Tag Archives: Airbnb Cancellation Nightmare

Airbnb Cancelled without Time to Respond

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My Airbnb was cancelled within six hours. In December 2018 I booked an apartment in Corfu City for August 2019. Half of the fee had already been paid in advance (so far, standard procedure).

On July 27th at 7:00 PM an email arrived in my account. Airbnb sent a message telling me I had 72 hours to update my payment modalities since the transaction of the remaining fee hadn’t gone through. Further down in the email Airbnb let me know I had until the next day – the 28th – otherwise my booking would be cancelled. What was it? 24 hours or 72 hours to update the account? A discrepancy in itself.

The second email I found arrived only six hours later at 2:00 in the morning telling me my booking had been cancelled and a refund had been made to my account. Airbnb kept a cancellation fee of 48.77 Euro. I found those emails the evening of 28th (I am on vacation after all, and not checking my email every five hours).

We were already on Corfu island, a very uncomfortable situation to suddenly find ourselves without accommodation the upcoming weekend. I had to get in touch with the host immediately. Our host was extremely nice and helped us activate the booking again. Now I wonder – whatever happened to my 48 Euro? I have already written to Airbnb, but no one has gotten in touch with me so far.

I wonder if this happens often? A long standing booking cancelled by Airbnb within six hours? Not even being given a chance to update the payment modalities before cancellation? The cancellation fee mysteriously vanishing? No further information by Airbnb provided? Everything left for the guest and the host to be figured out (which was a tedious procedure and I am still ending up paying more)? I am very disappointed in Airbnb. Next time I will find accommodation through other platforms.

Deposit Scam: Cancelled Within Four Minutes

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I was looking to book a place close to home for my wife and I while we had renovations done on our house. This is when I came across this host’s place. I went through the request process and paid. Just as I did, I noticed that it did not suit my needs, as it was only a room in a shared house.

I quickly cancelled (within four minutes) my request to stay. Then I received an email for the cancellation and another one for the credit. This is when I saw I was only getting back 50% of my money. I tried contacting the host to explain what I had done in error. He said: “No problem, just cancel.”

I told him that I did. He then stated that it was the cancellation policy to keep half. I called Airbnb and they said it was up to the host. This host has no morals at all. I did speak to a nice girl from Airbnb and she is trying to help me. If she is unable to help me I am out $2300 dollars. All because this host has no soul. Please avoid dealing with him.

No Refund Despite Cancellation Policy

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After cancelling a booking five days after I made it and after messaging Airbnb about this, I waited over a week my refund. The host’s cancellation policy clearly stated “cancellation within 48 hrs. of booking and 14 days before check-in to get a full refund”.

I notified my credit card company, who promptly issued me a refund. I thought all was well (I love Mastercard). Three weeks later, a charge was posted to my credit card for $487.00 (the amount of my first deposit). I messaged back and forth many times to Airbnb asking them to remove this charge and got a whole string of double-talk but no refund.

I opened a dispute with Mastercard and they collected the money from Airbnb. However, I have never experienced so many stalls, lies and downright BS from any company before. I do not recommend them and please be extra careful if you do decide to book – they are not reputable.

Host Cancelled One Hour Before We Arrived

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I just heard about this site and wish I had earlier so I could have posted this then. About three years ago, a friend and I booked a beachside condo in San Diego (approximately $400/night). We were driving in from about six hours away. One hour before we got to the condo (late at night), I received a phone call from the “agent” of the owner telling me that the unit was no longer available because the owner had let some friends use it instead. I asked the agent what we were supposed to do and was told to find something else.

Airbnb Automated Cancellation Problem

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I made a reservation through Airbnb for my upcoming spring break along with my friends and booked it at the start of January. The policy stated two divided payments, but when I checked back on March 11th, five days before the check-in date, it was stated that my reservation was automatically canceled.

I tried calling Airbnb and they said that the second part of my payment didn’t go through, so they tried to reach out to me through my email address. The problem here was that I’ve never received an email regarding this problem. So the first option they offered me was that they were going to contact the host of my reservation and talk with them to refund the first part of the transaction and make me re-reserve the place for the exact same date with same amount of money.

Since it was hard for me to find another place within five days and I didn’t want to lose out the money, I requested they contact the host. However, they came back to me saying that the host already was filled with another guest staying at his/her place so it was hard for the host to give me the refund.

I decided to talk with Airbnb about why their notification wasn’t delivered. They investigated the issue, but later came back to me saying that they sent out the notification. I double-checked all of my emails, but wasn’t able to find any single mail that was sent from Airbnb. I tried to ask them to compensate me for this issue because clearly, I did nothing wrong and I was the one who was going to lose out on approximately a thousand dollars without any clear reasons behind it.

It wasn’t my fault that Airbnb’s notification didn’t reach me, and so I asked them “wasn’t there another way to reach out to me to help make the second payment go through?” All they replied was that all they can offer me is a 100-dollar coupon for my next stay, and they just decided to close this case by themselves.

I was so outraged at their customer service and ended up losing 1000 dollars without doing anything wrong. Is this something normal that happens? Why isn’t Airbnb being responsible for the mistakes that they clearly made?

