I was a first-time Airbnb user for a trip to Toronto in August for four people. The listing was advertised as a ‘2 bedroom luxury retreat’. While the location and view were great, the condo left much to be desired. It was definitely not luxury – more like shabby, and I don’t mean shabby chic.

I think the photos on the listing were probably the sales photos used to sell the unit to the host because nothing other than the view was like the photos. Not one single piece of furniture, all wall hangings, nor appliances were as in the photos.

In previous correspondence with the host, he had said that the unit had been painted and wouldn’t look like the listing photos. He never said the listing photos were a complete fabrication. The luxury condo looked like a poorly maintained frat house. No toilet paper or anything to dry a dish was anywhere to be found. The listing photos showed plush white towels; what we got was one small threadbare towel each.

To say we were disappointed was an understatement. The host who seemed so responsive prior to the final payment went completely dark once I contacted him about basic necessities and never followed up during our five-night stay. So, I wrote a negative review, and surprise – the host then immediately contacted me via phone calls and texts, saying he was taking the unit off Airbnb and moving in himself, that it was listed for more money than it should have been, etc.

He wanted me to change my review as it would affect the other unit he had listed with Airbnb. He offered a refund via e-transfer for our disappointing stay. I foolishly changed the review.

Guess what? That was a week ago and I never heard from him again, nor did I get any refund. Lesson learned and Airbnb may not ever see me using their service again. Only thing I’m sorry about is that I never took any photos of the actual condo to be able to post here alongside the fabricated one attached that I found in deleted emails. The listing is not online anymore.

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I moved out on January 5th from a three-month lease with Airbnb’s permission by letting them know that I wanted to move out. They said if the host decided to refund me for the days I didn’t stay I could get my money back. After I spoke to the host, she agreed and I moved out. Once I moved out, the host conveyed to Airbnb that it was a miscommunication and refused to pay me back for the days I didn’t stay there. During the course of this battle I never mentioned how bad my stay was so they even removed my review from the host’s page after threatening me for not having documentation. The house where I lived had a rat infestation and there were more people in the house than what was mentioned – all men who smoked. I was exposed a large amount of secondhand smoke as a result. I mentioned this in my review and stated why I hated the stay instead of mentioning about the lack of a refund. To this, the case manager who constantly harassed me finally took down my review even when I asked her to confirm the unsanitary rat infestation with the host. All this was when I only made a rough draft of review that wasn’t even posted. This makes me wonder to which how many people Airbnb is doing this. How many reviews are they censoring, tweaking, falsifying, and into how many unsanitary conditions are they letting the naive customers walk? There needs to be some sort of New York state regulation against this kind of behavior and unacceptable business model.

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