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 malicious here and trying to make a quick buck by double-dipping - getting some money from the cancelled booking and then relisting the property back on the market.
I am always surprised how many people don't know about payment card disputes/chargebacks or refuse to use them, even right here on HN. The bank and card networks are biased towards you to begin with, and there's no downside to losing one as long as you're not being outright fraudulent or acting in bad faith.
Card chargebacks (or litigation, if you have the means) is the only thing companies understand, especially in a country where consumer protection isn't a thing.
> An important thing to remember is that the chargeback doesn't necessarily absolve you of the legal need to pay.
This is a misconception that many people have - at least in the US market. I owned an MSP for about a decade, and this was often the most common surprise for merchants: charge backs were final and were actually pre-accepted by the merchant as part of their merchant agreement (it's similar in concept to binding arbitration).
If (in the US) you find yourself being collected after a chargeback... have your lawyer get their hands on the merchant agreement. There are some fantastic consumer protections there.
I can’t find any reliable sources on this either way, but some blogspammy sites suggest that merchants are within their rights to pursue legal action outside of the credit card channels
If you'd like to verify what I've suggested, the best thing to do would be to read a merchant agreement and the associated card association rules. From what I saw when our merchants went after consumers, the outcome was usually bad for the merchant if the consumer had a lawyer. Most of the time, it was as simple as the thing that justified the charge back was unjust enough they were going to lose in court anyway. Failing to provide service, selling defective products, or having unfair (and often illegal) terms in your contract are not going to win.
Where you do see merchant success is where credit cards are being used to make installment payment and the customer stops paying with the card.
Suing someone across state lines for a small amount like 1k is not really worth it in most scenarios if the host is the one that tries to sue you. If its air bnb i don't think a jury would find they deserve the money if it was cancelled within 1 hour of booking due to a misunderstanding.
It wouldn't even get anywhere near there for multiple reasons:
1) once a competent human (and not a third-world boiler room which is what "customer service" is in any large tech company nowadays) looks into it, they may very well make a reasonable decision and rule in the guest's favor to begin with
2) even if they were in the right from a legal/contractual point of view, they'd spend more flying someone out to argue the case in court than to just take the loss right away, so there's still no point defending the case.
3) Airbnb and maybe even the host have skeletons in the closet they'd rather not draw any attention to (search for Airbnb horror stories and you'll notice how they happily profit from obvious, brazen scams and effectively engage in fraud or false-advertising including about their insurance service, and a significant chunk of hosts break their local laws with regards to short-term rentals and/or taxes, which is the only way to make their pricing attractive), so it would be suicide for them to willingly draw any more attention to themselves than they need to.
Likewise there’s nothing preventing you from suing the scammy host in small claims court. You probably won’t get the money for a while, but once you get the real estate lien you’ll see it sooner or later.
“You and Airbnb each retain the right to seek resolution of the dispute in small claims court as an alternative to arbitration.”[1] Also I don’t think that applies if you sue the host directly.
I'm not a lawyer but for an amount that small the only suing anyone would be doing is in small claims court. And for that amount the 'host' would have to do it themself as the settlement isn't even attorney's fees. Small claims are usually <$5000. As for sending for collection, you have to set up an account with a collection agency, not usually free, do a lot of paperwork and get some percentage of the original fee. Unless she does this a lot and already has a collection agency account it's big PITA for a few hundred bucks. And in this case it's not like the OP is just going to say, "Oh - OK, here you go."
Plus OP has an excellent story to post as a review since as a 'paying' customer clearly has standing in the matter.
AirBnB has gotten so much bad press over their nit-picky extra charges, fees and required cleaning by guests I would not be surprised if they encourage the 'host' to reconsider their position.
It reverse the burden of legal action. If you do nothing you have 100% chance of paying, if you successfully charge back you have 0.01% chance of being brought to court and end up paying the same amount.
Airbnb won't sue them since it's not their money. Host won't sue them since they would be laughed out of court for trying to recover a thousand bucks for nothing.
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 card rate.
So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.
Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response.
A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
While a possibility given the weird nature of SV companies, it's also pretty much nonsense in general when company support systems break down. It's the sort of learned helplessness that some people promote relative to companies that seems pretty silly. I've certainly used chargebacks when something wasn't working and continued to deal with said companies, albeit rarely.
Yes, sometimes you need to break relationships with certain companies as well. But that should be fine in general.
For the same reason we protect whistle-blowers; if a person has a reasonable problem with a business, we'd like to avoid the business retaliating because that creates incentives that protect bad actors.
> So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you.
From a contract point of view, merchants who ban consumers for charge backs are in violation of card association rules.
> refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute
The merchant agreed to accept charge back rulings when they signed their merchant agreement. The chargeback process is a pain for consumers - they have to do a quite a bit of paperwork to file one.
> Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again
A business that forces consumers into charge backs and loses deserves the charge back. Consumers don't automatically win. Source: owned an MSP for about a decade.
BTW, Visa, MC, AMEX and others can fine and ban merchants who fail to comply with card association rules (including chargebacks). Likewise, card associations can also cancel cards on consumers who file abusive charge backs.
Not Home Depot. Their support representative was worthless for an online order that was never delivered (lost in transit). They advised me to do a charge back. Luckily, it was an online chat, so I screen capped that to add to the CC docs you have to submit.
Blows my mind; reshipping the item would (given they sell it for a profit) cost HD less than me doing a 100% chargeback, and it would be better customer service. I guess they use the friction of doing a chargeback to be their fraud prevention.
Oh my goodness, I had the exact same experience with Home Depot. But then they responded to the chargeback and said it was delivered and no going back and forth with American Express would get them to help. I closed my AmEx card and am deeply skeptical of doing business with Home Depot.
Haha, same here. A package was never delivered (though the tracking number said that it was). Home depot representative couldn't resolve the issue, and recommended to make a charge back. After I made a chargeback, HD contacted the bank with a supporting package (receipt, tracking number, etc) and reversed the charge back. At this point I decided not to waste any more time for $50 item and moved on.
How can they avoid future trouble by not refunding a 1 hour cancel? The next person who makes a similar mistake will chargeback too, unless they aren’t aware of it. For a company, the only way out of it is to stay within common sense, because that’s what all their clients have in common.
Silicon Valley scum relies on a lot of people not knowing their rights to open a dispute/chargeback. Seems to be a winning strategy considering even on here most people don’t seem to be aware of this option.
Best Western hotels are individually owned and operated, and Best Western itself does not lose any money from chargebacks, the motel owner does. Best Western gets paid their 10% to 15% of gross revenue royalty either way from the hotel owner.
Hotel owners, however, can and do ban individuals for chargebacks.
Hotel owners will in general not screw a potential customer for an honest mistake like this, so maybe the chargebacks actual hotels get actually do warrant a ban compared to VC-funded scammers.
Uh yeah that absolutely can happen. Car rental companies are known to ban people who do chargebacks. If you refuse to pay a business what they think you owe then there’s a decent chance they won’t want future business from you.
Isn't the charge-back lower stakes than actually suing them? Because that would be the only alternative left, the charge-back is the third-party arbitration.
Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address.
And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.
Isn't government ID upload a requirement for AirBNB?
A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up.
If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban.
The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
I am curious how this would work. I have not heard of a US government forcing a business like AirBnb to do business with a customer unless there was a violation of discrimination against a protected class.
I think it's less about forcing them to do business and more about the regulator/consumer protection agency getting wind of what is obviously malicious and potentially illegal behavior from the company - a lot of companies will fold when a case gets anywhere near litigation/consumer protection/arbitration just to not attract attention.
In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
> refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases
Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed.
Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.
Personal experience shows you can typically use the same payment method and often even the same email address (with a different alias) to get around most bans. You'll get the odd place where this doesn't work, usually because they're implementing IP bans instead of just user bans. Bans are typically, at worst, a minor inconvenience for the person/party receiving it.
A VPN would already be banned or be considered a high-risk to begin with.
You'll need a clean, residential IP. Thankfully if you're on a dynamic IP all you need to do is restart your router, or just use your phone as pretty much every carrier only uses dynamic IPs for mobile devices.
It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
Haha. I had the same reaction. Clearly this person has never had to deal with addresses in a database.
