Host Charging me for a TV that was Already Broken

A couple of months ago, my wife, my parents, and I booked an Airbnb in San Antonio. The pictures looked nice and the place was in a central location. When we got there, the place was disgusting, with mold and dust everywhere. The fridge hadn’t been cleaned in ages, and there were dirty sheets on the beds and dirty towels tucked away in the closets. In addition, the TV wasn’t working.

We contacted the host by phone (our mistake – we should have done it on the Airbnb app, but at the time it seemed more convenient by phone). The guy said he didn’t care and wasn’t going to do anything about it, so he would just give us a full refund. I contacted Airbnb for them to find us a new place and they said they wouldn’t (first time something like this happened to us, and it was definitely alarming to see how Airbnb didn’t give a crap about us not having a place to sleep).

Anyway, we managed to find another place, and left this problem behind us. A month later I get a message from Airbnb saying that our host (even though we didn’t stay there) was charging us $2300 because we broke the TV. At first I thought this was a joke, and replied directly saying that we didn’t break anything so I wasn’t paying anything. The host then involved the resolution center. A month later I get an email from the resolution center saying they “feel” that the fair thing to do is for me to pay $1000 (why it went down from $2300 to $1000, I have no idea). I replied saying that I didn’t do anything; I wasn’t paying anything, and that I didn’t give them authorization to charge my card. If they did that, I would consider it fraud, since I am explicitly not giving my consent. I can’t believe that a host can just say that something’s broken and charge it to the guest. Sufficed to say I won’t ever use Airbnb again.

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

2 Comments

  1. I have a similar problem like you. The AIRBNB requested me to pay 650 euro , because I broke the wear out plastic folding door and wooden support bed frame. They believed that I hired the apartment to do kicking and jump up and down on the bed (I had no children to travel with me). I made a big mistake that I forgot to close my Paypal account. The AIRBNB took 250 euro from my credit card, they asked me to pay the rest , if I do not pay they will take my name from their list and I won’t be able to use AIRBNB .
    Did they say it to you that they would cross your name from the AIRBNB website. I will upload my story soon. I do not think AIRBNB would stand on our side.

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