This couple didn’t look legitimate at all, they even appeared homeless with all their belongings in their backpacks. The guy talks in very poor grammar and the girl didn’t talk much. I offered them water, chocolate and a very clean and comfortable room. And the first night went through peacefully.

However, the next day in the early afternoon. They started to fight very loudly. The guy was accusing the girl of stealing his money, and the girl refused to accept his charges. Eventually, they both stormed out of the house, left all their belongings behind and never came back. Their original reservation is two days but they only stayed for 1 day. But I was glad that my interaction with them is over.

About 1 month after they left, I got a call from a detective. He notified me that a girl was arrested and they found a check of mine on her. You can only imaging how shocked I was. It turns out that this girl much have taken my mails with her when she stormed out. And one of the letters was some promotional balance transfer checks sent from my bank. She even had the guts to use two of my checks to transfer balance from her credit card to my account.

I was very mad. Because I think Airbnb could have prevented this incident if they checked this guest’s reservation name with the name on the government ID. Moreover, the detective told me that this girl has done this repetitively, then why is Airbnb still allowing her to make more reservations and still more money from other hosts?

At the end, Airbnb offered to pay for 1 year of identify theft protection for me. But at this point, this barely seems fair considering all the time and energy that I’ve spent trying to get over this incidence. Not to mention all the stress! As the result, I’m pulling out of the Airbnb hosting experience forever.

Time and time again in that film, people say the only way they got Airbnb to take action was by going to the media. Even in one case where a guest woke up to find her host in bed with her!

I’m not sure if that doc is watchable from outside the UK. It might be on YouTube. But is very very good. Very eye opening. Very validating for me as a neighbour of this nonsense.

Best of luck to you.