There are any number of ways to represent the exact same address (apt vs. unit vs. suite vs. '#', 5 digit zip vs. 9- digit zip, st. vs. street), and there are cases where the same address serves multiple people (private/virtual mail boxes). A billing address is a loose identifier at best.
You try, but sometimes you have to accept addresses as written.
Again, it just isn’t that easy.
PMB 123
456 Main st.
May or may not be the exact same mailbox as:
Suite 123
456 Main st.
My official address is on “XXXX Boxwood Cres”. Not Boxwood Cr., not Boxwood Crescent, not “Boxwood Cres.”
Of course all of those will work for mail, but if I want to transfer the deed, or do anything of legal relevance, the government needs the address to be exactly like the first one.
For every way you can think of trying to standardize it, there is an exception.
Half addresses, letters in addresses, addresses with no number, etc. All this and we haven’t even left the US yet, other countries have their own variety of whacky shit.
When I bought my house, there was actually some legal paperwork around XXXX Main St. and XXXX N. Main St. being the same thing. (It got changed at one point in the now distant past probably when the interstate cut off the old N. Main St (which exists as a short stub)).
Verizon, Comcast, and some local businesses like my propane delivery still use N. Main and I would periodically get scolded when I first moved in pre-GPS because I would give businesses coming to my house my official USPS address which was different from what was still on many maps.
I wonder how that's handled now... last I hear the USPS had a database on CD-ROM you could get. Wonder if its api based now?
We used to run 'zip correct' jobs for large merchants at the service bureau I worked at just out of high school. Just 'correcting' thousands/millions of addresses at a time.
But generally, you don't need to agree to it. (Which may or may not work if it's just standardized as the back-end.)
I have a couple slightly different addresses. One of which is probably 30+ years old but is still used by the two local telcos and a few local businesses.
A lot of people will not consider this, or will attempt it and be defeated by simple methods (e.g trying a new email address but the same number, getting _that_ address burnt in the process).
Heck, years ago Uber used to ban you for having an old credit card on the account and trying to book a ride - no warning that the payment method had a problem, just boom, banned. Procedure for resolving was apparently sending a picture with the physical card (showing just the last 4 digits) that was on the account, but since it'd been changed months before I didn't have it and didn't care enough to pursue unbanning.
I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.
lol who cares if airbnb cancels your account? There are a million other ways to get a room . I mean it's convenient and I use it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they banned me.
And phone number, and fake name and address (you can do very creative things with billing addresses and have it still match - the matching is very fuzzy).
But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
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 chargeback and Lyft banned them a couple days later. Since the accounts are tied to the phone number, they simply can't use the service.
Support actually managed to reverse the ban for a few days, but then it was re-triggered (presumably by some automated system).
It is cute to think that a person who was scammed on Airbnb for $950 where Airbnb refused to help resolve a blatant scam would even touch Airbnb again.
Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.
There are lots of alternatives. Agoda, Booking.com, and many similar sites offer short-term apartment rentals. Also, in much of the world outside the US, hotels are a better and surer bet than short-term apartment rentals.
Look at it like this: Would you pay $950 for the privilege of using AirBNB? I sure wouldn't. An "AirBNB Membership fee" on the order of $950 should seem absurd.
If a service stole $950 from me, the last thing I would be worried about is getting banned from the service
They would not get a single cent from me for the remainder of my life and in fact I would do plenty of things to cost them business at any chance I will get.
AirBNB is also not the only short term rental option out there. E.g. Vrbo
I would absolutely end any customer relationship with Airbnb for a $950 host scam. If they can’t fix that they don’t deserve your business and you are better off off their platform.
For most people I can't imagine that keeping AirBnB "happy" is so important that you wouldn't try to get $1000 back. But, yes, it's a problem when keeping AirBnB, Google, Twitter, etc. placated requires rolling over.
Maybe your market is different, but Airbnb is hardly a monopoly on either short term housing or vacation rentals these days. The entire travel booking industry has caught up.
Similarly to the OP, both my wife and I had to pull teeth for weeks to get the full refunds we were entitled to after booking airbnb units. We both had dozens of stays and 5 star reviews under our belts prior to those experiences, dating back through 2013. In my case, it was a unit that the host admitted was infested with rats prior to arrival. In my wife’s, it was a unit that didn’t remotely match the photos of the listing.
At this point it’s my very last resort for booking any kind of stay, which is to say I’ve effectively sworn off the service. Since then, I’ve had no trouble finding vacation rentals elsewhere. For $900, yeah, I’d chargeback in a snap.
You assume you have a choice in playing. Most of the supply will never consider listing on multiple marketplaces, because its a massive hassle. $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market, they have strong financials and are massively profitable. The growth-at-all-costs play DID work, and now you have no choice but to bend the knee. Edge cases like this will never materially affect their business.
> $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market
Thats pretty cherry-picked, and I wouldn’t look to stock price to make the conclusions you’ve shared. Lots of growth companies are bouncing back after being oversold last year. As another cherry-pick, it’s also down nearly 50% from its 2021 high.
I've never been a host so can't speak for multiple listings, though there seem to be a ton of services that try to market to multichannel listing, so "never" seems a pretty strong word here?
But, if the interwebs are correct, airbnb has 7 mil rentals, booking - 6 mil rentals (vacation specifically, not hotels) and vrbo - 2 mil
Just have a friend use their account. Or make a new account. Or use VRBO or a number of Airbnb’s competitors. Or use a sock Airbnb account to connect with a host and then negotiate directly.
Great, maybe they get banned too and it's two less people playing a stupid game. I'm not going to tell anyone else how to live their lives, but cowering on my knees to tech bureaucracy out of San Fransisco is not how I'll live mine.
it was the case when they were the hot new disruptor. By now there are alternatives for house/apartment rentals, so they can't dick around and rip people off like that anymore. They've been called out on "cleaning fees", at some point may be forced to implement a sane cancelation window as well.
I was in a very similar situation and requested a charge back through Visa. it got denied after 2 months and AirBnb sent me a stern email saying they will ban my account if I try something like this again.
You make it sound like chargeback is an easy thing to do, with 100% success rate. I tried twice in my life to chargeback, for items not delivered. Both times unsuccessfully. It looks like banks usually side with merchants, because merchants pay them, not the customers, and because companies are generally considered more trustworthy than individuals.
Changebacks aren't guaranteed that your bank or credit card issuers will allow it. I've had a bank tell me several times that I can't do a chargeback when there were fraudulent purchases made on my account on the Playstation Network.
Even better, Sony threatened to ban my account and I'd lose all the content I legitimately purchased if I did a chargeback against them.
I buy physical game copies now and I've found CapitalOne is better at doing chargebacks than my credit union is (guess credit unions aren't all they're cracked up to be in certain aspects)
You can’t “terms and conditions” your way out of the card network rules which you agreed to when setting up a merchant account to accept card payments - those will take precedence regardless of what your own terms say and generally favor the cardholder.
It will depends on the local laws/regulations that apply to distance-selling and the card network rules. Considering there is clearly no bad faith involved from the buyer (he's not even trying to weasel out of the booking - he was looking forward to use the service he paid for), I'd say he has a good chance.
I've been with my bank 15+ years, and have a good credit rating.
The one and only time I tried a chargeback, they approved it virtually before I could ask for it. I think they look at your account and see you've been a good customer and give you the benefit of the doubt.
First you should check with your consumer protection laws, where I am from (Brazil) any cancelation fee that is more than 10% of the service value is considered abusive. So you are totally entitled to ask for your chargeback (just be sure to cite the regulation/law your applying) and if AirBnb does any retaliation (as banning your account) you can sue them for that.
I bought one oculus quest 2 while their site was blowing up during preorders. They shipped and charged me for 3. Nothing showed up on the order page or confirmation email. I didn’t notice the 3 charges until 3 of them were at my door.
A total nightmare to fix. Kinda hard to RMA an item that didn’t show up on my order page. They offered to RMA but no assurances I would get my money back. I didn’t order this many and the screwup was on their end. So in the end I did a chargeback for the 2 I didn’t order.
They banned me. Making my quest useless. I could not make a new account because at the time they were moving to FB and banning people with alt accounts or asking for ID to verify them.
In the end, I undid the chargebacks, sent back the extra two quest units (which I held sealed with no intention of profiting from them and I mailed after the chargebacks) and of course they didn’t refund me for one of them.
