How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb
chriskiehl.com
chriskiehl.com
The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being malicious here and trying to make a quick buck by double-dipping - getting some money from the cancelled booking and then relisting the property back on the market.
I am always surprised how many people don't know about payment card disputes/chargebacks or refuse to use them, even right here on HN. The bank and card networks are biased towards you to begin with, and there's no downside to losing one as long as you're not being outright fraudulent or acting in bad faith.
Card chargebacks (or litigation, if you have the means) is the only thing companies understand, especially in a country where consumer protection isn't a thing.
Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want.
This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.
Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate.
So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
Yes, sometimes you need to break relationships with certain companies as well. But that should be fine in general.
I struggle to think that a person should bear literally any consequences if they weren't in the wrong, which AIUI in this case he isn't.
You can fire that business as a vendor, they can fire you as a customer.
Blows my mind; reshipping the item would (given they sell it for a profit) cost HD less than me doing a 100% chargeback, and it would be better customer service. I guess they use the friction of doing a chargeback to be their fraud prevention.
The only time I made a charge back the CC company actively told me to not add any documentation.
It sounds to me like they refuse to follow the law.
From a contract point of view, merchants who ban consumers for charge backs are in violation of card association rules.
> refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute
The merchant agreed to accept charge back rulings when they signed their merchant agreement. The chargeback process is a pain for consumers - they have to do a quite a bit of paperwork to file one.
> Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again
A business that forces consumers into charge backs and loses deserves the charge back. Consumers don't automatically win. Source: owned an MSP for about a decade.
BTW, Visa, MC, AMEX and others can fine and ban merchants who fail to comply with card association rules (including chargebacks). Likewise, card associations can also cancel cards on consumers who file abusive charge backs.
Hotel owners, however, can and do ban individuals for chargebacks.
If you disagree, you need to change the definition of "utility" then; a utility such as an electricity company can't just cut you off for no reason.
Reporting this back to your bank, better yet, with your state financial regulator and maybe a federal copied, usually gets this swiftly reversed.
In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed.
Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.
Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.
Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it.
If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?
If I get banned as Joe Smith and address X, what if I register my new account as Joseph Smith?
There are any number of ways to represent the exact same address (apt vs. unit vs. suite vs. '#', 5 digit zip vs. 9- digit zip, st. vs. street), and there are cases where the same address serves multiple people (private/virtual mail boxes). A billing address is a loose identifier at best.
I have a couple slightly different addresses. One of which is probably 30+ years old but is still used by the two local telcos and a few local businesses.
We used to run 'zip correct' jobs for large merchants at the service bureau I worked at just out of high school. Just 'correcting' thousands/millions of addresses at a time.
Again, it just isn’t that easy.
PMB 123 456 Main st.
May or may not be the exact same mailbox as:
Suite 123 456 Main st.
My official address is on “XXXX Boxwood Cres”. Not Boxwood Cr., not Boxwood Crescent, not “Boxwood Cres.”
Of course all of those will work for mail, but if I want to transfer the deed, or do anything of legal relevance, the government needs the address to be exactly like the first one.
For every way you can think of trying to standardize it, there is an exception.
Half addresses, letters in addresses, addresses with no number, etc. All this and we haven’t even left the US yet, other countries have their own variety of whacky shit.
Verizon, Comcast, and some local businesses like my propane delivery still use N. Main and I would periodically get scolded when I first moved in pre-GPS because I would give businesses coming to my house my official USPS address which was different from what was still on many maps.
- Only one person can live at an address
- Two people with the same name can't live at the same address (Jr/Sr)
VPN to the rescue!
You'll need a clean, residential IP. Thankfully if you're on a dynamic IP all you need to do is restart your router, or just use your phone as pretty much every carrier only uses dynamic IPs for mobile devices.
But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.
And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.
There's also the part where the merchant agreed to abide by chargeback rulings and not ban the cardholder.
A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up.
If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban.
The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
I'm guessing if he does a chargeback he gets banned from AirBnB.
I guess they could say they will still provide the service? lol
edit: they do have cards that have no annual fee. disregard my comment.
Sometimes you get one free through employers too.
The one and only time I tried a chargeback, they approved it virtually before I could ask for it. I think they look at your account and see you've been a good customer and give you the benefit of the doubt.
The era of free money is over for now, they're going to want business soon.
Why do they need to know?
Thats pretty cherry-picked, and I wouldn’t look to stock price to make the conclusions you’ve shared. Lots of growth companies are bouncing back after being oversold last year. As another cherry-pick, it’s also down nearly 50% from its 2021 high.
But, if the interwebs are correct, airbnb has 7 mil rentals, booking - 6 mil rentals (vacation specifically, not hotels) and vrbo - 2 mil
https://hosttools.com/blog/short-term-rental-tips/vrbo-vs-ai...
whatever advantage airbnb has, they are no longer the only game in town *
* depends on the town
Look at it like this: Would you pay $950 for the privilege of using AirBNB? I sure wouldn't. An "AirBNB Membership fee" on the order of $950 should seem absurd.
