Hi everyone,
After a bad experience with a host, Airbnb customer service declined my request for a refund (after 189 days of back and forth, closing and reopening my claim). I’d love to know if this is a common problem:
The problem happened after we rented a house for 5 days. Everything went wrong about this rental: Unlike advertised, the house was basically empty (no towel, no pans or pots to do the cooking, lightbulbs missing in many lights), the lawn was just thick mud, the carpet was soaked wet (I mean soaked enough to drink from it), the balcony wasn’t built so stepping out from the patio door was quite a fall (very dangerous for kids). The house was surrounded by loud heavy machinery busy building the whole neighborhood around the house. The place was pretty much a construction site. Long story short, we realized all that after we finally got access to the house (much later than supposed). We immediately called the host and explained we wanted to cancel because it wasn’t what’s advertised. We stayed the first night cause it was already too in the evening to find something else and left the morning after. We got refunded for 4 days and had to pay for 1 (plus all Airbnb fees, of course).
I tried to get refund for the 1 night from Airbnb. I explained that either we stayed for the night or slept on the street. Still, the house was far from what was advertised. It was so far off that it’s obvious the host intentionally mislead us.
What Airbnb did is to call the host and ask him to be kind enough to refund the full amount. Of course, the host refused and Airbnb came back to me saying there is nothing they can’t do. Seems like Airbnb rely on the good faith of the hosts, even when that host is a fraud. It’s the same as if the local police kindly asked thieves to give back stolen property and would later tell the victim, “we found who did it but they said they’ll keep your TV. Sorry, we did all we could”.
Is this really what Airbnb customer service is or was I just unlucky? I’m struggling to find a reason to justify using Airbnb again in the future at this point.