I had to keep escalating as they closed tickets. Was close to trying to use HN and internal friends to help. In the end they did a “one time” unbanning. Still lost $400+. Never again.
EDIT: It took me like half a year to resolve this. At first I could not even figure out what happened. I got no email I was banned. Just adding any form of payment failed with an esoteric error message. I’ll never buy direct from any big tech company again. Go ahead and down vote.
This is correct. I had an issue with an Airbnb at some point that Airbnb was struggling to resolve. When I said "whatever, I'll just dispute the charge", the rep said that it is their policy to permanently suspend an account when a user initiates a chargeback. Not "may" but "definitely will". The issue did end up getting resolved after countless phone calls and escalating the issue to supervisors of supervisors but
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 after entering a contract that the contract was not what they wanted. Similarly the “host” is not breaking the contract: the person agreed to these terms of the contract, apparently having not read them. So this is not a fraudulent transaction, and claiming it is (for a charge back) just sounds like fraud
(2) charge backs are not free to the merchant - as I understand it the merchant is subject to penalties from the processor and/or bank that can easily be hundreds of dollars. So even if the bank doesn’t take you to court for fraud, airbnb maybe unhappy at having to cough up a few hundred dollars.
(3) it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host, and frankly they don’t seem like people who will take a no harm, no foul response to this, especially if they not only don’t get paid but if Airbnb offload any of the chargeback costs.
Fundamentally your running into the reason that there are regulations governing hotels and rental, and why Airbnb insists that in spite of all evidence that is not what they are providing.
He never changed his mind. He wanted to amend the name on the booking to rectify what is essentially a clerical error. It’s not his fault if the only way to do that through the software is to effectively cancel and make a new booking.
If we’re talking about laws, the law varies between states and countries and just because something is buried in page 59 of a clickwrap agreement nobody reads doesn’t magically mean the case is a slam-dunk - there will be many nuances a court will consider if it actually gets there, which it will not because Airbnb and maybe even the host has way more skeletons hidden in the closet to risk showing up in court over a cancellation fee - in fact the only reason this wasn’t resolved in favor of the guest is because the entire case was offloaded to someone in a third-world country barely capable of speaking English and definitely not paid nor trained enough to understand and care about the situation - so they’re definitely not going to be flying in a lawyer to argue their case for a few hundred bucks in court.
With regards to a chargeback fee, Stripe charges around 30 bucks last time I checked? Far from breaking the bank I would say.
> it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host
I would absolutely pay good money to see that host argue their case in court when the whole dispute started out of them trying to make a quick buck instead of allowing the guest to change their name. However just as the above there is no way they will show up in court considering it’s very likely they’re not even abiding by their local laws when it comes to short-term rentals, and the writing style of “Claire” suggests the whole thing might be a complete scam in the end.
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.
Your local laws will dictate what a contract can and can't do, but generally contracts require a "meeting of the minds" and it's up to a court to decide what that means and which clauses are actually enforceable (that's also why we have courts instead of the whole "code is law" crypto-dystopian BS, because not every possible edge-case can be predicted and written in the contract in advance).
In this case the guest did not realize the bookings were nominative, and once he made aware, he wanted to change the booking to the proper person. A shortcoming of the Airbnb platform is that there is no way to transfer a booking to another account, so the only way is to cancel and rebook.
Notice how at no point the guest's intention was to cancel and back out of the deal. The cancellation was suggested by the host themselves being unreasonable and trying to exploit a policy technicality to make a quick buck.
I have definitely had cases though where I've run into "Where did this subscription come from?" and there was no apparent way to cancel. Last was something Yahoo-related a number of years back. Ended up doing a chargeback and canceling the charge.
I would absolutely chargeback in this case. Some non-standard clause WHICH THIS ABSOLUTELY IS RELATIVE TO HOTELS (OR EVEN REGULAR B&Bs) buried in T&Cs somewhere should not be acceptable.
Sadly parent's point is correct. Chargebacks are not to protect from jerks and bad customer service.
If there was a contract you first agreed to, but you find out afterwards that one of the clause is problematic in your case, and the other party is a jerk about it, chances are your card issuer won't even accept the chargeback. Most of the time you need proof that the merchant is the one breaching the contract.
More over most honest businesses would rather you contact them for a refund rather than a chargeback. A chargeback should not be your go to for someone stealing your credit card or whatever as that costs the business (which is itself a victim) money. For Amazon etc that might not matter, but for smaller businesses it can be an expensive event. The payment processors charge them significant fees for any charge back (to “discourage” the need for them). (Ignoring that those companies may sell through Amazon or whatever, and those intermediaries take double digit % of every purchase, but don’t pay a cent of any refund).
Where? Because recall that if it is fraud they can file a criminal complaint, but my reading of this article is that they agreed to a cheaper booking for a stricter cancellation policy, they agreed that they were booking for themselves (afaik a standard condition for airbnbs, if not airbnb the company), and when told that they were required to adhere to the terms of the contract they chose to cancel, under terms they had explicitly chosen.
I’m not saying that I think the host was operating legally, I’m saying I don’t see a fraudulent transaction, I don’t see the host not providing the agreed upon service, nor agreed upon restrictions.
It’s an Airbnb so 50/50 the host is violating a bunch of laws (claiming simultaneously to not be a hotel, motel, or rental unit, etc), but the transaction for the purpose of a chargeback does not appear to be fraudulent on its face.
They lied about not getting cancellation messages from AirBnB for a while, hoping the person would go away and trying to refund $0, then when the person made it very clear they weren't going away, the host denied the cancellation request saying they "couldn't" give a full refund (lie). I'm sure they then turned around a rebooked the room, since it had only been delisted for that date for a couple of hours. To recap, they lied, cheated, stole, and double dipped. It was fraud.
Hoping to see some regulation going into that space pretty soon.
I refuse to use Airbnb after a couple of shitty experiences. The first time, the place was fine and everything. The issue was that when I got there the host told me that he wasn't supposed to be renting out his apartment, gave me a description of the property manager, and told me to tell the manager that I'm friends with the host and staying with him for a few days if the property manager chats me up. So it was just awkward and I was a bit paranoid.
The 2nd situation, and the one which made me decide to no longer use Airbnb, was when we had booked a fake rental. So Airbnb doesn't give you the exact address until after you've booked. My brother booked a house for 11 of us to stay at in Minneapolis. A couple hours outside the city I was trying to figure out the quickest route to the train station when I saw that the pictures on Google Maps didn't match up with the pictures on the listing. This place just didn't exist. We were unable to contact the host. So we contacted Airbnb and cancelled while I tried my best to find a couple of hotel suites to house us all. It was really stressful and dumb and I'm pretty sure there was some sort of fee that my brother didn't get refunded.
I don't remember. The first place was an apartment in Lower Queen Anne with the best views of Seattle I've ever seen, so I imagine the reviews were good.
But yeah, this was like 2017 and 2018 so I don't remember the details, and the 2nd one I didn't book so didn't really look at that.
I had the same thing happen to me. Not only do I not stay at AirBNBs anymore, I cancelled my Discover Card when they refused to fix it... after ~15 years as a customer.
Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good payment protection policies).
But in this case, I'd let the family member sleep in my bed, and I'd go stay at this AirBNB, and I'd probably trash the fuckin' place or something.
Or just say that you’ll be staying there even if you're not and not trash anything? I feel like any normal person would not just throw $900 bucks away like this, probably because they wouldn't have planned for a $900 bucks extra spend. What is the host gonna do?
What if you book for a couple and the one that booked gets sick and has to return early? This makes no sense, I feel like most people would've edited the form through support and just added themselves in and not use airbnb again after this.
But depending on the circumstances of how the rental is handled with respect to checkin etc., if the host is going to be an ass, now you have someone else thinking they have a bed and the host won't let them--because you already told them you won't be there.
It does sound in this case though that they could have just checked in with their friend and then taken off.
Meh, Amex denied my chargeback when StubHub was illegally refusing refunds for events canceled due to covid. I don’t think there is any card out there that hasn’t gotten much tougher on chargebacks recently due to both the covid shitshow and the massive increase in chargeback fraud.
chwrgebacks from stubhub/Ticketmaster/etc are hard since they have you basically agree to not charge back and they use that against you. Had to try a chargeback one with them and also got denied because I signed a waiver. Complete nonsense
They do try, it's just the way the ticket sellers do it make it a little more in their favor, especially when they can show you signed something. Bought a ticket to EDC and they made me write my signature with my mouse and then used that when I charged back after they cancelled half the event (this was many years ago now).
