Tag Archives: airbnb nightmare

Airbnb Customer Service is Completely Unprofessional

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I just opened an Airbnb account and was unable to verify my ID despite following the exact instructions for the setup. I went through hell to no avail to find answers from their useless help center and eventually found a link to raise my question. It went to a community member whose answer did not help. I opted to transfer the question to Airbnb. After three or four days, I finally received an email from a “Customer Service Experience” team member. The answer she gave is a repeat of what I have tried on the help center. The most horrifying bit? She has my Airbnb account associated with an email address of a stranger. I am terrified to see this – does that mean after I signed up for my account, someone fraudulently altered my account email without my knowledge? If this is true, it is a security breach on Airbnb’s part. The “reply to” address is a generic box, so of course I never get any response back.

I went back to the Airbnb Help Center trying to find a way to raise a question; it turns out the system has users endlessly looping and there’s no way for me to ask another question at all. My major complains with Airbnb’s dodgy business:

  1. The Airbnb website has a list of acceptable online accounts to link to an user’s account to establish trust. After linking one on the list, the system keeps asking for more. This is false advertisement and gives no clear indication of how much Personal Sensitive Information (PSI) they attempt to collect from unsuspecting users. This is a big trust issue for a company like Airbnb.
  2. Their own customer experience team told me my account is linked to an email not known to me. This seems like a huge security breach to customer data and worthy of attention from the press. There is no way to address this with Airbnb since there is no way to contact their customer service directly. The customer experience team is a joke.
  3. Customer service is non existent as I have experienced it. In the real world, people using services run into issues that can’t be resolved by looking at help center topics and need to talk to a real person. Having a dodgy website that keeps looping through help topics and not giving customer a way to contact Airbnb just shows how serious Airbnb is about serving customers.

Is the company trying to hide something?

Less Safety and Trustworthy Guarantee on Airbnb?

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We booked a house with this host from December 30th, 2016 until January 1st, 2017. He had two properties: one for a maximum of ten people, and another for a maximum of fourteen people. I told him that I needed the 14-person house and then we paid. We had nine people, all with big suitcases. We knew some hosts do not reveal the real capacity of their properties for comfort level, so we thought we would take a precautionary step. We arrived, and we were still placed in the smaller room. The nightmare started right away. After we paid, we couldn’t reach the host. Neither phone calls (at least ten times) or messages on Airbnb would receive any response. Some of us needed to stay in living room (his beds were only enough for six adults). Every corner was filled with dust like no one had been cleaning. There was a smelly toilet, and no extra blankets for the winter weather.

After 24 hours and many requests to change or cancel the booking, the host finally responded: “I thought you had a sufficient number of Japanese style beds.” That’s all he answered. Therefore, any host who wants to make quick money in this irresponsible manner should use Airbnb. They know Airbnb does not have much of a hold on their behavior, so as long as they make money, why should they care about anything else? Airbnb can say that there are many more good experiences, but how about all these irresponsible hosts? Who can take action against them? The host’s profile showed others’ reviews. Are these reviews just plain words? Can they be respected? Or is this just a trick from Airbnb to dilute the guest’s anger and complaints, e.g. “I heard you but sorry, I cannot do anything.” Both Airbnb and the host are still making money. The host can choose to not answer our calls and messages during our stay. What if an accident or safety issue happened and no one responded? I have to put my money and life at risk, just because I booked on Airbnb?

Airbnb Offers No Customer Service Whatsoever

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Let me first say that Airbnb offers no way to leave a comment or complaint. I tried, but when I left a comment in the cancellation field under the “other” box for reasons, I couldn’t process the cancellation. I was only able to cancel using one of their predetermined reasons (that don’t allow any comments). Jessica (my host) did not notify us that the location of her Airbnb houseboat had changed. We made the reservation on September 9th, 2016 for February 17th-24th, 2017. Had I not visited her listing this week, I still wouldn’t have been aware of the change. I booked a stay on her houseboat at Regatta Point Marina in Palmetto – a full service, premier marina. Her original description listed the marina amenities: pool, exercise room, a bar and restaurant on site, and gated. The boat was located on C Dock. Jessica’s listing description has now changed to state “the location of the houseboat has changed”… since when? Sometime around December?

