Abandoned: Non-Existent Airbnb in New York City

Upon arriving in New York, we caught a cab and gave the driver the address of the Airbnb we booked. He pulled up to a parking lot and said, “this is it”. We got out and went up and down the street trying to find the address. It was non-existent; there was no such address. It was rush hour, 85+ degrees and we had gotten up at 4:00 AM. Needless to say, we were frantic.

I called Airbnb and could not get through. After dialing continuously for over 30 minutes and being put on hold for over 15 minutes, I finally got someone on the line. She was very nice and promptly gave us a credit on this booking. Then we had to find a hotel, which, obviously, was a lot more expensive. This is the chance you take when you use Airbnb, so just beware. Will I book with them again? Probably, but I will really read the reviews. This particular apartment had a lot of reviews – believe it or not – so here again, beware. Airbnb is a crap shoot for everything to work out. We had booked in Barcelona and nothing went wrong.

Posted in Airbnb Guest Stories and tagged , , , , , .

2 Comments

  1. really sounds like an account take over with fraudulent behavior. hopefully, you got your money back.. normally Airbnb also assist you financially if you had additional costs due to H last minute cancellation or ATO`s

  2. That’s nuts, did they try to contact you outside of airbnb to ask for money or anything? I wonder what would be the point of it otherwise, because not like airbnb release the money prior to check-in? Unless they know how difficult and hopeless contacting airbnb is.
    Maybe a hacked account considering the reviews?

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