Outright trashing the place is obvious and will backfire, but there are plenty of subtle ways to generate significant inconvenience and expenses in a plausibly-deniable manner that will only take effect weeks or even months after the fact.
Hint: perishable goods and unaccessible (maintenance?) areas in the property. Pests would also work.
Many states have laws that are specific extra penalties for this sort of malicious behavior. Not only could it cost you the cost of undoing any damage you've done, but criminal charges on top of it. probably not the best advice to be giving to people.
I used to do something like that whenever I was in a hotel that charged outrageous fees for WiFi (this doesn't seem to be as common nowadays, though oddly it's more likely to happen in a "luxury" hotel than a "business" hotel).
Nothing damaging or malicious per se, but "Oh, hey, I think I need a fresh copy of every Linux distro"... stuff like that.
idk, i'd feel morally duplicitous engaging in plausibly-deniable damages to someone else's property. i'd rather just steal all their lightbulbs or burn the place to the ground. but that's just me.
the nice thing about this strategy is that _you_ don't have to do any of it. because eventually, they'll try to fuck me.
Or just lie about also staying there. Say "yes, I will be staying there as primary customer", go there give the keys to your sister and that's the end of the story.
Seriously, I am renting a place from you for 2-3 days for $1000, it's none of your goddamn business who's staying there. It's mine for 2-3 days to do as I please, as long as it's not trashed and neighbors don't complain.
Is that what AmEx is for? I've always wondered in all honesty. I had a similar experience with non-AmEx. Got double billed by a hotel and the credit card company initially didn't have my back. I had to go back and forth with them multiple times even with a seemingly obvious fraud.
I dunno if that's what its "for," but it's quickly becoming a point of differentiation between their competitors, if it hasn't always been.
It's likely that having a lot of cards with annual fees attached to them, plus not being an easy target by those manufactured spend weirdos, plus having a fairly high "minimum bar" for customer quality means that they've got their customers' backs an inch further than Discover does.
For comparison, Discover gave me a ~$20,000 credit limit when I was 19 and didn't have a job. Now I'm 37 and have millions of dollars in the bank and I had to call and argue with AmEx before they would approve my application for their entry level card.
This is a scam. We were almost a victim of something similar, but through Expedia. The scam is to induce you to cancel so they can extract a fee.
Basically the listing was nonsense, but we didn't notice it immediately. In our case the flat in Paris was both in the 2nd and 14th androssiment, somehow. It was listed in the 2nd but elsewhere it says 14th.
Of course we went to cancel but there was a 30% fee. We explained it to Expedia customer service and of course they're useless and said the fee was legit and didn't understand the scam.
We took it up with our bank (Chase) who took months to resolve it, we basically kept on getting passed up the chain of people who examine the claims, until we got to a high enough level that they actually understood the scam (after a hour explaining it several times). We were fully refunded our ~$500.
Of course we never will use Expedia again. We generally stick to booking.com because they seem to side with the customer most consistently. Free cancellation, or pay at the hotel is a must. One of the main reasons to avoid AirBnB is that they will keep your money in most cases.
Never use an intermediary. Instead of dealing with <hotel>, you have to deal with Indian call center agents. Hotels.com and booking.com and similar are the absolute worst.
I lost maybe 4 hours repeating myself to various people in India just so I could tell the credit card company I tried to resolve the issue for the chargeback.
Indian call centers are the worst because it seems like none of them are empowered to actually do anything other than rigorously stick to a script which cannot help you.
The scam is in listing so the actual location is inaccurate/uncertain so as to trigger the cancellation policy more often not the presence of a cancellation policy. Not that a scam being in policy is supposed to make something less of a scam anyways.
You missed this thread. That doesn't make something scammy.
I presume you're arguing that they didn't read the TOS and tried to reconcile the mistake within an hour so the non-recoverable refund shouldn't be enforced. If you were right, there'd be a class action lawsuit. But your premise is silly because standard hotels even have "accountholder must be present to check-in" policies and do the same things with non-refundable room reservations.
Inconvenient but sound policy. For example, I wouldn't want an executive assistant to be able to get a block of rooms and then get a key to my room without my permission.
I'm still shocked by the backlash ITT against the host/AirBnB. Hotels have always had as/more stringent stay policies.
Parent comment sounds scammy, I agree. Article experience (wanting to cancel because he can't book third-party) doesn't sound scammy at all, just draconian.
I don't see why someone would still use Airbnb for short stays. At $1.5k for 5 nights in Seattle you can surely stay at a decent hotel (which the OP ended up doing anyway, at $1.3k), and not have to deal with some weird hosts.
Hit them with a chargeback, who cares about getting banned from Airbnb.
I used airbnb for a couple of years but soon became apparent that booking through a hotel website directly was cheaper and lots of times included breakfast and you don't have to be their housekeeping at the end. I don't know why people still do it. Since then I've only used it as backup for last minute bookings in the middle of nowhere for just a night if I can't camp because it's raining.
True, but Airbnb isn't the only option. In the past I simply used local companies that specialize in that. It's extremely common in tourist heavy areas. And you don't have a laundry list of things to do before your checkout like some Airbnb hosts expect you do to. The keyword to google for is "vacation rental".
Or friends. We get AirBnBs for 4-10 friends at a time and it’s a blast. Way better than hotels. Nice to have a proper kitchen and living room to hangout in privately.
An airbnb feels like 'mine'. Whereas a hotel I have no confidence that some overzealous room service won't barge in and try to change the towels while I'm using them!
Put a "do not disturb" sign on your door, every hotel room has one.
I too don't like it when room service touches my stuff (it is a mess, but it is my mess!) - putting a DND sign on the doorknob and not removing it for the whole stay fixed that problem for me.
I travel for work approximately 120 nights per year, and have done so since 2011.
The number of times room service has barged into my room without my knowledge and/or permission can be counted on 0 fingers.
If this has happened to you you may want to reexamine what hotels you stay in because the only thing you have to do to not experience this, even if you forget to hang up the "Do Not Disturb" sign, is lock the deadbolt on your hotel room door.
I often want to stay in a city for a couple weeks or a month to maximize time with collaborators. An Airbnb with a functional kitchen beats the pants off a hotel.
Some cities have aparthotels which can be a reasonable compromise. They can have similarly poorly kitted out kitchens to many Airbnbs, but you don’t have to do your own housekeeping and you are dealing with an experienced business.
Woa thanks for the name (Sonder), I wanted to investigate aparthotels more since I've found one on Airbnb in Montreal. For me hotels are fine if I'm staying on my own and for a few days only, but I like to have a whole property otherwise. Much more private too.
Surely not, I’m afraid, at least not outside of a city.
I just returned from a ski trip where in order to not pay $500/night at a hotel I turned to Airbnb, where the prices were the same. I wound up renting an off-grid cottage that stank of sewage backup and required a generator to run while bathing for $300/night- and I had to feed tbeir mangy cat and leave them a wonderful review so as not to get dinged with a personal review that might make it hard to rent in future.
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, and inviting anyone into the house for any amount of time causes your entire booking to triple in price ($2000 in my case). I'm not sure if they can enforce those...
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 unsure is about guests, since they might technically be able to limit who goes around.
*if you do go with dirty shoes and make a mess is a different matter, I'm just talking about normal walking with shoes
I'm sure they had problems with people spreading dirt on the floor and a cleaning fee is perfectly reasonable, I just found the size of the penalties to be amusing.
I recently stayed in Panama City, Panama for a week, and booked an Airbnb for my stay. When I checked in, I was so tired from the flight that I just wanted to take a hot shower and crash. I turned on the shower and waited for the hot water. And waited. And waited. Finally I messaged the host to ask if I was doing something wrong with the shower controls.
The host’s response: “We don’t offer hot water at this rental.”
I was, let’s say, surprised.
I asked them where in the listing they mentioned that, and they said “We didn’t list hot water as one of the amenities. That was intentional.”
So essentially, Airbnb considers hot water to be an “amenity”, on the same level as a coffee maker or a carbon monoxide alarm.
