Tag Archives: airbnb racist host

Xenophobic Airbnb Host Harasses Guest After Stay

Posted on

I am a college student whose lease started after the school was scheduled to close. This meant for the few days in between I was on the brink of being homeless. I had finally found a way to move in early but I still wasn’t given a consistent time and date. My Airbnb host knew this and offered to store my things from my dorm room. He changed his price, but I did not mind or rather had no choice to because there was no available storage left in town that I knew of.

From the beginning, I felt uncomfortable. He was telling me what to do, and I felt extremely rushed. Later on and even before he was very confusing on what he meant by storage. We eventually agreed on storing my stuff in his car and he would deliver to my place at a price. This was fair to me. Overall, our personalities did not match, but I was willing to ignore that because I needed a place to stay and that’s ultimately what I was there for.

We had made an agreement that he would drop my things off at my house at a certain time. I tried to express to him multiple times that my property manager was not very responsive and he kept pressuring me to reach out, call him, and check my phone. It felt like I was caught between two men who wanted different things and my literal living situation was on the line. He told me he would drop me off at a certain time and I agreed to that because it was mainly congruent with the time my property manager gave. He also told me I could remain in the house until it was time to leave. He changed this very last minute and I had to leave earlier.

While I was waiting for the call to move in, he asked me what I wanted my occupation to be. To keep it brief it had to do with immigration and helping immigrants and native citizens with integration; this is a very incomplete explanation of it. His political views definitely differed from mine and he verbatim was quoting what seemed like Trump tweets. I constantly told him I was not having the conversation he wanted to have and he continued to talk about it despite my statements and clear discomfort.

I may have accidentally left something in his possession and he was reluctant to help me because he said I was “cold” after he helped me. I paid him for all services outside of housing such as delivery and picking up my stuff. He also made me uncomfortable by asking which exact unit I lived in after he was done.

When I made my review it was 4/5 stars for my comfort and he responded with it dismissing my comfort with his “good reviews”. He’s blocked me and I have blocked him, but there’s no telling if he has my possessions or not because he isn’t compliant. At first it seemed like he was going to help me but after I said thank you for looking for my stuff and I may have just misplaced it he really went out of line with being like: “I’m shocked you asked for help after being so cold” and accused me of getting my feelings hurt like he wasn’t the one calling me “bent out of shape” and overstepping my own boundaries.

It was honestly the most uncomfortable experience ever. I am missing a small pouch and the fridge I let him handle has a piece missing from the back I believe. I am hoping the pouch is just lost within the bins that haven’t been fully unpacked. I’m not trying to accuse him of anything but for someone who handled me so wrongly he really handled the situation poorly. Talk about hurt feelings. I doubt you’ll enjoy staying here.

Discrimination: Host Cancels Before Start of Trip

Posted on

I booked a house recently. I don’t want to name names or share links, because I don’t want Airbnb retaliation. The host sent me a convoluted message about the cleaning lady but she’d try to fix it to make sure it was ready. She then followed up with a convoluted message about how she couldn’t have it cleaned, and now there was some other problem that would prevent us from staying (again, I’m avoiding details). My guess is that she added this new issue because she didn’t want me to say “Hey, no worries, we’ll find a way to clean it and change the sheets.”

She asked me to cancel the reservation, which I did not. I made her do it on her end. Of course, I thought this was all suspicious. I’m a person of color. I had my white wife attempt a reservation at the same place on the same days, an hour after the cancellation (we added two extra days to the end to make it slightly different). Guess what? She approved the reservation. And contacted my wife. Airbnb was informed, but we have no idea what happened. She’s a Superhost.

Seeking Advice On Current Airbnb Situation

Posted on

This post is an appeal for advice on my current Airbnb long-term booking in Évry, France. Yesterday (June 9, 2019) the host knocked on the door of the room I am renting in her home and asked me to help her evict another non-paying Airbnb Guest.

The young man who was staying in another bedroom of her home is Middle Eastern – and she whispered, with tears in her eyes, that she was afraid he might have a bomb. She said she feared for her (undisclosed in the Airbnb listing) two kids, and wanted me – a 71-year old female paying long-term guest – to “back her up” when she knocked on the young man’s door, recording cell phone in hand, and tell him to pay up or get out.

I have only been in this rental for 12 days. There are a multitude of big problems with this accommodation, ranging from absolute filth (the communal fridge contained putrifying foodstuffs; the toilet seat was broken and slid off the porcelain base; the bathroom itself is disgusting with built-up human waste and dirt). There are no handrails on the staircase to the four second-floor rental bedrooms.

Last – but certainly not least – is the host’s four-year-old son, who dominates the household. He has no schedule or discipline, does not go to nursery school, and is typically left in the care of his teenage sister (who is glued to her iPhone and generally ignores him). The child chatters, laughs, shrieks, cries, and screams from morning to late night (1:30 AM is typically when the host and her teenage daughter finally leave the living room for their bedrooms). The living room is open to the second-floor staircase, permitting everything the young child says or does to be clearly heard upstairs.

When I emerge from my room to go to the bathroom, downstairs to the fridge, or to leave, or return to, the residence, the boy approaches, follows, and bombards me with pleas and demands for attention. It is constant. I am wearing earplugs as I write, but even so, I can hear his occasional shrieks and screams when the host or her daughter (ineffectively) admonish him.

I make this appeal for advice here, in this forum, because I have researched my options and learned that cancelling the remainder of this three-month booking (for which I have already paid the first of three installments) means I will owe the host the full second month’s installment equivalent to 30-days (to wit, Airbnb’s long-term cancellation policy during a stay: “If the guest books a reservation and decides to cancel the reservation during their stay, the guest must use the online alteration tool in order to agree to a new checkout date. Regardless of the checkout date chosen, the guest is required to pay the host for the 30 days following the cancellation date…”)

My funds are limited. My savings has been eaten up by the Airbnb host of the previous booking I had before this. There was the promise of wifi; the wifi code did not work; the host sent a different Livebox passcode, which was bounced by Google within three days due to a “proxy server”. Thereafter, the host ignored my desperate Airbnb messages, calls, and texts for nine days, well after the Airbnb 24-hour full-refund cancellation period for an accommodation-not-as-advertised guarantee.

This resulted in my having to rent a mobile wifi hotspot device in Paris which cost $200 per month for the three-month booking. Other necessary expenditures to make that “service room” livable cost an additional $1,000.

My goal (such as it is… I’ve just about given up hope at this point) would be to secure an alternative long-term Airbnb accommodation (perhaps a good one, with some hard-earned wisdom on my side now). However, my monthly retirement income will be sucked up later this month, when my host gets another installment paid to her, the funds I could use to secure a replacement accommodation. I would be most sincerely grateful for any and all advise, and I thank you in advance.