Fake booking received guests

[Victoria1425]

Hi all

Had an upsetting situation yesterday of people turning up at my villa in Portugal  (they had the wrong street number on their booking confirmation but recognised my house from the pictures ). I had no idea who they were as never had any communication with them. 

Did a search on Airbnb and saw someone had copied my advert. These guests had been scammed and told in their enquiry to make the payment through a ‘travel agency’ which they did. Obvs this was not the right thing to do but from my side, is this common that someone can make a fake listing on Airbnb and get passed through their security checks etc. 

i have only just starting using Airbnb for hosting and feeling that I won’t stay on here.. 

Thanks for your time 

v 

[Sarah977]

@Victoria1425  Airbnb does not require anything in the way of proof of ownership or permission from a landlord to sublet on Airbnb, which is ridiculous, so these things occasionally happen. And Airbnb is not known for being particularly responsive when this is reported.

But you do need to contact them, tell them it's an urgent Trust and Safety issue, and explain what happened.

It's quite possible that ad will disappear on its own soon before Airbnb takes action- how these scams usually work is that someone copies your listing, puts it up on another site, like Craigslist or zillow, then when some unsuspecting person who doesn't know how Airbnb works, and that you never send money, answers the ad, emailing back and forth with the scammer, the scammer directs them to either a fake look-alike Airbnb URL they have created, or briefly throws up an ad on Airbnb to seem legit. Once they get the victim's money, they then pull the ad, never to be heard from again.

If the ad is still up, it wouldn't hurt for you to send the scammer an inquiry message telling them you have reported their criminal activity in copying your listing and scamming guests out of their money and I bet that ad will disappear right away.

[Victoria1425]

Hi Sarah, 

thanks for your feedback. Airbnb have been advised and are looking I to it.

i was just curious if this has happened to others? Before the advert was taken down I had a look at it as if I was a traveler and the ad looked legit (apart from suspicious  profile pic of host) 

it was a shame  they could get their advert so easily on Airbnb platform.  

Hoping won’t happen again! 

[Elaine701]

This is a fairly old scam. Has anyone ever asked you to send them "full resolution photos" of the place? NEVER do that. 

They can still download the photos and really, copy the entire listing fairly easily, so they don't always ask for such info anymore. 

Sorry you were victimised by it. I fear the day when it happens to us. Poor souls showing up, thinking they booked it. And little help from Airbnb. I suspect >I'd< end up finding them a new place. 

I'd like to point out that VRBO does require "proof of ownership", although I suspect that they wouldn't have the resources to effectively identify whether submitted documents are forged or not. 

The local boutique platform we list with does require full proof of ownership, which they check against a government database. But they have local resources for that exercise. Something Airbnb or VRBO would be far removed from. 

[Victoria1425]

Thank you Elaine. 

it is an old scam that naively I thought was a thing of the past. Surely there would be tougher measures now in place! 

yes the poor people! It was sad to see the realisation on their face of what had happened and the children knowing they were not staying. They managed to get accommodation elsewhere in the end although felt their holiday was now effectively over 😞 

I will check how my listing appears now from time to time in the search results and keep an eye out for fake ads. 

I do hope that this does not happen again or to others! 🙏

[Sarah977]

@Victoria1425  I hope those poor guests also reported the fake listing to Airbnb, as they take guest reports much more seriously than host's. After all, guests who get scammed like this will likely never book through Airbnb again and will tell everyone they know not to.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Victoria1425   with new changes on Airbnb, its founder Brian Chesky made a video showing how anyone can become a host in 10 seconds and rent someone else's property without the owner consent ( in this video Brian listed his parent's home and said "I hope they  won't mind" !?! )

Hosts around the world who have seen the video were shocked and I am sure guests were shocked as well. This video is made to promote Airbnb (obviously) and attract new users but in fact it shows how easy is to scam someone.

The only protection guests have is the fact the payment is made 24 hours after check-in so if they don't check-in they can contact Airbnb to stop the payment. That's why scammers are requesting payment outside Airbnb what is obvious but, more sophisticated scammers redirect guests to the fake Airbnb website.

[Victoria1425]

😱 wow that’s so interesting. Thanks for sharing Branka & Silvia!