On May 5th, 2019 my Airbnb account was hacked. In the space of five minutes, the hackers had made five reservations for May 5th-9th, 2019. All reservations were accepted and charged to my credit card. On receipt of payment, they then cancelled all of the bookings (all had strict cancellation policies so I was not entitled to a refund), deleted my phone number from Airbnb and closed down my account.
They have managed to steal £1500 from me. My credit card company has told me that in the first instance this needs to be resolved with Airbnb. Because the hackers have closed my account, it is now almost impossible for me to contact Airbnb as you have to log in to access the resolution centre.
When I was able to get a phone number for Airbnb, I was met with an automated voice telling me that in order to use this service you had to enter the phone number that was associated with your account; my phone number and account had been deleted so I could not get through to speak to a human being. There was no other option but to enter a phone number so I had to hang up.
I am appalled that for an organisation as large as Airbnb this is the only way you can contact them on the phone. I then decided to use my mum’s phone number as she has a Airbnb account. This got me through to speak to an actual person however they were worse than useless: their English was appalling; they did not understand the situation and it took ten attempts to get them to take my details rather than looking at my mother’s account (which has not been hacked); they were just a triage service and the ‘team’ that I needed to speak to were unwilling to speak to me until they had investigated further.
I was told that I would be called back yesterday. I have had no phone call. I am going round in one big hellish circle. I have tried to reactivate my account. In order to do this you need to log on, which I can’t as my account has been deleted. When I try to create an account it tells me that the email address I am using is already recognised in the system. When I go through the ‘forgot my password’ option, I enter my email address and it tells me that email address does not exist.
This is absolutely atrocious and Airbnb need to rectify this immediately – it is not like they don’t know what is happening,;here was an article in the British newspaper ‘The Sun’ yesterday about this exact issue with Airbnb. Shame on you, Airbnb. I won’t ever be using your service again and will advise everyone I know to close down their accounts.