I found out it was now located at the Bradenton Beach Marina – a mom and pop place with none of the aforementioned amenities – under and next to the bridge (causeway) that connects Anna Maria Island to the mainland; in other words, it’s noisy. This is not what I agreed to when I made the reservations. Although Jessica has changed the description of the accommodations, she left the location map and pictures from the initial listing on the Airbnb website. I called Jessica the morning of February 9th, and she did not return my call. I sent a message from the Airbnb website the morning of February 9th, and she has not responded. I feel she should pay the Airbnb service fee for our cancellation as the property description and location has changed substantially, and she has not communicated with me regarding these changes. It seems she would have at least notified her confirmed guests back in November or December there was a change so if they wanted to make other plans, they could. I tried to copy the URL from the listing but it had been removed immediately after I cancelled.

Host Nightmare: Religious Beliefs vs. Guest Rights

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I have had the worst experience hosting in my house. The guest’s name is Fernando, staying from January 10th to February 14th, 2017. I’m really upset about his behavior – his irresponsible act of throwing a lot of tissues into my toilet until it was clogged. I spent 350,000 rupees to fix that and I decided to just let it be my burden. Second, he didn’t put any effort into keeping the house clean. Everything was always messed up: all his clothes were scattered around the floor, and his hair after shaving was everywhere on the floor. He left the house in a condition where all my appliances were on, which is very dangerous. Can you imagine if there was any short circuit that could cause a fire? I have always asked for his permission whenever there’s a regular checkup and he said I was snooping on him. It’s normal to have a regular checkup in my own house otherwise he would have broken all my belongings. I do respect him as a guest in my country, but I don’t think he does the same to me. He has known from the beginning that my neighborhoods are predominantly Muslim, and he didn’t seem to respect that.

Last thing, I just can’t tolerate the fact he brought a woman to my house for sex. Though there wasn’t any stated rule that prohibits adultery on my property, it is an obvious covenant for Muslims to never allow adultery in any way. This isn’t a hotel; this is my house and it is strictly prohibited for adultery to happen in my house and around the neighborhood. He should have known this because I told him in the very beginning that the neighborhoods are predominantly Muslim, and he definitely knows that Muslims are prohibited from allowing adultery. However, he just didn’t abide by the covenant. I have always tried to do my best to serve him as my guest: I’ve tried to fix anything he has complained about, I’ve tried to fulfill his requests, and I’ve definitely asked for his permission when my family visits to have a regular checkup of the property. We’ve always emptied his trash and cleaned the house. I apologize for this situation, but bringing a woman in the house is truly crossing the line.

I have a lot of friends from the US and all other parts in the worlds as my business partners, and this is truly the first disappointing experience for me. He is my first and my last guest because I’ve unlisted all my houses on Airbnb. Now he is requesting a refund because security chased that woman out of my house after his stay was almost finished. After all he has done to my house, it’s really challenging my sanity. I’ve tried to call Airbnb in the US, Malaysia and Singapore so many times. I’ve stayed on the phone for ten minutes and there isn’t any answer. It is so frustrating to have never reached Airbnb customer service for resolving such problems.

Airbnb Put Me in Identification Verification Hell

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I had been booking accommodations with Airbnb throughout New Zealand and Australia until one day, Airbnb would not let me make any new bookings until I complied with their ID verification process. I began the process and became very alarmed: I was being asked for a ton of personal data, with questions referring to my former spouse (from whom I have been divorced for twenty years), an address I had 60 years ago – where did Airbnb find this? – and past places of employment. The clincher came when they asked for my social security number, a scan of my passport, and access to my Facebook account. Smelling a scam, I Googled “ID verification” and found out this was indeed a legitimate Airbnb process. Then I phoned them and actually got through. No matter how much personal data I provided, they kept asking for more, assuring me all the while that my information was secure.

