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How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

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Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#201

Post by makeitdouble »

triyambakam wrote: post #180
olliej wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized af…

Isn't it fraudulent though? They didn't even use the service.

The other side's argument will be they cancelled the reservation and issued a refund under the agreed policy (so, partial refund only)

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#202

Post by dubcee349 »

kornish wrote: post #179
Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

One danger of chargebacks: companies may ban your account or otherwise treat your activity as fraud. It can be extremely difficult to get through to a person to correct the situation. I know a couple folks who still can't use Lyft, for instance, because they charged back an NYC Citibike subscription. You can allegedly cancel a Citibike subscription by contacting customer support — but after no response, they issued a…

I don't think I would want to ever use Airbnb after that experience so charging back would be worth it.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#203

Post by WheatMillington »

kornish wrote: post #179
Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

One danger of chargebacks: companies may ban your account or otherwise treat your activity as fraud. It can be extremely difficult to get through to a person to correct the situation. I know a couple folks who still can't use Lyft, for instance, because they charged back an NYC Citibike subscription. You can allegedly cancel a Citibike subscription by contacting customer support — but after no response, they issued a…

Why would you want to keep using a service that just ripped you off anyway?

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#204

Post by narrator »

GiorgioG wrote: post #170

From all the comments here I’m glad I’ve never used AirBnB. VRBO has thus far been ok - anytime we’ve had an issue with the place (once) the hosts were reasonable and provided a refund.

I think the issue with AirBnB is they are trying to be the cheap low maring option. They rent individual rooms, etc. I think that's where all the terrible customer service comes from.

Perhaps most of their hosts can barely pay expenses and so they do all these sorts of cheats to avoid going broke? Perhaps AirBnB is just desperate for inventory and lets too much stuff slide on both the customer and vendor sides of the marketplace?

Anyway, I have had great experiences with VRBO, which is a bit more expensive generally, and always got a refund if there was a significant issue.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#205

Post by dan-robertson »

franciscop wrote: post #88
rjh29 wrote: post #30

This is the reason I hope booking.com are successful (they increasingly have aparthotel listings). They usually offer free cancellation and I've never had a problem cancelling for free if I had a good reason (such as illness). Other thing to watch out for is fees. The place I'm staying at charges 20000yen ($150) if you enter the apartment without taking off your shoes, 6000yen ($44) per hour overstayed after checkout…

They definitely cannot enforce those. Now if you do enter with shoes AND damage the floor a bit*, I still doubt they could even enforce those. Even courts here are not punitive in nature (they are restorative), so even if they sued you and won for going in with shoes, which I highly doubt, at most you'd have to pay for the damage they can prove that you made, which would be few thousand yens. The only one I am a bit…

Presumably local laws apply. I don’t have any idea whether fees like that would be allowed in Japan.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#206

Post by ddoolin »

I don't use Airbnb since they did a background check (which I guess I agreed to at some point) and then banned me when my record came back. I thought that was strange since it's up to the host if they want your record checked, I think, and instead of preventing me from reserving that particular listing, they banned me for life. It doesn't seem to matter how long ago the offense was, and it also seems pretty indiscriminate with regards to the type of offense as well.

Oddly enough, I can usually go to VRBO and rent the exact same properties, or go to any hotel.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#207

Post by bensons1 »

Had more or less the same situation. My flight got cancled some 8 hours after my AirBNB booking. Story is similar, host refused to refund "no refund policy" and AirBNB trying to blame the host. In the end I went to PayPal, as I used them for payment. Opened up a ticket, explained the situation and after 5 days I received a full refund. AirBNB afterwards sent some two horribly translated E-Mails to me, explaining I might loose my account blabla, but nothing happend. Still I stopped using them.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#208

Post by nixpulvis »

jeromegv wrote: post #59
nixpulvis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.

Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit ca…

So we need to externally regulate this market... cool.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#209

Post by olliej »

triyambakam wrote: post #180
olliej wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized af…

Isn't it fraudulent though? They didn't even use the service.

No. If you agree to a contract, and then choose to back out of that contract, or not use the service or whatever you agreed to, that’s your choice.

For example: if I rent a car, but then don’t pick it up, the rental agency has not defrauded me. If I buy some food at a restaurant and then don’t eat it all, the restaurant doesn’t owe me a (partial) refund.

If the person believes the host breached their contract, then they can try small claims courts and/or lawyer town.

More realistically given most Airbnb hosts are land lords violating tenancy and hotel regulations it might be worth contacting the local regulatory authorities.

But while you make think the behaviour of the host here is illegal, they placed this person booked was available, and was available under the terms they apparently agreed to, so being told “no you can’t violate the terms you agreed to” is not fraud. This person could still go and stay at this property themselves, they just couldn’t have some other person stay their instead.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#210

Post by guluarte »

olliej wrote: post #160
Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized af…

maybe he can sue the host in small claims?
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