They would not get a single cent from me for the remainder of my life and in fact I would do plenty of things to cost them business at any chance I will get.
AirBNB is also not the only short term rental option out there. E.g. Vrbo
Similarly to the OP, both my wife and I had to pull teeth for weeks to get the full refunds we were entitled to after booking airbnb units. We both had dozens of stays and 5 star reviews under our belts prior to those experiences, dating back through 2013. In my case, it was a unit that the host admitted was infested with rats prior to arrival. In my wife’s, it was a unit that didn’t remotely match the photos of the listing.
At this point it’s my very last resort for booking any kind of stay, which is to say I’ve effectively sworn off the service. Since then, I’ve had no trouble finding vacation rentals elsewhere. For $900, yeah, I’d chargeback in a snap.
They've stold me up twice, I was left in a foreign city with nowhere to sleep. Host simply didn't show up, didn't pick up, just vanished.
Never again.
Just because the credit card company claws the money back doesn't mean that a merchant can't come after you in court/debt collection.
It's not common, but for a big enough transaction, there's nothing stopping a business from coming after you.
1) once a competent human (and not a third-world boiler room which is what "customer service" is in any large tech company nowadays) looks into it, they may very well make a reasonable decision and rule in the guest's favor to begin with
2) even if they were in the right from a legal/contractual point of view, they'd spend more flying someone out to argue the case in court than to just take the loss right away, so there's still no point defending the case.
3) Airbnb and maybe even the host have skeletons in the closet they'd rather not draw any attention to (search for Airbnb horror stories and you'll notice how they happily profit from obvious, brazen scams and effectively engage in fraud or false-advertising including about their insurance service, and a significant chunk of hosts break their local laws with regards to short-term rentals and/or taxes, which is the only way to make their pricing attractive), so it would be suicide for them to willingly draw any more attention to themselves than they need to.
Plus OP has an excellent story to post as a review since as a 'paying' customer clearly has standing in the matter.
AirBnB has gotten so much bad press over their nit-picky extra charges, fees and required cleaning by guests I would not be surprised if they encourage the 'host' to reconsider their position.
This is a misconception that many people have - at least in the US market. I owned an MSP for about a decade, and this was often the most common surprise for merchants: charge backs were final and were actually pre-accepted by the merchant as part of their merchant agreement (it's similar in concept to binding arbitration).
If (in the US) you find yourself being collected after a chargeback... have your lawyer get their hands on the merchant agreement. There are some fantastic consumer protections there.
It doesn’t mean it will go anywhere if we actually end up in court.
Where you do see merchant success is where credit cards are being used to make installment payment and the customer stops paying with the card.
Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase”
(1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized after entering a contract that the contract was not what they wanted. Similarly the “host” is not breaking the contract: the person agreed to these terms of the contract, apparently having not read them. So this is not a fraudulent transaction, and claiming it is (for a charge back) just sounds like fraud
(2) charge backs are not free to the merchant - as I understand it the merchant is subject to penalties from the processor and/or bank that can easily be hundreds of dollars. So even if the bank doesn’t take you to court for fraud, airbnb maybe unhappy at having to cough up a few hundred dollars.
(3) it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host, and frankly they don’t seem like people who will take a no harm, no foul response to this, especially if they not only don’t get paid but if Airbnb offload any of the chargeback costs.
Fundamentally your running into the reason that there are regulations governing hotels and rental, and why Airbnb insists that in spite of all evidence that is not what they are providing.
If there was a contract you first agreed to, but you find out afterwards that one of the clause is problematic in your case, and the other party is a jerk about it, chances are your card issuer won't even accept the chargeback. Most of the time you need proof that the merchant is the one breaching the contract.
I’m not saying that I think the host was operating legally, I’m saying I don’t see a fraudulent transaction, I don’t see the host not providing the agreed upon service, nor agreed upon restrictions.
It’s an Airbnb so 50/50 the host is violating a bunch of laws (claiming simultaneously to not be a hotel, motel, or rental unit, etc), but the transaction for the purpose of a chargeback does not appear to be fraudulent on its face.
Hoping to see some regulation going into that space pretty soon.
For example: if I rent a car, but then don’t pick it up, the rental agency has not defrauded me. If I buy some food at a restaurant and then don’t eat it all, the restaurant doesn’t owe me a (partial) refund.
If the person believes the host breached their contract, then they can try small claims courts and/or lawyer town.
More realistically given most Airbnb hosts are land lords violating tenancy and hotel regulations it might be worth contacting the local regulatory authorities.
But while you make think the behaviour of the host here is illegal, they placed this person booked was available, and was available under the terms they apparently agreed to, so being told “no you can’t violate the terms you agreed to” is not fraud. This person could still go and stay at this property themselves, they just couldn’t have some other person stay their instead.
In this case the guest did not realize the bookings were nominative, and once he made aware, he wanted to change the booking to the proper person. A shortcoming of the Airbnb platform is that there is no way to transfer a booking to another account, so the only way is to cancel and rebook.
Notice how at no point the guest's intention was to cancel and back out of the deal. The cancellation was suggested by the host themselves being unreasonable and trying to exploit a policy technicality to make a quick buck.
