
Ask HN: Dramatic decrease in AirBnb support quality? - jMyles
I have been using AirBnb nearly since the beginning and I&#x27;ve always thought it was a great service.<p>In particular, the support always seemed fast, responsive, and on top of any scams that started to arise.<p>Until about... maybe this summer.<p>Has anyone else noticed this?<p>...<p>If anyone is interested in the details of a particular bad experience:<p>I booked a listing that had all of the features I needed, in the neighborhood I wanted.  Great!<p>But when I arrived, the host provided check-in instructions to a completely different unit.  I didn&#x27;t even notice this at first - it was late at night and I was just happy to get myself and my 3-year old checked in.<p>The next day, I messaged the host and asked if there had been a mistake.  The host said that they needed <i>another</i> day to get back to me.<p>When they did, they informed me that my unit was not available.  So, I asked for a refund.  From the AirBnb guidelines:<p>&quot;our Guest Refund Policy will make sure you either get the listing you booked or receive a refund.&quot;<p>...so I opened a support request, left the unit, and booked a different AirBnb, for which I paid full price.<p>I assumed I was going to get a full refund.<p>Instead, I had a back-and-forth for quite a long time with AirBnb support to explain the situation (it seems that they weren&#x27;t carefully reading the messages between myself and the host) and at the end of it, their &quot;final decision&quot; was that I had to pay for <i>three nights</i> (remember: I only stayed two nights, and never even set foot in the actual listing) plus the AirBnb fees - in total, for two nights at a hugely downgraded listing, I paid more than half of my original week-long price.<p>Prior to this, I had had a couple of other small hiccups (confusion with support, taking a long time to respond, etc) but things had always eventually been smoothed out.  This is the first time I&#x27;ve ever been wholesale scammed out of hundreds of dollars.<p>I imagine I&#x27;m not alone here?
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jMyles
In case anyone is interested in the back-and-forth with support:

[http://dpaste.com/3AF6YKM](http://dpaste.com/3AF6YKM)