Of course I escalated to Airbnb support and of course they sided with the host. So completely aggravating. Like, ok but you also didn’t list “front door” or “roof” among the amenities. What should I infer from that?
Never been in Panama, but my experience in Colombia was similar: in warmer areas hot water just was not a thing - homes, hostels, hotels just did not have it, without special notice. "Yeah, the temperature outside is above 30C all year round, why would you need more heat?". To be fair, the "cold" water was not really cold either, 25-30C or so, so showering with that was not unpleasant.
Not sure whether things are similar in Panama, but it could very well be. If so, it's cultural barrier, not malignacy.
Even assuming that’s the cause, Airbnb doesn’t let you filter out properties which don’t have this “amenity”.
I can specify that I only want to see listings with BBQ grill, an indoor fireplace, or an EV charger. But I have to manually check each listing to see if it offers hot water? Really?
I had a similar experience in Colombia too. Hot water was definitely an amenity.
I remember walking along the street asking 10-12 hotels in a row if they had hot water. None did and the last one suggested (sarcastically) staying at a 5* hotel if I wanted it that much.
Our shower didn't work in an airbnb (well-reviewed) in WA state. Another guy I know got a place with no heat in the winter in Montana (probably illegal). Airbnb can sometimes save you a buck or get you a unique place, but you're really rolling the dice without those pesky regulations and professional hospitality workers.
This kind of article makes me angry because an extremely similar situation happened to me. I made a reservation months in advance, only to have Airbnb cancel it on me days before the flight out.
I panicked and booked another place, only to try to cancel the booking a few hours later when I calmed down and realized it wasn't large enough. But I couldn't, because of the cancelation policy. I contacted Airbnb customer support and they wouldn't cancel it either, so I ended up having to pay the entire bill.
The supreme irony of course is that Airbnb cancelled a reservation I made months in advance without a single penny paid to me for my inconvenience - but when I cancelled because of Airbnb's incompetence I had to foot the entire bill. Truly absurd.
Airbnb completely lost me as a customer at that point, and I'm someone who had spent quite a good deal on Airbnbs in the past. Hotels have never cancelled on me days before a trip.
AirBnB is like a no-recourse Paypal for random third parties of unknown psychological stability. You do not contract with AirBnB. I recommend staying well away from them.
I have my own horror story, involving an overflowing toilet and hysterical accusations from the host.
We noticed the toilet was backed up in the bowl in the morning and alerted the host. The person the host sent round to look at it found some kind of cosmetic wipe, then the host leapt the conclusion that we were at fault, thinking they were nappy wipes. We were not at fault; we use laundered reusable cotton wipes. In any case, this lead her to not fix the problem!
In the evening, after we came back to the apartment, the toilet started overflowing when the apartment upstairs flushed. Then the apartment upstairs had a shower; water was coming up out of our shower, out of the toilet, flooding out of the bathroom, into the living area. We had a toddler, and toilet water started flooding into his bedroom too.
After some heated phone conversations, the apartment upstairs was determined to be the problem (she was flushing cosmetic wipes), and still the host was incredibly nasty, because we weren't grateful enough that it was cleaned up late at night.
I deleted my AirBnB account after this experience.
Indeed you do. I was a host for several years, and there is NO direct contract between the host and the guest. The host has a contract with Airbnb, and the guest has a contract with Airbnb. This is why hosts need to enforce the "no third party bookings" rule because if something goes wrong Airbnb will not honour their "insurance" and the host cannot even get the guests contact details out oof Airbnb due to "privacy".
Many hosts send guests a contract to sign and insist on getting government issued identification (I refused to accept bookings from guests whose account image was a child, a pet, or a sunset) for each and every person entering the property.
Note that I didn't allow instant bookings, and would only accept requests after the guest had confirmed they had read the listing fully, read the house rules and understood the refund policy. The house rules were basically "no parties, no smoking, no pets, no third-party bookings".
The practical upshot is you give your money to AirBnB, it's not coming back, no matter how dreadful an experience you have. You have to go after the host.
Here's the thing: the host doesn't get any of the guest's money until 24 hours after the booking begins (basically after the guest's ability to cancel during the first 24 hours has passed).
The host's payment from Airbnb does not include fees and taxes that guests need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required) and it doesn't include the fees and taxes that hosts need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required). So completely refunding guests full payment can mean a host is deep out of pocket.
In munich I had booked 3 night stay, 2 HOURS!! before i was to turn up the host made an excuse of their dad had died and cancelled the reservation - this was obv nothing to do with the fact they had just realised there was an exhibition on in the area (where rates sky rocket x4)
I spoke to the person and they was extremly unconvicing of the real reason of cancelling - luckly I managed to get a hotel for a little more, but the stress!!!!!!! I WILL NEVER EVER use airbnb again
We had a very similar experience in Paris. Six of us were running in the Paris Marathon, and we'd booked an AirBnB months in advance. Come the week of the marathon, the booking got cancelled by the host without explanation. When we politely enquired as to why our booking had been cancelled and whether there had been some kind of mistake, we got a four word reply: "My husband is DEAD".
If I recall correctly, AirBnB didn't allow the host to rebook the same period once they have cancelled a booking. That was no matter to the host - we later found the same property listed on another platform. AirBnB were unable/unwilling to find us alternative accommodation. And as guests who had been left massively inconvenienced and out-of-pocket, we weren't able to leave a written review or give a low rating to reflect our terrible experience - they simply end up with a brief "auto-review" to say "The host cancelled a booking with X days notice."
I don't like AirBNB at all, but that doesn't sound "generous" to me.
The host isn't reducing their income. They're paying a fine outright, and it jumps to 50% 2 days before.
Since things out of your control can happen (the toilet breaks, the place floods) a 50% fine seems reasonable without being unnessarily punitive. And 25% seems OK too since more than 48 hours should be enough time to find an alternative?
I would expect to ban a host if they cancelled stays repeatedly or as any kind of pattern, however.
If the place can't be rented because of an emergency, they don't keep any fine. The 25% or 50% fine is for shitty hosts who decide they want to use the place for something else after all
I wonder what the outcome would have been here if the author just turned this into a game of chicken with the host.
It sounds like the host said "You can't have this reservation you made", the author said "Okay, I'll cancel", and the host said "Whoops too late".
Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reservation if you can't fulfill it, not a problem".
Obviously no ruling out that AirBNB wouldn't just charge the author and not give access to the property, but seems like at least a higher probability of success.
That seems the best alternative to me. If the host is so interested in enforcing the policy, let she enforce it herself.
Given the circumstances, I think it is highly unlikely Airbnb would charge the guest. In any case, the guest can also resort to a chargeback, as others have said.
Not giving in to unreasonable demands should be the norm when using services such as Airbnb, Uber, etc.
> Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reservation if you can't fulfill it, not a problem".
Airbnb punishes host when they cancel both financially and through "the algorithm" that determines placement in search results. Also the host could have allowed the booking and have Airbnb cancel it when an unregistered guest arrived, or not allowed them into the property (they had no legal right to occupy the premises).
My elderly parents were going to visit us last spring, but my daughter came home from school with a sore throat, so I went to cancel immediately, and they weren't willing to work with me at all, and also mentioned I shouldn't have booked for my parents. I did that because they're not very tech savvy.
In any case, I did a chargeback and got all of my money back, even though I would have been happy to forfeit some since this was the day before they were supposed to arrive.
Airbnb did make some noises about removing my account "if this happens again" or something like that, but they can take a hike. The whole thing was handled very badly.
I ran into a similar situation- booked for my wife to have a girls getaway, the place was disgusting and unsafe (no walking path up a hill covered in snow) and had to book elsewhere because the host wasn't around when they arrived.
Airbnb refused to help, because per Airbnb policy, me booking for my wife counted as a "third party booking".
They tried being reasonable up until the person said "well if your wife damaged something you wouldn't want to be responsible would you?" and I pointed out that legally, in my state spouses are responsible for debts incurred by their partners. Mentioning the word "legal" put an immediate stop to the conversation with a blunt sentence along the lines of "we have done all we can for you. Goodbye."
This is one of the reasons, besides all the ethical stuff, that made me stop using AirBnB.
Some hosts are a-holes, and AirBnB usually sides with the hosts. Personally I never had issues, but have seem to many having this kind of issue.