I would absolutely chargeback in this case. Some non-standard clause WHICH THIS ABSOLUTELY IS RELATIVE TO HOTELS (OR EVEN REGULAR B&Bs) buried in T&Cs somewhere should not be acceptable.
If we’re talking about laws, the law varies between states and countries and just because something is buried in page 59 of a clickwrap agreement nobody reads doesn’t magically mean the case is a slam-dunk - there will be many nuances a court will consider if it actually gets there, which it will not because Airbnb and maybe even the host has way more skeletons hidden in the closet to risk showing up in court over a cancellation fee - in fact the only reason this wasn’t resolved in favor of the guest is because the entire case was offloaded to someone in a third-world country barely capable of speaking English and definitely not paid nor trained enough to understand and care about the situation - so they’re definitely not going to be flying in a lawyer to argue their case for a few hundred bucks in court.
With regards to a chargeback fee, Stripe charges around 30 bucks last time I checked? Far from breaking the bank I would say.
> it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host
I would absolutely pay good money to see that host argue their case in court when the whole dispute started out of them trying to make a quick buck instead of allowing the guest to change their name. However just as the above there is no way they will show up in court considering it’s very likely they’re not even abiding by their local laws when it comes to short-term rentals, and the writing style of “Claire” suggests the whole thing might be a complete scam in the end.
He thought he was paying for a reservation for a family member, the host and AirBnB thought he was paying for a reservation for himself.
No actual contract was agreed upon here, as the parties did not actually agree on anything.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffles_v_Wichelhaus for one of the earliest examples of case law on this, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds for more general discussion on this topic
I know a couple folks who still can't use Lyft, for instance, because they charged back an NYC Citibike subscription. You can allegedly cancel a Citibike subscription by contacting customer support — but after no response, they issued a chargeback and Lyft banned them a couple days later. Since the accounts are tied to the phone number, they simply can't use the service.
Support actually managed to reverse the ban for a few days, but then it was re-triggered (presumably by some automated system).
However, in this case I don’t believe the author will ever want to do business with this disgusting company, so nothing of value will be lost.
Even better, Sony threatened to ban my account and I'd lose all the content I legitimately purchased if I did a chargeback against them.
I buy physical game copies now and I've found CapitalOne is better at doing chargebacks than my credit union is (guess credit unions aren't all they're cracked up to be in certain aspects)
Don’t ever chargeback big tech. You will lose every time.
A total nightmare to fix. Kinda hard to RMA an item that didn’t show up on my order page. They offered to RMA but no assurances I would get my money back. I didn’t order this many and the screwup was on their end. So in the end I did a chargeback for the 2 I didn’t order.
They banned me. Making my quest useless. I could not make a new account because at the time they were moving to FB and banning people with alt accounts or asking for ID to verify them.
In the end, I undid the chargebacks, sent back the extra two quest units (which I held sealed with no intention of profiting from them and I mailed after the chargebacks) and of course they didn’t refund me for one of them.
I had to keep escalating as they closed tickets. Was close to trying to use HN and internal friends to help. In the end they did a “one time” unbanning. Still lost $400+. Never again.
EDIT: It took me like half a year to resolve this. At first I could not even figure out what happened. I got no email I was banned. Just adding any form of payment failed with an esoteric error message. I’ll never buy direct from any big tech company again. Go ahead and down vote.
The 2nd situation, and the one which made me decide to no longer use Airbnb, was when we had booked a fake rental. So Airbnb doesn't give you the exact address until after you've booked. My brother booked a house for 11 of us to stay at in Minneapolis. A couple hours outside the city I was trying to figure out the quickest route to the train station when I saw that the pictures on Google Maps didn't match up with the pictures on the listing. This place just didn't exist. We were unable to contact the host. So we contacted Airbnb and cancelled while I tried my best to find a couple of hotel suites to house us all. It was really stressful and dumb and I'm pretty sure there was some sort of fee that my brother didn't get refunded.
But yeah, this was like 2017 and 2018 so I don't remember the details, and the 2nd one I didn't book so didn't really look at that.
Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good payment protection policies).
But in this case, I'd let the family member sleep in my bed, and I'd go stay at this AirBNB, and I'd probably trash the fuckin' place or something.
Hint: perishable goods and unaccessible (maintenance?) areas in the property. Pests would also work.
edit: I did a ballpark estimate and it won't even come close. If a bathtub wastes 10000 gallons/day at 0.25 cents/gal, then that's only about $25/day.
Nothing damaging or malicious per se, but "Oh, hey, I think I need a fresh copy of every Linux distro"... stuff like that.
the nice thing about this strategy is that _you_ don't have to do any of it. because eventually, they'll try to fuck me.
What if you book for a couple and the one that booked gets sick and has to return early? This makes no sense, I feel like most people would've edited the form through support and just added themselves in and not use airbnb again after this.
But depending on the circumstances of how the rental is handled with respect to checkin etc., if the host is going to be an ass, now you have someone else thinking they have a bed and the host won't let them--because you already told them you won't be there.
