Comments on: Bait and Switch: Unethical Airbnb Owners https://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-switch-unethical-airbnb-owners/ Uncensored Airbnb Stories from Hosts & Guests Tue, 23 Apr 2019 01:18:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Paul Kern https://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-switch-unethical-airbnb-owners/comment-page-1/#comment-25888 Tue, 23 Apr 2019 01:18:30 +0000 http://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-and-switch-unethical-owners-agent/#comment-25888 I had a similar experience, where Airbnb quoted just under $800 for total cost, including line items for rental | cleaning | Airbnb charges | Tax. Then immediately after accepting the contract, the rental company contacted me to add $95: they’ve found that sometimes Airbnb underquotes their amount by roughly the amount of the Airbnb fees, and though they have 60+ properties, they wanted the renter of a finalized contract to pay the difference.
Airbnb assigned a case worker, I let the rental company know this right away rather than pay the $95 upcharge, and we exchanged messages through the Airbnb communications channel (a great feature, btw, done through emails to/from Airbnb). The rental company communicated that it is their right to cancel — not a fair recourse, I think, because I already signed a non-refundable contract.
A day later Airbnb informed me that the rental company needed to cancel the booking, and was good enough to also include a 10% credit for the trouble of finding another property on their site, so now I had about $880 to find another place.
I’d say Airbnb handled this well.

]]> By: Frustrated traveller https://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-switch-unethical-airbnb-owners/comment-page-1/#comment-22500 Fri, 09 Mar 2018 19:21:00 +0000 http://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-and-switch-unethical-owners-agent/#comment-22500 Airbnb’s policy is unhelpful on this. They encourage it to happen by not penalizing hosts sufficiently. We are in the middle of a bait-and-switch right now where the host waited until there were no other comparable listings available. We already spent a bunch of money on airfare, and we’re not going to be able to have the vacation we wanted, and Airbnb said they don’t care. They said it’s between me and the host – that they just connected us, but take no responsibility. If they cared, they could easily penalize hosts who did this by refunding airfare cancellations and withholding those funds from hosts.

]]> By: L Lee https://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-switch-unethical-airbnb-owners/comment-page-1/#comment-14475 Wed, 11 Jan 2017 00:17:11 +0000 http://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-and-switch-unethical-owners-agent/#comment-14475 We had a bait-and-switch situation last year in Provence France. After we arrived, we tried to contact the property owner/agent but she couldn’t be reached. After at least 10 failed attempts, she finally called back to meet us in 30 minutes. We met her after about 1 hour. She took us to the property but did not show us the property. Instead, she said that there was plumbing problems with the property so she couldn’t give it to us. She took us to another property which was not even ready when we got there. We then suffered 5 days of mosquito bites and heat without air-conditioning (the original property we booked claimed to have air-conditioning).

After the trip, we complained to AirBNB but no actions had been taken and no apologies. This bait-and-switch scheme appears to be more common in AirBNB. We also book a property in Paris through TripAdvisor. We didn’t have this issue.

]]> By: David Aaron https://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-switch-unethical-airbnb-owners/comment-page-1/#comment-14292 Wed, 04 Jan 2017 09:57:31 +0000 http://www.airbnbhell.com/bait-and-switch-unethical-owners-agent/#comment-14292 These hosts should be thrown out of the system. I am sorry this happened but the host is certainly not a reflection of most hosts.

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