Airbnb Cancellation Issues Part of their Business Model

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I fully understand that Airbnb is not a hotel service and that the hosts state their cancellation policy on the their page. That being said, I have had some issues with them. I booked a four-day stay on July 3rd at an oceanfront studio condo in Daytona Beach for October 26-30. When my boyfriend, who I added onto the reservation, looked at the dates he advised that I booked the wrong days.

I looked at the available dates for when we needed the Airbnb (October 18-22); the host’s place was not available. I contacted her the second I realized I would not be able to stay there, which was July 7th. She was very reasonable at first. She stated that because I cancelled months in advance that she would offer me a full refund and that I would need to cancel and then send a request. I did as she requested and Airbnb was fully aware of it. I cancelled and then sent the request.

After five days of her not accepting the request for the refund, I messaged her and asked if she would go and accept the refund. I then contacted Airbnb for a week and they stated there was nothing they could do at that point. It has now been five weeks since I sent the request and she has not answered even though I have sent messages. I have months before I would have even checked in for the reservation but she is unable to communicate.

I understand fully that I made the mistake, but by accidentally choosing the wrong dates and cancelling months in advance, I do not believe I should lose hundreds of dollars over this issue. I understand Airbnb is a way to save money but it would have been much easier to just get a hotel if it is going to be this difficult.

Airbnb Customer Service Unprepared to Help

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This has nothing to do with my host, but everything to do with Airbnb’s horrible customer service. On Airbnb’s mobile site, it states I have to call an 855 number in order to change a current reservation. I did that and waited almost 30 minutes listening to the same song over and over and over again, and no one came on the line to help me. Then, when I went to the full site on my computer, I first learned that I could request a change through the site from the host. As a customer who has done a lot of business with them, I do not appreciate Airbnb putting me on hold for ages when I have a problem that can be resolved by the website. This isn’t the first time I have had a problem reaching Airbnb when I have had to call them myself. I am at the point where I am ready to stop using their service because of this.

After I was on hold for 15 minutes, a representative told me over the phone that she would contact the host and wait 12 hours for a resolution. Another representative tried to talk to me early the next morning after I was on hold for 20 minutes but the call got disconnected after two minutes! Then the second representative told me at 4:00 AM that only the first could help me and that she would call me back. Why can only one person help me? This person did not even know how many nights I asked to cancel! He didn’t seem that interested in taking the time to read through my file to familiarize himself with the case even though I took an hour of my time on hold to talk to him. After all that, I dug deeper into the website and learned I could cancel the remaining days of my reservation through the website itself.

Why don’t the customer service representatives tell you this while they have you on the phone so we don’t keep wasting each other’s time? Now I have to calculate 24 hours before the first night I want to cancel the reservation for. So when does the first night begin? If I put in my request a day too early, will I be kicked out the day before? Or if I put in the request too late, will I lose 50% of that extra night? What is the cut off point? Why does it have to be this difficult dealing with Airbnb?

Airbnb is a Ripoff, Plain and Simple

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I’m a first time user who will NEVER use Airbnb again. I reserved a long-term stay (30 days) with a host through Airbnb. They quickly took half the amount – $1700 – from my credit card. Then I needed to cancel. I was within my refund window. There was lots of chatter with accommodating texts between the host and myself, two weeks prior to the reservation cancel request. Then nothing. She had three days to respond to my refund request. Of course she didn’t. After those three days, Airbnb sent a notice that I could receive up to $1580 minus their $75 fee, which would be refunded within three days. This is what ended up happening. And they offered to help resolve things with my host. This was a one-time chance to reach anyone via text through the link Airbnb provided. After the initial request, it literally dead ends not allowing me to reach out to Airbnb until they respond. It has now been almost a month. I can’t text, email or contact anyone! Thankfully, my credit card company allowed me to dispute the charge. I have some kind of control over fighting for MY money. Where was Airbnb’s customer protection?

Airbnb Nightmare: Cancelled ONE MINUTE Before I Arrived

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I was traveling with my family (myself, my wife, and my three-year-old daughter) in Los Angeles where I had booked a nice cottage for four nights. Everything was ok until the day of our arrival at the host house. The same morning I receive a message saying she had to postpone her departure and thus the house was not available on the first night. Instead of cancelling the booking she offered to book us an hotel room for the first night at her expense. I obviously accepted and started my trip to arrive there. Later in the afternoon, around 5:00pm, just a minute before arriving at her home (without any news from the host about the hotel), I received a cancellation notification from Airbnb.

The rest of the day was a nightmare. We found a hotel for the night that cost a LOT more than the Airbnb, but had a lot of problems booking it as our credit card was maxed out due to the Airbnb reimbursement not arriving promptly. Only in the late evening did we get the money we needed to let our daughter sleep in an hotel room instead of a car… worst afternoon of my life… I think most of this is linked to the very low penalty fees ($100 as far as I know) Airbnb enforces on hosts cancelling their bookings. This should be changed such that the host is strongly discouraged from cancelling a booking in the last few days before check in. Furthermore, Airbnb provides a 10% bonus to guests for the inconvenience – ridiculous: the longer you book, the less you receive in case of cancellation? – ONLY IF YOU SPEND IT AGAIN ON AIRBNB?

Anyway, this was my first experience using Airbnb, and for sure it will have been the last…