It does sound in this case though that they could have just checked in with their friend and then taken off.
It's likely that having a lot of cards with annual fees attached to them, plus not being an easy target by those manufactured spend weirdos, plus having a fairly high "minimum bar" for customer quality means that they've got their customers' backs an inch further than Discover does.
For comparison, Discover gave me a ~$20,000 credit limit when I was 19 and didn't have a job. Now I'm 37 and have millions of dollars in the bank and I had to call and argue with AmEx before they would approve my application for their entry level card.
Seriously, I am renting a place from you for 2-3 days for $1000, it's none of your goddamn business who's staying there. It's mine for 2-3 days to do as I please, as long as it's not trashed and neighbors don't complain.
Basically the listing was nonsense, but we didn't notice it immediately. In our case the flat in Paris was both in the 2nd and 14th androssiment, somehow. It was listed in the 2nd but elsewhere it says 14th.
Of course we went to cancel but there was a 30% fee. We explained it to Expedia customer service and of course they're useless and said the fee was legit and didn't understand the scam.
We took it up with our bank (Chase) who took months to resolve it, we basically kept on getting passed up the chain of people who examine the claims, until we got to a high enough level that they actually understood the scam (after a hour explaining it several times). We were fully refunded our ~$500.
Of course we never will use Expedia again. We generally stick to booking.com because they seem to side with the customer most consistently. Free cancellation, or pay at the hotel is a must. One of the main reasons to avoid AirBnB is that they will keep your money in most cases.
I presume you're arguing that they didn't read the TOS and tried to reconcile the mistake within an hour so the non-recoverable refund shouldn't be enforced. If you were right, there'd be a class action lawsuit. But your premise is silly because standard hotels even have "accountholder must be present to check-in" policies and do the same things with non-refundable room reservations.
Funny you mention that - once I booked a room in my SO's name using my card
She fell asleep in the room before I got there, and they refused to let me up even though I had the card on me, along with several forms of photo ID
Eventually she woke up, but it wasn't the best start to the stay
Inconvenient but sound policy. For example, I wouldn't want an executive assistant to be able to get a block of rooms and then get a key to my room without my permission.
I'm still shocked by the backlash ITT against the host/AirBnB. Hotels have always had as/more stringent stay policies.
I lost maybe 4 hours repeating myself to various people in India just so I could tell the credit card company I tried to resolve the issue for the chargeback.
Indian call centers are the worst because it seems like none of them are empowered to actually do anything other than rigorously stick to a script which cannot help you.
Hit them with a chargeback, who cares about getting banned from Airbnb.
And you can always physically lock the door
I too don't like it when room service touches my stuff (it is a mess, but it is my mess!) - putting a DND sign on the doorknob and not removing it for the whole stay fixed that problem for me.
The number of times room service has barged into my room without my knowledge and/or permission can be counted on 0 fingers.
If this has happened to you you may want to reexamine what hotels you stay in because the only thing you have to do to not experience this, even if you forget to hang up the "Do Not Disturb" sign, is lock the deadbolt on your hotel room door.
I just returned from a ski trip where in order to not pay $500/night at a hotel I turned to Airbnb, where the prices were the same. I wound up renting an off-grid cottage that stank of sewage backup and required a generator to run while bathing for $300/night- and I had to feed tbeir mangy cat and leave them a wonderful review so as not to get dinged with a personal review that might make it hard to rent in future.
portland maine in the summer's a great example.
portland's downtown hotel is The Press. It goes for about $219/nt off-peak. On-peak? >$800/nt!
However, the Airbnb's in downtown are stil going for $250/nt-ish, if you can book one.
Other thing to watch out for is fees. The place I'm staying at charges 20000yen ($150) if you enter the apartment without taking off your shoes, 6000yen ($44) per hour overstayed after checkout, and inviting anyone into the house for any amount of time causes your entire booking to triple in price ($2000 in my case). I'm not sure if they can enforce those...
The only one I am a bit unsure is about guests, since they might technically be able to limit who goes around.
*if you do go with dirty shoes and make a mess is a different matter, I'm just talking about normal walking with shoes
Do you want to be a good guest or an entitled douchebag? (I don't mean you personally).
The host’s response: “We don’t offer hot water at this rental.”
I was, let’s say, surprised.
I asked them where in the listing they mentioned that, and they said “We didn’t list hot water as one of the amenities. That was intentional.”
So essentially, Airbnb considers hot water to be an “amenity”, on the same level as a coffee maker or a carbon monoxide alarm.
Of course I escalated to Airbnb support and of course they sided with the host. So completely aggravating. Like, ok but you also didn’t list “front door” or “roof” among the amenities. What should I infer from that?
That is absurd.
Not sure whether things are similar in Panama, but it could very well be. If so, it's cultural barrier, not malignacy.
I remember walking along the street asking 10-12 hotels in a row if they had hot water. None did and the last one suggested (sarcastically) staying at a 5* hotel if I wanted it that much.
I can specify that I only want to see listings with BBQ grill, an indoor fireplace, or an EV charger. But I have to manually check each listing to see if it offers hot water? Really?
