround: I opened a new airbnb account with another email , be my own Co Host and only use the Co host Account for log into airbnb. No more changes in Global preferences...

(It took me a lot of time to find the root cause and the workaround, and of course no help from Air Support ...)

[Angie797]

I experienced the same. Airbnb app said it was fully refuned, but there were 40 us dollars difference between the amount i paid and amount I received, even though i canceled within a few hours.  Just be careful with Airbnb app. It can fool you.