So, go to an hotel, that pays taxes, have employees and where you are not a source of nuisance for neighbors and an agent of gentrification. As a bonus you will avoid this kind of problems.
That's a fair enough point, but there's always tradeoffs to anything.
You could also make an argument that hotel prices have been exorbitant for people, and AirBnB (despite whatever numerous flaws it currently has) did some good for people in providing a massive adrenaline shot of competition to that industry.
I'm picturing "Claire" swinging a knife every time "she" says "Chris".
"Hello Chris [stab] might I ask Chris [stab] if you wish Chris [stab] to be scammed today Chris [stab]? That's wonderful Chris [stab] but I'm afraid Chris [stab] that I am required to scam you Chris [stab] by my boss Chris [stab] nothing personal Chris [stab] it's fine Chris [stab]."
Airbnb hosts these days are insane for real.
You pay a premium and still you do laundry, clear the garbage, mop the floor and what not and still be charged for cleaning.
4.47 rating. That is, believe it or not, a pretty appalling score, and not something I would book. Also, the host is an ass, I cannot count how many times I have had people book for family members, and I’ve had numerous occasions where someone has booked for someone else for work.
You also want to avoid 5.00 or 4.99 with hundreds of stays as they are inevitably buying or extorting reviews. 4.88-4.97 is the sweet spot.
I really wish Airbnb would just ban hosts like this, as it makes those of us who are honestly trying to provide good hospitality all get tarred with the same brush.
It’s ridiculous - and Airbnb perpetuate it. If you get a 4.8* or below review, you get a cranky email from Airbnb saying that you suck and red warnings all over the “improvements” section of the admin. It works, just barely, as long as you only book places with like 50 stays and a score in the range I mentioned - which isn’t something you expect your average Joe to realise.
At least historically, eBay was the same. Anything other than Positive: A++++++++++++++++ Fantastic seller meant that they shipped me a cinder block rather than the MacBook I purchased.
>If you get a 4.8* or below review, you get a cranky email from Airbnb saying that you suck and red warnings all over the “improvements” section of the admin.
The one stay I've had at AirBnb--a lovely place in Maui (mostly because the hotels were so expensive and it was nice)--there were at least a couple pleas in the various information about talking to them before leaving anything other than a 5 rating because they might lose their super-host status.
I know a fulltime host in my city. He goes to extreme lengths to ensure only 5-star reviews. He is basically on call 24/7 to address guest concerns, however the total amount of work he does in a week is probably 10-15 hours for a livable income. The sleep he loses and amount of psychoanalysis he attempts on guests sometimes doesn't seem worth it though.
AirBnb doesn’t necessarily side with one side or the other, but rather, there, customer service is outsourced to the Philippines and they just don’t care. The side you wins is the side you can say the magic words that specific agent wants to hear.
I’ve had guests stay at our place and get a refund at the end by lying, and even admitted to me, he knows how Airbnb support works so knew what to say to them.
I’ve been able to get damage claims paid by Airbnb when guests refused.
Looking at this host though and reading the reviews, this looks like a complete scam. Claire, for one, is definitely not real. Also anything under 4.7 on Airbnb is generally not good. I generally only rent 4.8 and up. The first review (I hough it may not have been up when he booked) mentions being hit up for money, bad checking, etc, lol of which point to a scam.
Had it been me, I wouldn’t have cancelled and would have just said I’ll stay there and been done with it.
I’ve had a few interactions with AirBNB support and agree for the most part- they’re relatively impartial and I haven’t had any more issues with them than I generally have with support agents.
The problem is that the policies can be _brutal_. I went in expecting it to be similar to hotel/airline policies since that’s how they position themselves but that’s not the case. For example cancel charges are very high while hotels are much more permissive and airlines are required to give no questions asked refunds in the first 24hrs.
You mention airlines, yet I have noticed, in the last month, several different cases of long-established airlines (Lufthansa for one) simply refusing to do what they are required to do.
Another notch in the "AirBnB is a totally different experience outside the USA vs inside of it".
Every story I've heard, as well as my personal experience, is that people outside the USA are very customer service oriented, want you to have a good time exploring the place they live, and are generally very attentive and accommodating.
Inside the USA people are just in it as a side hustle. Usually it works out fine, sometimes not so much.
I've never had a bad experience personally, but I've had some pretty amazing experiences outside the USA, but never within it.
(Stuff like hosts buying us groceries ahead of time because they knew we were arriving late, personally showing us around town upon arrival, paying for my offsite parking when my rental car wouldn't fit in the provided garage, etc).
I’ve stayed in airbnbs in over a dozen countries and 4 continents. The side hustles and scams are everywhere. Like booking a place in Krakow, plane arriving at night in winter, getting to a locked up apartment with no lights on, just to hear from the host that the key is 10 blocks away and there will be an additional 200€ non-refundable deposit on checkin. Or the “guest house” in Chili that said it had a bathroom and shower just to find out they meant a communal outhouse and outdoor shower with no hot water or even potable water on premises. I could go on. But scams and crappy hosts are not a US-specific problem.
Yes. I've stayed in AirBnBs in Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Japan, and mostly met very hospitable and helpful hosts that seemed genuinely interested in providing the best service. Maybe I'm picky with the listings, maybe I'm lucky, maybe it's a thing of culture like you suggest.
Commenting as a "host" on Airbnb: yes, it's a reeaaally nasty company with absolutely horrible "support", from the hosting side as well as from the guest side.
In this particular case it's an unkind and nasty host as well; they could perfectly well allow the guest despite Airbnb's policies, though Airbnb would say that their laughable "Aircover" "insurance" would not apply to the rental.
This sucks. I was doing exactly this yesterday and fortunately figured it out before sending money that I could not do the booking. Instead I told the people I wanted to stay close to me "book it and I'll send you the money."
I bet AirBnB people read hacker news.
Folks: I should be able to pay for another user's booking. It just can't be that hard. I set the dates, supply the payment info, anoint another user of your platform to reach out to the host.
Alternatively (if there's something with payment processing that I don't understand), the user who wants me to pay chooses the dates, writes what they want to say to the host, and then passes the baton to me for supplying payment info.
I've paid for friends and family to stay in hotels a zillion times. I was amazed that your platform does not allow this. Now I'm appalled that it allows situations like OP's to happen. And for the record, I was not thrilled to have to disclose what I was paying for my friends. Until this is fixed, will actively try to use hotels for this in the future. (This was a unique case.)
Unfortunately, I found that the best way to resolve these situations is to post publicly on Twitter about what happened making sure to @ the relevant company and # the relevant things.
If the support group won't help you, then maybe the PR group can.
Basically your attitude has to be "either you give me my $900 back, or I'll make sure this problem costs you more than $900 in bad publicity."
The math becomes better for them to give you your $900 back, if they can publicly look responsive to complaints or maybe even get you to take down your post.
If the article author is reading, watch to see whether the property is booked again for the time of the reservation. Then once it's done, sue the property owner personally (not Airbnb) in small claims court and argue your case on the equitable basis of "unjust enrichment." This basically means that it's not fair for a contract to end up with someone getting paid twice for a single transaction, and the court has the equitable power to fix that by making the recipient "disgorge" the profits. The magic word is "equitable," which tells the judge to switch modes from legal remedies to equitable remedies. That is also how you get around the sticky Airbnb-as-defendant question, and how you avoid the arbitration clause that's likely in the Airbnb ToS.
(I'm not your lawyer. This isn't legal advice. Good luck.)
I used to regularly rent a particular BnB for 1-2 weeks when I used to travel back home (Delhi), once, during my 3rd trip the water heater was broken, (this is in the middle of January (~3-13C)), and I was not made aware of the fact. Additionally, there was also no heating, nor any areas where I could take a hot shower, when I asked the manager, who had been pretty friendly with me, he said it'll take 5-6 days for him to figure it out. I, unfortunately prefer to shower daily, so staying like that was very hard. When my booking did end, I rated them a very generous 4/5 because I thought that the relationship mattered more than my discomfort. The next time I wanted to book, I was denied, saying we require all our guests to rate us 5 stars, and if not, they don't accept bookings. I had to then promise them I'd rate them 5 since I didn't want too much of a hassle and that place was pretty nice/economical by the city standards. Rated them a 1/5 and never booked again. Hotels are my goto for any duration of stays now, nothing more than a cursory, "Hi I'd like a <generic_room> please, thanks".