I panicked and booked another place, only to try to cancel the booking a few hours later when I calmed down and realized it wasn't large enough. But I couldn't, because of the cancelation policy. I contacted Airbnb customer support and they wouldn't cancel it either, so I ended up having to pay the entire bill.
The supreme irony of course is that Airbnb cancelled a reservation I made months in advance without a single penny paid to me for my inconvenience - but when I cancelled because of Airbnb's incompetence I had to foot the entire bill. Truly absurd.
Airbnb completely lost me as a customer at that point, and I'm someone who had spent quite a good deal on Airbnbs in the past. Hotels have never cancelled on me days before a trip.
I have my own horror story, involving an overflowing toilet and hysterical accusations from the host.
We noticed the toilet was backed up in the bowl in the morning and alerted the host. The person the host sent round to look at it found some kind of cosmetic wipe, then the host leapt the conclusion that we were at fault, thinking they were nappy wipes. We were not at fault; we use laundered reusable cotton wipes. In any case, this lead her to not fix the problem!
In the evening, after we came back to the apartment, the toilet started overflowing when the apartment upstairs flushed. Then the apartment upstairs had a shower; water was coming up out of our shower, out of the toilet, flooding out of the bathroom, into the living area. We had a toddler, and toilet water started flooding into his bedroom too.
After some heated phone conversations, the apartment upstairs was determined to be the problem (she was flushing cosmetic wipes), and still the host was incredibly nasty, because we weren't grateful enough that it was cleaned up late at night.
I deleted my AirBnB account after this experience.
It's not worth the risk. Not once.
Indeed you do. I was a host for several years, and there is NO direct contract between the host and the guest. The host has a contract with Airbnb, and the guest has a contract with Airbnb. This is why hosts need to enforce the "no third party bookings" rule because if something goes wrong Airbnb will not honour their "insurance" and the host cannot even get the guests contact details out oof Airbnb due to "privacy".
Many hosts send guests a contract to sign and insist on getting government issued identification (I refused to accept bookings from guests whose account image was a child, a pet, or a sunset) for each and every person entering the property.
Note that I didn't allow instant bookings, and would only accept requests after the guest had confirmed they had read the listing fully, read the house rules and understood the refund policy. The house rules were basically "no parties, no smoking, no pets, no third-party bookings".
The practical upshot is you give your money to AirBnB, it's not coming back, no matter how dreadful an experience you have. You have to go after the host.
The risk is not worth it.
The host's payment from Airbnb does not include fees and taxes that guests need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required) and it doesn't include the fees and taxes that hosts need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required). So completely refunding guests full payment can mean a host is deep out of pocket.
This lets a host dump you three days before your booking and get away with "only" 25% in fees.
AirBnB definitely invests in their inventory (the hosts).
Meanwhile a guest is on the hook for all of it.
In munich I had booked 3 night stay, 2 HOURS!! before i was to turn up the host made an excuse of their dad had died and cancelled the reservation - this was obv nothing to do with the fact they had just realised there was an exhibition on in the area (where rates sky rocket x4)
I spoke to the person and they was extremly unconvicing of the real reason of cancelling - luckly I managed to get a hotel for a little more, but the stress!!!!!!! I WILL NEVER EVER use airbnb again
If I recall correctly, AirBnB didn't allow the host to rebook the same period once they have cancelled a booking. That was no matter to the host - we later found the same property listed on another platform. AirBnB were unable/unwilling to find us alternative accommodation. And as guests who had been left massively inconvenienced and out-of-pocket, we weren't able to leave a written review or give a low rating to reflect our terrible experience - they simply end up with a brief "auto-review" to say "The host cancelled a booking with X days notice."
Note that you don’t even need to search for _host_ cancellation policy.
Airbnb is even biased in their SEO investment.
The host isn't reducing their income. They're paying a fine outright, and it jumps to 50% 2 days before.
Since things out of your control can happen (the toilet breaks, the place floods) a 50% fine seems reasonable without being unnessarily punitive. And 25% seems OK too since more than 48 hours should be enough time to find an alternative?
I would expect to ban a host if they cancelled stays repeatedly or as any kind of pattern, however.
It sounds like the host said "You can't have this reservation you made", the author said "Okay, I'll cancel", and the host said "Whoops too late".
Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reservation if you can't fulfill it, not a problem".
Obviously no ruling out that AirBNB wouldn't just charge the author and not give access to the property, but seems like at least a higher probability of success.
Given the circumstances, I think it is highly unlikely Airbnb would charge the guest. In any case, the guest can also resort to a chargeback, as others have said.
Not giving in to unreasonable demands should be the norm when using services such as Airbnb, Uber, etc.
Airbnb punishes host when they cancel both financially and through "the algorithm" that determines placement in search results. Also the host could have allowed the booking and have Airbnb cancel it when an unregistered guest arrived, or not allowed them into the property (they had no legal right to occupy the premises).
In any case, I did a chargeback and got all of my money back, even though I would have been happy to forfeit some since this was the day before they were supposed to arrive.
Airbnb did make some noises about removing my account "if this happens again" or something like that, but they can take a hike. The whole thing was handled very badly.