…secure until someone hacks Airbnb and has access to enough information to steal my identity and ruin my life, a situation simply not worth this risk. So now I am unable to book any future accommodations on Airbnb. I understand that a host needs to feel confident about strangers staying with them, but this verification process goes way too far and clearly exposes travelers to the risk of identity theft. I am a 70-year-old woman, retired from working in healthcare, with no criminal record who has been a pillar of my community for decades. I am not a threat to anyone. Furthermore, someone who really is up to no good could most likely obtain false documents and still get through their ID process. I am angry and upset that I can no longer use Airbnb, despite the fact that I am a totally honest, harmless and ethical person. My message to Airbnb: you need to figure out a better way to vet travelers. If an honest, harmless retired senior can’t use your site without divulging a ton of personal data, something is amiss with your process.

Incomplete Airbnb Stays: No Reviews Allowed

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My friends and I lost hope of getting a proper resolution of our case through the Airbnb resolution center. We did not get a refund and our review was not published on the website. The situation with feedback is totally awful as our review was supported by multiple photos. We have contacted Airbnb multiple times but got only formal responses. I would very much appreciate if you could advise what we should do in this situation. I would want a chance to at least make our review available to others on Airbnb; the apartment is still listed on the site so there will be other people who may suffer from it.

We had used Airbnb to book an apartment in Barcelona from January 5-11, 2017 for our family. We arrived at the apartment at 8:30 AM but at that time the previous guests were there. The host told us that we may check in only after 12:00 PM. At that time we did not have a chance to look through the apartment and discuss its conditions with the host. We left our luggage and used the rest of the day for sightseeing in Barcelona. We came back at 7:00 PM and realized that the apartment was not in a good conditions. The linen was dirty, the bed was not suitable for two people, and there was no linen at all for the third guest. We can provide the full review with photos if anyone is interested. The host was not available so we could not discuss these issues with her. We were not comfortable staying in the apartment, so we had to leave it and find another location.

The same day, we informed the Airbnb resolution center about these issues and asked for assistance. The next day I discussed these issues with the host and she told me that our requests about cleaning and the bed could not be satisfied. She did not feel comfortable providing the apartment after our feedback about these conditions so we agreed to sort it out with Airbnb. A few days later, an Airbnb specialist cancelled our booking without our consent, and informed us that the case was closed. When we came back home from the vacation we provided a detailed review but it was not published by Airbnb. We had contacted the Airbnb resolution center and got a response that the review could not be released as we did not stay in the apartment and the booking was cancelled. We had called the resolution center and explained that the review was based on our personal experience – that we had to leave the apartment because of its poor conditions and that our booking was cancelled by Airbnb – but the response from the resolution center did not change.

Uninvited Guests Make Themselves at Home in our Airbnb

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I am a guest who stayed at an Airbnb and had a horrible experience. When I arrived at the house there was one female, one male, and two children in the house. The women identified herself as “Sam” and informed me that the night before there was a party at the house; a door on one of the bedrooms was broken, they did a clean up of the house, and it was perfect now. Sam handed me a single key, said only I was allowed to have it, and said that there would be a security guard downstairs. I asked Sam if the security guard would be there all night and she informed me that he would not be. I checked the house and noticed that the floors were sticky; there was dirt everywhere and there were stains on the sofas. There was dust everywhere and there were two blinds broken.

When I was setting up the table for dinner I tried to turn on the lights and half the ones in the kitchen were not working. I called Sam and asked about this. She told me to go into the basement and get a lamp. At this point I felt there were cameras in the house because she knew every move as I was making it. I went into the basement as she told me to. I went to the washroom and the toilet would not flush properly. My guest and I went to to get food. I tried to lock the door and the key would not work. I called Sam to inform her. She said “in her haste she had given me the wrong key” and told me to leave the door unlocked. I asked one of my guests to come to the house because I had personal items there. I received a call from Sam saying there was someone in the house. They had neighbours watching the house and I felt very uncomfortable with this.

