Somebody manipulated Airbnb. I had two reservations all set up, one in which the host gave me a fake address; the people coming out of the flat didn’t know the guy, and his name wasn’t on the buzzer. After calling for 15 minutes, I left since somebody had painted something offensive near the entrance indicating something was wrong. The guy then called me screaming at me, demanding to know where I was after he refused to answer. I was then stalked at the train station.
The Airbnb crew offered to help with a hostel. It was peak season that summer so I could only stay there two days. I immediately found four hosts willing to let me rent for a month, when suddenly Airbnb told me their system had been frozen; nobody could reserve a place, and they would communicate with me the next day.
I contacted a friend of mine who rents from them. She tried to rent a room and she was able to rent immediately. I called them again, and they sounded like they were lying. The next day they told me something else; it seemed like somebody was stopping them from letting me rent from them. I had to book an expensive emergency flight back to England instead of staying there as planned.
What happened there afterwards wrecked the rest of my future. It had nothing to do with Airbnb, but if that host hadn’t messed with me none of this would have happened. After I moved to stay at another reservation I made prior to that, the host than contacted me apologizing, saying that they really wanted to rent to me but somebody had canceled the reservations.
After I politely contacted Airbnb about all of this mess, they suddenly just deleted five years of my rentals and positive references as if to erase previous hosts’ contact information. For some reason they didn’t want their references on my account, despite being positive.
Thereafter they refused to communicate for a whole two years. I was stuck struggling to rent in England. They allowed me to reopen another account but without being able to use my positive references from prior renters they refused to explain why.
When I was desperately seeking a property to get out of air pollution hell and harassers causing me serious health problems, I started to see weird rental properties in my searches: a room covered in tin foil; a living room with a drawing of a woman crucified; a tent for £80 per night with odd things on it. I thought somebody had asked them to mess with me, leaving me stuck without a home.
The animosity and discrimination has since stopped me from renting from Airbnb, which is frustrating since they are one of the most secure online rentals or the most convenient in my situation. I went to the Facebook offices in London about everything that happened to me which they and Twitter participated in. They told me to sue Airbnb. It’s been five years stuck without a home. My biggest concern is getting lung cancer and dying.