Airbnb refused to help, because per Airbnb policy, me booking for my wife counted as a "third party booking".
They tried being reasonable up until the person said "well if your wife damaged something you wouldn't want to be responsible would you?" and I pointed out that legally, in my state spouses are responsible for debts incurred by their partners. Mentioning the word "legal" put an immediate stop to the conversation with a blunt sentence along the lines of "we have done all we can for you. Goodbye."
"AirBnB is the new Facebook, everyone complains about how terrible it is and yet they keep growing usage & making even more money each year."
https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1625607351083597825?...
You could also make an argument that hotel prices have been exorbitant for people, and AirBnB (despite whatever numerous flaws it currently has) did some good for people in providing a massive adrenaline shot of competition to that industry.
"Hello Chris [stab] might I ask Chris [stab] if you wish Chris [stab] to be scammed today Chris [stab]? That's wonderful Chris [stab] but I'm afraid Chris [stab] that I am required to scam you Chris [stab] by my boss Chris [stab] nothing personal Chris [stab] it's fine Chris [stab]."
When I told him I was quite busy that day and didn’t have time, he replied “Oh that’s OK, tomorrow is fine too.”
You also want to avoid 5.00 or 4.99 with hundreds of stays as they are inevitably buying or extorting reviews. 4.88-4.97 is the sweet spot.
I really wish Airbnb would just ban hosts like this, as it makes those of us who are honestly trying to provide good hospitality all get tarred with the same brush.
>If you get a 4.8* or below review, you get a cranky email from Airbnb saying that you suck and red warnings all over the “improvements” section of the admin.
The one stay I've had at AirBnb--a lovely place in Maui (mostly because the hotels were so expensive and it was nice)--there were at least a couple pleas in the various information about talking to them before leaving anything other than a 5 rating because they might lose their super-host status.
AirBnb doesn’t necessarily side with one side or the other, but rather, there, customer service is outsourced to the Philippines and they just don’t care. The side you wins is the side you can say the magic words that specific agent wants to hear.
I’ve had guests stay at our place and get a refund at the end by lying, and even admitted to me, he knows how Airbnb support works so knew what to say to them.
I’ve been able to get damage claims paid by Airbnb when guests refused.
Looking at this host though and reading the reviews, this looks like a complete scam. Claire, for one, is definitely not real. Also anything under 4.7 on Airbnb is generally not good. I generally only rent 4.8 and up. The first review (I hough it may not have been up when he booked) mentions being hit up for money, bad checking, etc, lol of which point to a scam.
Had it been me, I wouldn’t have cancelled and would have just said I’ll stay there and been done with it.
The problem is that the policies can be _brutal_. I went in expecting it to be similar to hotel/airline policies since that’s how they position themselves but that’s not the case. For example cancel charges are very high while hotels are much more permissive and airlines are required to give no questions asked refunds in the first 24hrs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/travel/lufthansa-refunds-...
Every story I've heard, as well as my personal experience, is that people outside the USA are very customer service oriented, want you to have a good time exploring the place they live, and are generally very attentive and accommodating.
Inside the USA people are just in it as a side hustle. Usually it works out fine, sometimes not so much.
I've never had a bad experience personally, but I've had some pretty amazing experiences outside the USA, but never within it.
(Stuff like hosts buying us groceries ahead of time because they knew we were arriving late, personally showing us around town upon arrival, paying for my offsite parking when my rental car wouldn't fit in the provided garage, etc).
In this particular case it's an unkind and nasty host as well; they could perfectly well allow the guest despite Airbnb's policies, though Airbnb would say that their laughable "Aircover" "insurance" would not apply to the rental.
I bet AirBnB people read hacker news.
Folks: I should be able to pay for another user's booking. It just can't be that hard. I set the dates, supply the payment info, anoint another user of your platform to reach out to the host.
Alternatively (if there's something with payment processing that I don't understand), the user who wants me to pay chooses the dates, writes what they want to say to the host, and then passes the baton to me for supplying payment info.
I've paid for friends and family to stay in hotels a zillion times. I was amazed that your platform does not allow this. Now I'm appalled that it allows situations like OP's to happen. And for the record, I was not thrilled to have to disclose what I was paying for my friends. Until this is fixed, will actively try to use hotels for this in the future. (This was a unique case.)
If the support group won't help you, then maybe the PR group can.
Basically your attitude has to be "either you give me my $900 back, or I'll make sure this problem costs you more than $900 in bad publicity."
The math becomes better for them to give you your $900 back, if they can publicly look responsive to complaints or maybe even get you to take down your post.
(I'm not your lawyer. This isn't legal advice. Good luck.)
I had a 6 days stay in Zakopane, Poland. My friend was physically attacked by the owner of the house, and support done nothing but removing my review from one of his apartment page(it's seems that the owner can create identical listing pages for one house, and just hide/show the ones with best reviews on it)
At first support seemed very supportive, but it the end they done nothing, but a "close investigations with an undisclosed results by internal guidelines", according to one of the support-stuff. I also got my review removed because of the "links to external resources"(I've attached the link of the video with screaming home-owner) and emotional advice to use other services like Booking(without direct link). The last one is understandable. Through it wasn't specified as a reason to remove the review, the support gave me no chance to edit or re-post the review.
