We were on our way to the Soho apartment we rented after a nightmarish morning of driving two hours (opposite side of the road of course, very stressful), and a broken down commuter train. We were in constant contact with the host to let him know our progress, and always received a “no problem” or “no rush” reply. Finally, in a taxi ten minutes away, I got a host cancellation notice from Airbnb. I arrived at the apartment to find a sheepish host saying he’d just arrived at the apartment to find his flatmate hadn’t cleaned out some moving boxes and apartment was not suitable for guest. He wouldn’t even let us see the place. This was in the afternoon; there was plenty of time to have it cleaned. Airbnb’s response was to email seven or eight alternatives and let us look through them and decide… on a noisy London street on my mobile phone with no idea where these other places were while we were exhausted and furious. We were lucky to find a hotel. Then I found out I couldn’t leave a review for this jerk. They simply put an automatic “host canceled ” notice with no information about how horrible the experience was. They say they deducted payment from his next transaction, which only means he makes a little less money next time, but more importantly it means Airbnb makes money off bad hosts. Who comes up with these stupid rules?
Host was Soho THEATRELAND DESIGNER FLAT. He had plenty of great reviews but for us he was horrible. Automatic review says he canceled the day before, not ten minutes before. Why are they protecting this awful person?
What is your host listing #?
We are going to London in 2 days, our host canceled 3 days ago and stop answering messages/phone. Airbnb gave us 10% credit today, which is useless at this point.
Airbnb failed even to post automatic review “listing was canceled”. When I was looking for a place, I was avoiding any listings with such reviews, and now I know that absence of these reviews means nothing 🙁