During my dinner, some of my guests were outside and noticed a young boy come out from the basement. We asked if he wanted food; he came and ate some and one of my guests asked if he was with the security guard. He told us his father owned the house and was sleeping downstairs. I was never told he was the owner nor that they would be sleeping in the basement. I was told that this security guard was not going to be sleeping downstairs. After I noticed that the young boy kept coming upstairs and speaking to my guests, I was being questioned by Sam about the number of people there. There were only sixteen. The young boy was upstairs when Sam called me so I asked him to speak to Sam; she said that the music was too loud and I overheard the young man say his father kicked him out of his room in the basement.

Around 3:00 AM I received a phone call from a number I did not know. I picked up and it was the young man’s father saying that the neighbours called him and he was going to call the police. If they came, we would get kicked out. At this point I became irate. I only spoke to Sam – she was the only person who had my number and she had given my number to this security guard. I never authorized anyone to give out my information outside of Airbnb. When my guest and I were going to bed the young man came upstairs and said his father kicked him out of the basement and he had nowhere to sleep. I rented this place and the owner’s son was upstairs looking upset with nowhere to sleep… we could not say “sorry, no” at 4:00 AM. As human beings, we offered him a pillow. I stayed downstairs to clean and noticed that the young man got up, turned on an alarm, and went back downstairs. Some of my guests were so upset with what happened they left. Overall this entire experience has been horrible from the start.

Giving up on Airbnb Verification Process to Book Bungalow

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I registered with Airbnb, as there was one property in particular that we just had to have: this really beautiful seaside bungalow with views to die for. I made a booking and the owner accepted it, but in order to finish the booking I needed to get verified. I thought that would be no problem. I got my email and phone number verified, and then they asked me for my passport. Last time I checked, only border authorities have the right to check passport, but I just wanted to book my holiday so I went ahead and sent it in. I made a photo of my passport and waited. The website said there was a problem. Then I made another photo, this time with perfect lighting conditions and saved it in the highest resolution; Airbnb gave the same response. I held up my own passport in my webcam (a real person, with real documents) crossing my fingers that a computer would recognize me as a real person with a real document; nothing happened.

Normally this would have already been a few too many steps for me, but my girlfriend and I were just in love with this bungalow, so following all the guidelines and help desk information (which was not a lot, considering they are massively invading my privacy with this verification process) I linked my Google account so they could cross reference my name. I still had no luck, just a lot of frustration. At this point it wasn’t just coming from losing our dream holiday. The frustration was also coming from realizing what I have just done, allowing some website (and whatever 3rd and 4th parties behind them) to go through my personal emails, including my PayPal information, and have a perfect high resolution photo of my passport.

Needless to say I have deleted my account and will never return to this website. The keen traveler I am, with 80+ nights booked with my Expedia account, I will finish my experience at Airbnb with zero nights and actually quite a bit of fear and frustration that I had to go through using personal documents and still not getting recognized as a human being. I will never return to this website, unless in the following years I ever end up being a victim of some identity theft.

I did respect the fact that it’s because of Airbnb that I found this bungalow, so I never wanted to cut them off, and was more than happy paying their share. They cut me off with their ridiculously faulty (and arguably dodgy) verification system. After that I had no other choice but to Google the name of the property, and after a little research, I ended up with a direct contact to the owner. I do not encourage anyone to do this; it is against to policies and also not a “nice” thing to do. However, it was literally the only choice they left me with. Ironically, it saved around 100 bucks, shared between the owner and myself.

Same Scammers, Different Story: Airbnb in Dubai

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Three of us wanted to rent an apartment in Dubai so we went on the Airbnb website and found a host under the name Maria who had an apartment for rent supposedly on the 312th road. The host replied to us that the apartment was available and that she would send us a special offer through Airbnb; she sent us an email from Airbnb and we followed a link to make a payment that directed us to an Airbnb payment page. It said that the gateway was down after we entered our credit card details and that we would have to make a bank transfer to an account in Portugal under the name Diana Gore as instructed on the page. We emailed the receipt to Maria. When it was time to check in she sent us a guide with a contact number for the UK that did not work and left us circling the block trying to get her to reply to our emails. Then she vanished. When we contacted Airbnb they said that they can’t do anything for us because we paid outside their platform even though we found the listing on their site and were instructed to pay on a page that had their logo on it. They refused to take responsibility for having a fake host on their site. That means that it is very easy to list on their site and upload fake pictures. They should be responsible for people that have accounts with them. Simply terrible.