So at the end I can surely say the only thing they care is the money, and your well-being is the latest thing they care.
Google, Facebook, AirBnB and I would say now Amazon too, are all on this path.
No one like them or trusts them, they are broadly considered evil and their services are used where there are no reasonable alternatives or their monopoly hold of whatever form acts to prevent users from leaving, but the moment there are reasonable alternatives, those companies will be deserted.
Speaking for myself, I have used AirBnB a great deal over the years - back in the early days I thought it was an amazing company. Now I avoid it as much I possibly can; hell, whenever I come to log in again I have no idea if log in will even work, with whatever latest false positive alarm that might have been introduced. It is my last choice, not my first, and I would be very happy never to use it again. When people are writing that about your company, the writing is on the wall.
They cater to 1. People without housing 2. Longer term business travelers. The former is more affordable, but comes with... issues. The latter is probably what you want.
IME, the nighly cost of an Airbnb is generally in the same ball-park as a reasonable budget friendly hotel after you factor everything in.
Chances are, the listing itself is a complete scam and there would’ve been something else gone wrong if the booking proceeded, but the author being honest about the third-party booking gave them an easy way out to begin with.
They'd lose money if they did. They understand they can get away with it because nobody can raise enough hell for anything to happen.
From the business side you get a notice of the chargeback along with the statement the customer provides when they file it. You then have some period of time, a week or two, to respond. Businesses get scammed by charge-backs too, you know. So you have the opportunity to submit your paperwork showing why you are entitled to the funds. A surprising number of the times the business doesn't even bother.
The credit card company looks at what the customer says and what the business says. They may ask either party for clarification or more documentation. They always prefer the vendor and the customer to settle things themselves so they look to see if the customer reached out to the vendor for some help and resolution first. So if you have a problem you really want to do this first. Documenting emails, phone calls, chat-bot transcripts you, as the customer, have with the vendor is extremely useful here. What's also useful are screen shots of a website that doesn't offer any way to contact the vendor and initiate a refund.
They look to see what the vendor did to try to resolve the issue. Then they may look at the actual evidence. And they may have internal data, like a vendor has a lot of other complaints and charge backs for similar reasons. Or that a customer has a lot of charge backs that weren't upheld.
All things being equal the one with the better documentation generally prevails.
My personal experience is some cards are more likely to stick up for their customers. These tend to be the cards that pay high rewards because the customer pays them directly (the annual fee). Some, like USAA, seem to just be more oriented to helping their customers. But this is totally anecdotal.
One thing I've never heard of is anyone getting 'banned' for making a charge back. If someone has personally experienced this, not just heard it happened, please leave a comment.
Sadly, that is a lot harder now, because all the apps have already been built and they're huge and have all the users. And now millions of people have to deal with the side effects or poorly built or abusive online services which are too big to disrupt or change. Policies upon policies, which, when applied to particular cases mean 'you gave us your money, now it's ours and you get nothing in return and we'll get away with it'.
I think time is ripe for new disruptions.
I had already booked a hotel, and don't use Airbnb anymore.
It certainly doesn’t make me want to use them more often. Hosts always have insane rules like I basically have to be a full time cleaner and also the only parking is three miles away and I can only eat in exactly one place.
And I always have to live in fear that something will come and I’ll have to cancel and lose 100% of my money. Why is it that hosts can have misleading listings and cancel days in advance while I have no power at all?
Really tells you who Airbnb’s customer is.
Oddly enough, I can usually go to VRBO and rent the exact same properties, or go to any hotel.
Hosts have very little say about how the platform works. Airbnb suddenly hid guest account details (name, photo etc) from hosts during the booking process because they decided there would be less racial (or whatever) discrimination, and removed the requirement for people to have their face in their account image. The result was somebody would roll up at a property and the host has no idea who they are, and no way to verify whether they were the guest or not.
Airbnb is built on evading taxes, skirting the law and exploiting the real estate market to the detriment of the local population AND the traveler. Don't support them.
AirBnb is a minefield of gotchas.
1. They don't show you full price. Most of the hosts make bank from cleaning fees. $300-$500 cleaning fees tacked onto final price is usual. Please airbnb fees, resort fees, tourist fees, cleaning Brian Chesky's ass fees. 2x what you see on the listing is normal.
2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.
3. AirBnB is no longer primarily people renting out their house, but get-rich-quick crowd that own homes for the sake of putting on airbnb, shady cancellation policies, some make you clean the house. All sorts of weird house rules like bring your own towels. Every host can have slightly different official and unofficial policies.
4. The pictures are heavily edited, wide angle shots. I once booked based on pictures. They had 10 shots of living room, but no bathroom shots, I saw positive reviews and went ahead. It's like how hollywood creates beautiful sets just for one good scene. We stayed at a "renovated airbnb". Only the living room and kitchen was renovated (new paint), the rest of the house was a shack. Looked gorgeous from the pictures, but actual was quite the surprise. Had an old house smell, bathrooms weren't cleaned. (Again, the hosts will threaten you if you complain about any of these)
5. Support is a joke. They'll acknowledge but won't actually process a refund. Once stayed in an NY apartment. $700/night and it was a tiny room, with a bed that stank of urine. Support said the equivalent of "tough luck, life isn't fair".
