Last year around Nov, I tried to book a Lake Tahoe cabin for 2 families (1 is mine, another is a friend's) for a simple trip for our young children.
I booked via Airbnb few days in advanced. The day before driving to Tahoe, we even called Airbnb to confirm that the listing is OK. The host accepted, but didn't answer to any of our questions.
The next morning when we woke up, we packed everything, then out of bad habit, I opened up the app and checked again. I was caught on surprised that the host cancelled, just 4 hrs before our suppose arrival time. We were very shocked and pissed. I was booking for a friend's family and it was very embarrassed. I immediately contacted Airbnb support, and all they call do for me was to give me $100 back for my NEXT reservation. And they couldn't do anything about my existing. I thought they would put a penalty on Airbnb's host who cancelled on us in less than 24 hrs, but they said they don't have such policy. I was upset because I knew they had such policy for the renter. They also mentioned the best they can do is to find me the next 10 houses to book in the similar location, but cost 3x more as it is bit last minute. They did not anything else to help me.
I was very upset and went to Homeaway.com and found something immediately, even cheaper than the original reservation I had with Airbnb.
My story was a clear first-hand witness on how I believed Airbnb failed at customer service, and will be very difficult to become a successfully company.