Airbnb Fraud: Someone Cancelled the Reservation For Host

We were contacted after midnight by a guest asking if we could take him and his family on such short notice and check in at 3:30 AM. We worked our butts off to get the house ready for him and his family and accommodate them on short notice. My husband was in the backyard cleaning up the pool at 3:30 when they arrived. We greeted them and welcomed them to Dallas; they checked in and then out at 11:00 AM. In the morning I discovered someone on Airbnb had posed as me, canceled the reservation, and without even so much as a phone call or message, the payment had been removed from our account.

We have a strict cancellation policy which doesn’t allow cancellation without 24 hours’ notice and at 50% of the cost. The guest had concerns about the Internet and TV, which he just needed to contact us to get access. Instead he went around our backs to Airbnb and then committed fraud by logging in as me and cancelling the reservation. Airbnb sent me a message three days later telling me that our Airbnb host status was in jeopardy due to the cancellation. We want our money back and the cancellation removed. This is not the first time Airbnb has interfered with payments in the past. A guest was looking for a cheaper stay and they refunded the reservation, even though they didn’t give us notice and broke Airbnb rules by having a friend make the reservation and not stay there. Third party reservations are against policy. They took money out of our future reservations to refund them.