I had a terrible experience this January with airbnb and it's support.
I had a 6 days stay in Zakopane, Poland. My friend was physically attacked by the owner of the house, and support done nothing but removing my review from one of his apartment page(it's seems that the owner can create identical listing pages for one house, and just hide/show the ones with best reviews on it)
At first support seemed very supportive, but it the end they done nothing, but a "close investigations with an undisclosed results by internal guidelines", according to one of the support-stuff.
I also got my review removed because of the "links to external resources"(I've attached the link of the video with screaming home-owner) and emotional advice to use other services like Booking(without direct link). The last one is understandable. Through it wasn't specified as a reason to remove the review, the support gave me no chance to edit or re-post the review.
So at the end I can surely say the only thing they care is the money, and your well-being is the latest thing they care.
IME, the larger a company, and the longer it exists, the more it asymptotically approaches evil, and the less awareness and responsiveness there is to actual end-user experience, and these two factors in the end are the demise of large companies.
Google, Facebook, AirBnB and I would say now Amazon too, are all on this path.
No one like them or trusts them, they are broadly considered evil and their services are used where there are no reasonable alternatives or their monopoly hold of whatever form acts to prevent users from leaving, but the moment there are reasonable alternatives, those companies will be deserted.
Speaking for myself, I have used AirBnB a great deal over the years - back in the early days I thought it was an amazing company. Now I avoid it as much I possibly can; hell, whenever I come to log in again I have no idea if log in will even work, with whatever latest false positive alarm that might have been introduced. It is my last choice, not my first, and I would be very happy never to use it again. When people are writing that about your company, the writing is on the wall.
I've only used AirBNB a few times and it always sucked. The fact that you have to pay a cleaning fee, then you have to do all these chores on the way out (strip linens down, do dishes, take out trash, etc.) never made any sense. I just wish hotels would have found a way to compete better for longer term stays. You should get some kind of price break for staying longer in a hotel.
Lots of hotels offer weekly and monthly discounts.
They cater to 1. People without housing 2. Longer term business travelers. The former is more affordable, but comes with... issues. The latter is probably what you want.
IME, the nighly cost of an Airbnb is generally in the same ball-park as a reasonable budget friendly hotel after you factor everything in.
Yep, sounds like third-world boiler room and will explain the determination to make a quick buck and screw the customer despite an honest mistake.
Chances are, the listing itself is a complete scam and there would’ve been something else gone wrong if the booking proceeded, but the author being honest about the third-party booking gave them an easy way out to begin with.
I had something very similar happen to me when a mudslide physically prevented me from getting to the property. You'd think you would be able to get a full refund, but the host had to approve and of course they didn't. $400 in my case. This was years ago, and I've never used the site again.
I don't understand all the comments here fretting about charging-back. It's one of the most effective consumer protective actions we still have in cases like this. I have experience in these matters from both sides of the transactions.
From the business side you get a notice of the chargeback along with the statement the customer provides when they file it. You then have some period of time, a week or two, to respond. Businesses get scammed by charge-backs too, you know. So you have the opportunity to submit your paperwork showing why you are entitled to the funds. A surprising number of the times the business doesn't even bother.
The credit card company looks at what the customer says and what the business says. They may ask either party for clarification or more documentation. They always prefer the vendor and the customer to settle things themselves so they look to see if the customer reached out to the vendor for some help and resolution first. So if you have a problem you really want to do this first. Documenting emails, phone calls, chat-bot transcripts you, as the customer, have with the vendor is extremely useful here. What's also useful are screen shots of a website that doesn't offer any way to contact the vendor and initiate a refund.
They look to see what the vendor did to try to resolve the issue. Then they may look at the actual evidence. And they may have internal data, like a vendor has a lot of other complaints and charge backs for similar reasons. Or that a customer has a lot of charge backs that weren't upheld.
All things being equal the one with the better documentation generally prevails.
My personal experience is some cards are more likely to stick up for their customers. These tend to be the cards that pay high rewards because the customer pays them directly (the annual fee). Some, like USAA, seem to just be more oriented to helping their customers. But this is totally anecdotal.
One thing I've never heard of is anyone getting 'banned' for making a charge back. If someone has personally experienced this, not just heard it happened, please leave a comment.
There was a time, not so long ago, when you could 'fix' the things that didn't work in the world by building a new app or website. This is how airbnb came about.
Sadly, that is a lot harder now, because all the apps have already been built and they're huge and have all the users. And now millions of people have to deal with the side effects or poorly built or abusive online services which are too big to disrupt or change. Policies upon policies, which, when applied to particular cases mean 'you gave us your money, now it's ours and you get nothing in return and we'll get away with it'.
The photo of "Claire" is a crop of a stock photo listed as "close-up-portrait-of-a-young-beautiful-blonde-woman-summer-outdoors.html". So yeah, there's that.
Airbnb customer support is terrible. I placed a booking and got complete radio silence from the host. Support wouldn't provide a refund until checkin-in failed.
I had already booked a hotel, and don't use Airbnb anymore.
Smells like a systematic scam. An opportunistic one-off like this would already be beyond immoral, but I bet the host is abusing by plan and full understanding of what they can get away with "by policy".
I only use Airbnb when I have no other options (no nearby hotel or I have too many people). Which has been a total of three times ever.
It certainly doesn’t make me want to use them more often. Hosts always have insane rules like I basically have to be a full time cleaner and also the only parking is three miles away and I can only eat in exactly one place.
And I always have to live in fear that something will come and I’ll have to cancel and lose 100% of my money. Why is it that hosts can have misleading listings and cancel days in advance while I have no power at all?
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.
> it's up to the host if they want your record checked...
Hosts have very little say about how the platform works. Airbnb suddenly hid guest account details (name, photo etc) from hosts during the booking process because they decided there would be less racial (or whatever) discrimination, and removed the requirement for people to have their face in their account image. The result was somebody would roll up at a property and the host has no idea who they are, and no way to verify whether they were the guest or not.
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.
I don't understand why anyone would still bother with Airbnb.
So many headaches.
I've used booking dot com, to reserve real hotels or apartments managed by real professional people, all over the world, for over a decade and counting, and I never had a single issue.
Airbnb is built on evading taxes, skirting the law and exploiting the real estate market to the detriment of the local population AND the traveler.
Don't support them.
DO NOT USE AIRBNB IF YOU HAVE OPTION OF USING A HOTEL!
AirBnb is a minefield of gotchas.
1. They don't show you full price. Most of the hosts make bank from cleaning fees. $300-$500 cleaning fees tacked onto final price is usual. Please airbnb fees, resort fees, tourist fees, cleaning Brian Chesky's ass fees. 2x what you see on the listing is normal.
2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.
3. AirBnB is no longer primarily people renting out their house, but get-rich-quick crowd that own homes for the sake of putting on airbnb, shady cancellation policies, some make you clean the house. All sorts of weird house rules like bring your own towels. Every host can have slightly different official and unofficial policies.
4. The pictures are heavily edited, wide angle shots. I once booked based on pictures. They had 10 shots of living room, but no bathroom shots, I saw positive reviews and went ahead. It's like how hollywood creates beautiful sets just for one good scene. We stayed at a "renovated airbnb". Only the living room and kitchen was renovated (new paint), the rest of the house was a shack. Looked gorgeous from the pictures, but actual was quite the surprise. Had an old house smell, bathrooms weren't cleaned. (Again, the hosts will threaten you if you complain about any of these)
5. Support is a joke. They'll acknowledge but won't actually process a refund. Once stayed in an NY apartment. $700/night and it was a tiny room, with a bed that stank of urine. Support said the equivalent of "tough luck, life isn't fair".
> 2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.
I've always felt that reviews should be not be visible until both parties had 'blindly' submitted their reviews. Or if only one party submits a review, then after a set period of time, it is published and the other party does not have an ability to rate the other party anymore to prevent retaliation reviews.
This would ensure more honest reviews and stop revenge reviews.
Haven’t used Airbnb in a while but I could swear that’s how it worked. Which is why I’m confused reading all these experiences about retaliatory negative reviews.
