Nightmare Customer Service, Cancelled without Explanation

I am honestly shocked at how terrible my experience with Airbnb was. It really seems like they just don’t care. I signed up for an account on a Friday afternoon and booked a $3900 one-month stay. Two hours later, Airbnb cancelled my booking with absolutely no explanation. Saturday I called customer service, and they couldn’t explain why they cancelled the reservation. They said the $3900 refund would take 10-15 business days to clear my credit card. The problem is, their “hold” on my funds created a situation where I couldn’t rebook the reservation, because it would have put my credit card over the limit. After a nightmare of five phone calls on Saturday, they finally agreed to ask the host to block out the dates, until my credit card refund hit the account and I could rebook. They also promised to waive the $200 service fee as an apology for the mistake. Luckily the host was very nice, and agreed to hold the property until I was able to rebook.

On Sunday the refund on my credit card cleared the account, so I tried to rebook the house on Airbnb. However, Airbnb was blocking my credit card payment for some reason. My credit card company said that it was fine on their end; this was an Airbnb problem. I literally spent all day Sunday calling Airbnb to resolve the situation. They never responded as promised, and would never let me speak to a supervisor. The customer service was totally horrendous. Then Airbnb asked me to “confirm” my credit card by uploading a copy of my most recent card statement.

Why am I having to do this? They already charged my card and refunded it; why the extra hassle now? I had already given them my name, address, phone, email, photo of my face, copies of my driver’s license, and all my credit card details. I need more crap to deal with now? I uploaded the card statement.

By late Sunday night they finally emailed and said “you can rebook now, and your credit card is approved.” Of course when I tried to rebook, Airbnb still had a hold on my credit card. Here we are four days later and I still can’t book the reservation. They are now asking me to upload a photo of my credit card itself, as well as other documentation that my credit card is associated to my email address. At this point I just gave up. Seriously Airbnb, you make it this hard to do business with you? The service was awful, the people were rude, and it is absolutely impossible to speak to a manager that can make anything happen. Stay away from Airbnb. This company obviously doesn’t care about service at all.

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

One Comment

  1. Wow! I’m so so sorry your dealing with this. Your not the only one. I am homeless after booking a two month trip with air bnb and they canceled the reservation. The thing is we got the air bnb when our lease was up to look for an apartment and keep all our belongings. We went to the listing and after the landlords told the host he couldn’t rent it out two days after checking in air bnb were they ones to officially cancel the reservation because of the HOSTS fault. Air bnb wouldn’t put us in a hotel and begged us to use another air bnb with a super host instead. We found one and she took my reservation alright then said to arrive two days AFTER the reservation began because conveniently she said she couldn’t get the keys to the apartment to us until then because of work. Work? We are going to be sleeping out of our car! After the second cancellation we COULDN’T get a hotel because there is a 10-14 day wait till they put the money back. We are sleeping in our car, it’s been 10 days and I still haven’t gotten my 5,700$ back from the cancellation. Air bnb knows all of this and all they have to do it credit me but they always make it seem like I’m a bother because I call like 10 times a day now wondering why I can’t be credited. I just explained this to you because sometimes the only thing that can make you feel better when air bnb won’t help is just knowing your not the only one. It’s 1:47 am and I’m still sleeping out of my car. I went from living in a luxury complex for 3 years to this…how did air bnb ruin so much and cause so much pain?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *