I live next to an illegal short-term rental Airbnb. In New Orleans you cannot have an Airbnb in a residential neighborhood unless the owner lives on the property permanently. Yet the city of New Orleans does not enforce these laws. Therefore there are many, many illegal Airbnb’s in our residential neighborhoods. I live next to one of these “party houses”. The owner lives in New York and has never lived on the property. He lost his short-term rental permit in 2019, and I have been trying to get the property closed ever since.

The pictures of the property are fake, and the reviews are fake. Attached is a real review of the property which the owner has taken down. When I contacted Airbnb they told me to speak to the owner. He has been very nasty to me. His guests throw beer cans at my house next door, broke my fence trying to climb over it to get a ball, and they have loud parties into the early morning hours.

When a real customer is disgusted with the property and does not want to stay because it is not clean, nor meets any of the description, he does not give them their money back. He has thrown guests out because he has others checking in. He has seven listings on Airbnb when there are only two properties. I live next to one and the other is in the French Quarter, which is totally illegal.

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As the check-in date approached, I was concerned as I had not received an email with building and room codes. I contacted the host through Airbnb’s message center. They said the emails were going to an email other than my account email (but would not specify which: red flag #1), so they resent them. I noticed right away that the message referred to ‘The Baker’ property, not the revised property.

I contacted them again. The first agent ended the call as soon as I explained the situation (red flag #2). I called back and was told that no, the information was correct, and that although it said ‘The Baker’ on the message, the address and entry codes were for ‘The Leo’. I even messaged again and asked them to confirm again because my wife and her cousin were arriving at 11:30 PM and I did not want them to have nowhere to go.

Turns out that they outright lied. The property was still ‘The Baker’ and ‘The Leo’ was not even available as it was being renovated (red flag #3). Of course after over seven hours on the phone trying to figure this out, it is not even possible to find a room at a similar rate in San Diego on such short notice.
Sonder won’t even respond to my comment to which they lied outright.

Airbnb is working on a ‘solution’, but their solution is: no refund (the host won’t agree) and Airbnb protects them. The host will provide a substitute — yes, one that has horrible reviews and is located directly above a loud bar (property called ‘The Marin’) — but don’t worry, they will provide ear plugs and a white noise generator so you can sort of sleep. I am cancelling my Airbnb account as of today.

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My disabled husband and I booked this accommodation being told it was an entire home; it was not – it was a tiny room at the rear of building. It was supposed to be less than a two-minute walk to the beach but it’s nowhere near the beach.

As this was completely unsuitable for my husband we had to leave immediately and get a taxi to take us around Barbados to find suitable accommodations. We had to book two separate hotels as it was the Christmas season and paid almost £2000 for our stay here.

Airbnb still lists this property as less than a two-minute walk to the beach and as an entire home. We are struggling to get a full refund even though I have all the evidence needed to prove it is an inaccurate listing. The host also did not turn up for us at the airport nor send someone for us nor inform us he wasn’t coming for us. When we got there the host started shouting at us when challenged regarding the distance to the beach.

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When we arrived, physically looked at the space, and spoke to her, the exact opposite was true. The pull out couch was right outside her bedroom door, next to her desk which she said she’d be using. The bathroom she assigned us was literally in the kitchen. The room she assigned us was smaller than a broom closet, while hers was huge with a private bath. There was absolutely zero possibility for privacy. She misled us in order to stay while making money off her unit.

Unfortunately, being a nice guy, I agreed based on her description. Airbnb said there was nothing I could do, since I didn’t record our encounter. I’m not a PI; I’m on vacation and don”t even know the legality of recording her or her private space. I told her the situation she just put me in was undoable. With no other option I had to leave and rent a hotel room. This experience completely ruined our NYC stay.

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We contacted the host immediately but he refused to help us. He told us to cancel if we wanted; there was nothing he could do. I told him it was frightening walking down dark staircases, as that is not what we were expecting. He said, “You are scared – no one else is, deal with it.”

I also told him the room had no real window and he continually disagreed and shouted there was a window. The “window” was a small storage window (see photos).

I have used Airbnb multiple times before and I know the many host policies, specifically: listing photos fairly represent the condition and layout of the space. I have not seen such drastic differences between the photos and the actual room: such filth and no hygiene. I also had to deal with a rude host. We had to stay in the room because we had no choice. If I knew about the situation, I wouldn’t have paid 315 TL for a rubbish room under a staircase. I want others to know about my experience and not to trust this host and his fake photos.

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The dishwasher had a note posted on it not to use it. After being there we assumed that was also because of the low water pressure. The water tasted quite bad and we bought bottled water. There was no mention of this in the description. The instructions asked that only cold water be used for laundry, so that’s what we used. Unfortunately, there was also no mention that the water would stain whites and two of my shirts were ruined.

The working shower control had to be turned “just so” to obtain a comfortable temperature and maintain enough pressure to shower. A fraction of an inch to the left of that magic spot and the water was scalding. A fraction of an inch to the right and water pressure was not sufficient. The water pressure continued to decrease and on the last night and day we were unable to shower at all. The toilet wouldn’t flush on the last day either.

The property is posted as being able to sleep seven people. There is a two-person size bed in one bedroom and a twin bed in each of the other bedrooms. The couch in the living room folds out, so I’m assuming two people could sleep on that. That adds up to six people. I’m not sure where number seven would fit.

I should mention that the host did refund $150.00 for having only one bathroom at the last minute. My niece has emailed him since, explaining the problems as he may want to remedy them before he rents it out again, but he has not responded. I will mention that it was clean and the air conditioning worked fine. Personally, I would like to have a large bit of what we paid to stay there refunded as it certainly was neither convenient nor pleasant and my shirts were ruined.

This experience makes me very reluctant to use or recommend Airbnb in the future. In fact, I have already told the story to quite a few people, some of whom were specifically inquiring about Airbnbs.

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I was travelling to Montreal for Canada Day weekend and had booked a two-bedroom apartment for $700. While driving from Toronto to Montreal, we received a call from our host indicating that she couldn’t host us anymore due to flooding. I then went back and forth with customer service on the phone trying to find a suitable alternative. I had to find a similar place at the last minute on a high demand weekend and the $350 credit they gave me didn’t cover the extra cost at all.

I finally thought I had found a suitable location based on the recommendation from Airbnb’s customer service. It was $1500, which was a lot more than what I had wanted to pay, but it met all the requirements. About five minutes after booking I received a call from the new host. He then told me that if I wanted to stay at his place I would have to pay an extra 15% in cash on top of what I booked because of Montreal property taxes. This is not true at all; I stay in Montreal all the time and no one has ever charged me this.

The place I wanted to book was not available since it was new and the host said he had an alternative place at which I could stay. There was no way I was going to give this guy an extra 15% payment for a place that I knew nothing about. I called Airbnb customer service to cancel this booking because this did not seem right at all. I was in the process of cancelling this booking with an agent but the phone connection cut and it wasn’t finished.

I had to book a new location quickly because I was almost in Montreal and I still didn’t have a place to stay. I proceeded to book a new Airbnb for the weekend. Based on my original conversation with customer service I thought I was going to be able to cancel that Airbnb with the individual that was misrepresenting himself, but I found out that he had a very strict cancellation policy and after talking to customer service Airbnb would only give me a partial refund of $514.

I was literally booked with this guy for an hour and I would have stayed there had he not tried to hit me up for an additional 15% and had it been at the actual place he was advertising. The next day I argued this point with customer service but apparently it’s totally okay for their hosts to do this and that they would see what they could do. I’ve tried contacting Airbnb since then but they keep on telling me that the case manager is the one I need to speak with and that I have to wait for her to call me back. I never receive a return call probably because they just want me to get fed up and pay.

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