Hi I have a quite bad situation here. I have booked an apartment for March and several days later the host told me the apartment can't be rented anymore and he suggests me to rent somewhere else. He asked me to cancel it and I was gonna do it until I find out I will lose half of the money due to the cancellation policy. He said he will change the policy but apparently it doesn't work for people who have already booked the apartment. So I kindly asked him to cancel, and he just disappeared. I'm aware that you can send cancel request through airbnb and if he doesn't reply within 24 hours then I will get full refund. However he did reply to the request, he canceled my request! And I also sent the complaint to airbnb customer service via airbnb APP and didn't get any response....
So here I am, the host said the apartment isn't available, refused to cancel by himself and still refused my request to cancel. That means I have to go to the apartment which I know will not be available or cancel by myself and lose half of the money?? This is just very unfair to me. In fact I checked the following dates of the apartment and many dates are still booked with much higher price than what I got, so I seriously doubt his explanation.
I have been using airbnb for years and this is my first time dealing with this situation and it is really frustrating to find out that the host can do all this things and there is nothing I can do. If someone sees this, please help me. Thank you!