Hostess Attacks My Weight In Response to My Review

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Where do I start? My boyfriend and I were going to Madrid for a few days to help him prepare for a month-long trip to Africa. He grew up in Madrid and has a Spanish passport. We booked an apartment from a hostess named Olga. She had wonderful reviews and seemed very nice. Well, our stay was not what we expected; it was horrible. However, I understand that my concerns may not be concerns to other people so instead of writing an extremely rude comment, I chose to write an honest, yet professional review of my stay. After reading her review and responding to her review of me, I deleted my Airbnb account. Here is what I wrote:

“The apartment is much smaller than the pictures make you believe. There is no terrace and the only windows are in the bathroom, which isn’t good because the neighbors can see right through when they’re open. If you have a lot of luggage, it is not ideal because the building does not have an elevator. There is really only enough space for two people. If you’re just planning to sleep in the apartment and not cook or plan or anything special, it’s ideal for that purpose since you won’t be spending so much time there. But, since Madrid was more of a stop to another destination and not the destination itself, my boyfriend and I were expecting to have more space and expecting all the appliances to work properly. The apartment just did not fit our needs, and we felt that some things could have been explained better.”

Her first review of me was positive, but when she saw that I was not in awe of her apartment like everyone else was, she attacked me and wrote a second review and a response to my review. Her response says it all so here it is (it is in Spanish so I will translate it for everyone):

“Any apartment is too small for Elizabeth’s size. Of course the hot water runs out when she showers. I recommend that Elizabeth reads the description well before making a reservation. The listing of the apartment said that it was small and that there was no elevator. Also if you travel with four large suitcases it makes it difficult to go up any kind of stairs. In reference to the hot water: the heater has a capacity of 50 liters and this is the first time in four years that someone has complained that the hot water ran out. The internet is made of fiber optics and runs very fast, so we also have never had complaints about this either. I’m sorry she had so many difficulties, but I think the solution lies with her; to pick spaces that are super big and that have an elevator.”

First of all, there was no hot water the first night we got there, nor the next morning. We turned on the shower and only cold water came out; clearly it wasn’t working from the moment we got there. My boyfriend and I had to hand wash ourselves three of the five days we were there. Secondly, size has nothing to do with the perception of the size of the apartment. In her second review of me that is present on my profile, she wrote that I was “extremely heavy.” I’m sorry, but not being a size 6 doesn’t make me “extremely heavy.” I’m a size 16. The average woman is a size 12. The apartment was objectively small. My boyfriend is like a size 6 or 8 and even he was upset with the small size of the apartment. Third, I had two small suitcases and two big suitcases. Honestly, her photos don’t represent the apartment.

I was really upset that she attacked my size just because I was unhappy with my stay. I didn’t mention it in my review, but every time my boyfriend and I tried to cook in the apartment, the breaker would just cut off and all the electricity was gone. By her logic, that is due to my size too. Instead of realizing that she needed to fix some things in her apartment, she attacked me with rude comments. What makes me so angry is that my post wasn’t even mean. Just because I didn’t fall before her feet and praise her like other guests have done, I guess that means a rude and hateful comment is warranted. In short, she was a total jerk and so immature. It’s no wonder girls have body image issues by the time they’re six. Other women constantly put them down and make them think if they’re not a size 2, then they’re fat.

Needless to say, I won’t be using Airbnb again. This was my first and last experience with them. The fact that they don’t have an email or a phone number for you to complain is so annoying. I reported the review and her response, but it is still active. I have attached a picture of her profile and this is the link. If you come across her place, don’t stay there. Although it is (as I said in my review) ideal for people who don’t plan to spend time in the apartment, don’t stay there simply because the hostess is a demon from hell and will lash out at you if you don’t praise her. From now on, it’s hostels and hotels for me.