I've always felt that reviews should be not be visible until both parties had 'blindly' submitted their reviews. Or if only one party submits a review, then after a set period of time, it is published and the other party does not have an ability to rate the other party anymore to prevent retaliation reviews.
This would ensure more honest reviews and stop revenge reviews.
I was surprised how useless AirBnB support is. Especially that I had a five figures turn over with them. You'd think with such numbers they'd favor the customer over the host. But after going through like 5-6 of their support agents, I still got the same response: Cancellation policy.
I'm taking my business elsewhere starting from next month. I don't know if the alternatives are any better but it doesn't hurt to try.
What was the host going to do, go make the guest show ID to verify they're the author?
Don't understand how AirScrewYouAndB is still in business.
Maybe blame Airbnb for not being clearer, but the profile photo / ID verification stuff is designed for the guest.
Do people do third party dating or car reservations etc?
I think the actual issue was not the Airbnb rule but that it makes little sense that the OP was unable to cancel at no charge for a reasonable reason an hour after making the booking (and plenty of time before the stay).
The host is not your friend, if you’re doing anything odd with an Airbnb it’s best to just be quiet and not divulge more info than what is necessary.
AirBnB's TOS which provides reasoning. [0]
This policy isn't foreign to hotels. I don't want customers signing in their kids for a room to throw a party without the parents present. They do these checks to limit fraud you describe.
The cancellation refund discretion is part of the host's TOS , too.
Also, it’s trivial to book a room at a hotel and have someone else check in under the reservation as long as you put them on the guest list. I’ve done it before. Not sure how this is fraud.
This comes off like a bad faith question because OP wrote this article because AirBnB's TOS was enforced in explicit detail.
> Also, it’s trivial to book a room at a hotel and have someone else check in under the reservation as long as you put them on the guest list. I’ve done it before.
Did you have to present ID? Were you over 18? Did someone in your party already have a credit card on file before anyone got the first set of keys? If you do those things, there's no trivial difference between making your own reservation.
The issue isn't whether you can get legally away with spoofing a reservation account. The issue is whether you're potentially liable for breaking a contract or committing fraud.
With hotels, typically you reserve a room with a credit card, and any guests you put on the list can show up, present their ID, and check in. You never have to check in yourself. So I really don’t think what you said was accurate. The hotel doesn’t even know who is making the booking, there’s no account they can check like there is with AirBnB.
Screw AirBnB, I’ll keep using hotels.
She asked if he was staying. He said no. She clarified that if he did stay, things would be fine and wouldn't have cancelled. He answered honestly.
In AirBnB, if the person making the booking isn't staying there, it pattern matches as a red flag with credit card fraud, people throwing parties, people spoofing AirBnB accounts because they're blacklisted, etc.
> You never have to check in yourself. So I really don’t think what you said was accurate. The hotel doesn’t even know who is making the booking, there’s no account they can check like there is with AirBnB.
I provided counterexamples to your claims. I don't know where you're getting the claim that hotels don't know who's making the booking or they can't check for blacklisted customers.
Anyway, that's my first time with AirBnB, and I decided not to have anything to do with them again.
Can't believe Ycombinator invested this company, what a disaster!
Even if they do send somebody (which is doubtful) what you're saying suggests that the listing was totally fraudulent.
It’s not like they’re going to drop in unannounced, ID you, and if you’re missing a few times while your friend is there, make a case to cancel the booking in the middle of it.
Typically NONE of this information is passed from the person making the booking to the person actually staying, so the guest parks in the wrong spot, goes to the wrong house, cannot find the key or doesn't have the code to open the front door, etc, and after an hour or so they contact the hosts demanding action and the host says "Who are you and why are you phoning me at midnight?"
Perhaps most of their hosts can barely pay expenses and so they do all these sorts of cheats to avoid going broke? Perhaps AirBnB is just desperate for inventory and lets too much stuff slide on both the customer and vendor sides of the marketplace?
Anyway, I have had great experiences with VRBO, which is a bit more expensive generally, and always got a refund if there was a significant issue.
I'm not sure I believe the host either. Perhaps AirBnB have changed things, but as far as I knew from talking to hosts before, the host could always refund up to the booking date, they had tools to do more than guests in exceptional circumstances. And it's in their interest as this dude is now going to give the host a 1-star rating.
I actually find it downright weird that you can't book a reservation for someone else on AirBnB.
The last few Airbnbs I stayed in had self-checkin. I never saw a person, host or owner. There’s an easy way around this issue, as crafty as it might be.
When I had an issue with "funny" hosts, I reached out to the Airbnb supported and I actually got a full refund and a discount for a future booking as an apology for the situation.
To be fair, your host was extremely rigid. Reach airbnb support, maybe you'll get a full refund.