Fake Listings

[Ciska2]

I just found some new listings, that are apparently fake. Who will take care of that?

[Link removed]

[Brant2]

We had someone copy our webpage and advertise it as his own.  We called and emailed AirBnB many, many times, and it took 2 weeks for them to delete the post.  In the meantime about 8 parties booked on the fake website.   AirBnB apparently started calling these poor people today because three have already contacted us from our VRBO website describing what happened and asking if our property is really available on their desired dates.   The fraudster, 'Jose', wasn't 'verified' with government ID, nor did he have a picture.  He used our pictures but swapped the order.  We think he gave AirBnB a  different address, so there's not an address collision.   He put our real address in the 'Neighborhood' commentary which is a serious security problem since a calendar with vacancies appears on the same page.  We think he's using Google Voice because at the same time the fake listing appeared, we received a text from Google Voice asking where we lived.  One of his victims told us that Jose tried to get them to pay outside of the platform, so this must be his business model.  AirBnB's security is apparently on the back-end payment side.  They need to start vetting hosts or they will lose their business to competitors. 

[Letti0]

@Brant2   Did you have any cancellations that would have been given the exact address? That's one way to try to figure out who is responsible. 

[Brant2]

The address and the "host" are all bogus. No way to know who is responsible.  AirBnB does no serious vetting apparently. 

Email accounts are easy to get.  Phone accounts can also be disposable.

We expected more from the AirBnB platform.  We are not actually harmed, but it is the guest that need to make other arrangements and possibly damaged if the scammer can get them off the AirBnB platform for payment. 

The guests that got scammed (made bookings with the bogus listing) mentioned never using AirBnB again!

It is a PR disaster ... and could have been prevented. We had contacted AirBnB 2 weeks ago. I have been on the platform for 4 1/2 years ... my reputation apparently did not have any sway.  As I said, it is a PR disaster!