Tag Archives: airbnb cancelled reservation

Problem Paying? Accommodation Cancelled

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I booked a place in Nottinghill Gate in the UK for three different dates in December 2019 earlier on in the year. Obviously they take off a certain amount of money when you book and the rest closer to the time of the stay. As the time came closer to my travels, they took off money twice for the first two accommodation dates. The third would be taken off during my holiday. As a responsible traveler, I had international roaming for WhatsApp messaging only. I just before I left, I changed my credit card in order to get a bigger overdraft line. That was the start of my nightmare.

The first attempt to take funds failed. Knowing that my accommodation would be cancelled, I attempted to contact them via the email that they sent the failure to collect funds to explain to them that the card they are trying to take funds from doesn’t exist. I tried several times to add an alternative payment card on the Airbnb app, it took days as it kept saying there was an error and I couldn’t. I

contacted the hosts via messenger to tell them I was having an issue, and to please not allow Airbnb to cancel my accommodation. Eventually, I managed to add the new credit card number and set it as the default. I felt relieved as I’d covered all my bases.

To my horror on December 19th, I got an email to say my accommodation has been cancelled and a refund of R4.01 was being deposited into my credit card (the card that I changed to the default one). So Airbnb can’t take approximately R1800 from the account, but they can give me R4?

It has become a nightmare since then. I’ve emailed screenshots of evidence of emails, messages, etc to both Airbnb and the hosts and each party says that it is not their responsibility to make a decision. Airbnb says that it is up to the hosts to give the authorization to refund me and they say I have to get Airbnb to refund me.

I’ve had to make alternative arrangements for my last three and a half days in the UK which was stressful enough. I have no words of wisdom here as things haven’t been resolved. All I can say is don’t change your credit card details; it causes a nightmare. You would think a mere £90 is not too much of a dent in their accounts. It is for me, a South African.

Horror, Thy Name is Airbnb NYC

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We (a family of four) were travelling to New York for the first time. We tried to make bookings on the Airbnb site, but many hosts either did not reply or refused. The response time from hosts was a minimum of 48 to 72 hours. We then chanced upon a place on East 13th Street, Manhattan which was reasonably priced. We paid up in full two months (for our 5-night stay) before our proposed trip. We confirmed with the host the night before check in. We had an email also from Airbnb. Eight hours before check in, we get an email from Airbnb cancelling our reservation. The host informed us that the reservation was cancelled abruptly by Airbnb. We could not find a reasonably priced hotel. Airbnb was of no help. They just refunded the money after two months. We lost money on the exchange rate and conversion charges for no service provided. You are pushed in a loop on their website trying to contact them for a resolution.