Just picked up on a SHADY scam by an Airbnb host and I am so disappointed that Airbnb knows about this scam, and is refusing to do the right thing.
I booked a place in South Africa for our trip with no reviews and just a few photos but felt OK about it because it had a free cancellation policy. You can see my booking email below.
The house is under construction so the host said he didn't have real photos yet. A few weeks later, he asked if he could change my reservation by a few days because the home wouldn't be ready yet due to construction issues. I said OK and accepted. A few days later, I started to not feel great about the idea of flying to Cape Town with my family and baby and maybe not having a place to stay.
After booking a new spot, I went to cancel this one and realized that somehow without me knowing, when he had changed the dates, he had also changed his cancellation policy to non-refundable. I was never presented with this updated information when I agreed to the new dates. It was simply not in the date change user interface.
Airbnb says that in agreeing to the new dates, I agreed to his new policy and that I will have to work it out with the shady host who is clearly trying to scam me to get a refund. They say they are trying to "mediate" but in reality, shouldn't they just 100% honor the original cancellation policy at the time of booking, that thank god I have an email to prove?
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He asked me to update my dates, I accepted, and without me knowing, he altered the cancellation policy on the backend.
@Airbnb
is refusing to honor the original cancellation policy from when I booked! Watch out for this trick.