Interestingly, the host was also violating AirBNBs terms of service and the author could have gotten a full refund if they realized. It’s against AirBNB’s ToS to charge a security deposit outside of the fees already charged by AirBNB. I’ve had AirBNB offer to kick a host off of the platform if they didn’t back down on this. You could probably get them to cancel a reservation because of it.
You can lose money in another way too, which wouldn't happen with hotels: you book a property for an expensive location at high season, the booking gets cancelled for any reason (host changed idea, host got banned etc.) and now you are stuck with much shittier and more expensive choices and a lot less time to go through them. This happened to me recently.
I had the "exact" same thing. Basically, a host will list a price but message you later that there is an "extra fee" that they mentioned somewhere in the "very visible" guidelines. This was also within the hour. There was no refund policy with the host, so you lose the whole amount.
I was surprised how useless AirBnB support is. Especially that I had a five figures turn over with them. You'd think with such numbers they'd favor the customer over the host. But after going through like 5-6 of their support agents, I still got the same response: Cancellation policy.
I'm taking my business elsewhere starting from next month. I don't know if the alternatives are any better but it doesn't hurt to try.
I don't know why nobody is suggesting this, but wouldn't the simplest thing be for the author to say "oh oops, yeah, OK, I'll stay there then" and then just... not stay?
What was the host going to do, go make the guest show ID to verify they're the author?
Something similar happened to me! Pretty much after booking and waiting for the checking instruction, the guy asked me to go 1 mile away to pick up some keys in a unknown location, that was not specified in advanced... I wanted to cancel the reservation to pick up a more safe place... Airbnb only return 50%... this was in matter of minutes! The guy wanted 50% for a reservation done 30 minutes before sending me those ridiculous instructions... I contacted Airbnb, scaled the situation, and at the end they said nothing could be done... yep, they are enabling Scammers... Never used Airbnb again...
Something I don't get. What does it mean "you need to be there for the whole duration"? Is it some kind of house arrest? I've rented places where I was absent the whole day except a few hours at night. How would anyone know I was or wasn't there at all? It's not the business of the host anyway to tell me where I should be present. I paid money, I rent the place, where I am physically present is not their fricking business.
I've lost over $2000 AUD on Airbnb in a similar situation - month long stay, but the place was uninhabitable (dirt, insects, suspected blood on floor). I spoke to Airbnb on first night to cancel but they defaulted to 'Host's discretion' and the host said no. I'm not sure I was even able to leave a review telling others about my experience. I still use Airbnb but every time it feels like a massive gamble, knowing now that they don't care about customers at all.
I've lost over $2000 AUD on Airbnb in a similar situation - month long stay, but the place was uninhabitable (dirt, insects, suspected blood on floor). I spoke to Airbnb on first night to cancel but they defaulted to 'Host's discretion' and the host said no. I'm not sure I was even able to leave a review telling others about my experience. I still use Airbnb but every time it feels like a massive gamble. They just don't care about customers at all.
Uhh - I came ready to blame Airbnb as I no longer use them. However - you obviously can’t do third party bookings and if a host has had third party booking issues (Airbnb will not cover these at all) I think hosts will have a very negative reaction to a third party booking.
Maybe blame Airbnb for not being clearer, but the profile photo / ID verification stuff is designed for the guest.
Do people do third party dating or car reservations etc?
Well people do blind dates or get set up by friends or both, so maybe that counts? And the OP managed to make a third-party hotel reservation fine.
I think the actual issue was not the Airbnb rule but that it makes little sense that the OP was unable to cancel at no charge for a reasonable reason an hour after making the booking (and plenty of time before the stay).
I never book anything on Airbnb unless it has the most lenient cancellation policy. Not that I cancel often but sometime I do due to bad weather usually. To Airbnb's credit I would say that they sent me a reminder one time about a booking I did well in advance and forgot to cancel after my plans changed. Thanks to the reminder I managed to cancel it on time. It was $1500.
Am I missing something? Why didn’t the author just say yes he was staying as well? In fact he was going to be there at check in, just not sleeping there. Do you really think they’ll check the bed to see if you’re in it every night?
The host is not your friend, if you’re doing anything odd with an Airbnb it’s best to just be quiet and not divulge more info than what is necessary.
This policy isn't foreign to hotels. I don't want customers signing in their kids for a room to throw a party without the parents present. They do these checks to limit fraud you describe.
The cancellation refund discretion is part of the host's TOS , too.
Putting it in a TOS is one thing, how is it enforced?
Also, it’s trivial to book a room at a hotel and have someone else check in under the reservation as long as you put them on the guest list. I’ve done it before. Not sure how this is fraud.
>Putting it in a TOS is one thing, how is it enforced?
This comes off like a bad faith question because OP wrote this article because AirBnB's TOS was enforced in explicit detail.
> Also, it’s trivial to book a room at a hotel and have someone else check in under the reservation as long as you put them on the guest list. I’ve done it before.
Did you have to present ID? Were you over 18? Did someone in your party already have a credit card on file before anyone got the first set of keys? If you do those things, there's no trivial difference between making your own reservation.
The issue isn't whether you can get legally away with spoofing a reservation account. The issue is whether you're potentially liable for breaking a contract or committing fraud.
The op wrote an article about how he shot himself in the foot and got taken advantage of by a shitty host. He should have put his name down as one of the guests. When the host saw his name wasn’t listed, he got him to incriminate himself and reported it knowing she wasn’t going to have to give him a refund.
With hotels, typically you reserve a room with a credit card, and any guests you put on the list can show up, present their ID, and check in. You never have to check in yourself. So I really don’t think what you said was accurate. The hotel doesn’t even know who is making the booking, there’s no account they can check like there is with AirBnB.
> When the host saw his name wasn’t listed, he got him to incriminate himself and reported it knowing she wasn’t going to have to give him a refund.
She asked if he was staying. He said no. She clarified that if he did stay, things would be fine and wouldn't have cancelled. He answered honestly.
In AirBnB, if the person making the booking isn't staying there, it pattern matches as a red flag with credit card fraud, people throwing parties, people spoofing AirBnB accounts because they're blacklisted, etc.
> You never have to check in yourself. So I really don’t think what you said was accurate. The hotel doesn’t even know who is making the booking, there’s no account they can check like there is with AirBnB.
I provided counterexamples to your claims. I don't know where you're getting the claim that hotels don't know who's making the booking or they can't check for blacklisted customers.
That's pretty crazy. Becoming an Airbnb host in Australia at least and even the most strict cancellation policy you can set allows for a full refund within 48 hours of booking
Had a similar experience, only lost about $400, because I disabled my credit card in advance for further payments. AirBnB tried to charge multiple times.
Anyway, that's my first time with AirBnB, and I decided not to have anything to do with them again.
Can't believe Ycombinator invested this company, what a disaster!
I also recently lost $3050 to Airbnb and a terrible host in London. The listing was wrong (including the address), but both Airbnb and the host didn't want to refund my long term stay and dragged it to force me to stay. I am still fighting it through my bank to no avail :(
$3050 is a large enough amount that I would take it to small claims court. In which case, AirBNB has to send a representative to court to fight the charges, or they'll default and you'll (eventually) get your money back.
Even if they do send somebody (which is doubtful) what you're saying suggests that the listing was totally fraudulent.
Why not just tell them you’ll be there yourself too?
It’s not like they’re going to drop in unannounced, ID you, and if you’re missing a few times while your friend is there, make a case to cancel the booking in the middle of it.
Here is one of the problems with third-party bookings: the person that makes the booking is sent all the information needed to make the stay a pleasant experience. This can be details like: where to park and where NOT to park; how to find the house; how to find the key or the code to the electronic lock; how open the front door; etc, and the host is given the contact details of the person that made the booking (phone number, e-mail). The preferred method of communication between host and guests should ALWAYS be the Airbnb app messages, not third-party systems where fraud could occur, so the host has no way to contact the person staying and usually has no idea who it is.
Typically NONE of this information is passed from the person making the booking to the person actually staying, so the guest parks in the wrong spot, goes to the wrong house, cannot find the key or doesn't have the code to open the front door, etc, and after an hour or so they contact the hosts demanding action and the host says "Who are you and why are you phoning me at midnight?"
First thing that annoys me: they ask for your email address. That way whatever communication you have can be done outside of AirBnb. Big no-no. Like eBay. Don't move outside of the platform.
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.
Everything about this is silly. You can contact hosts beforehand on AirBnB and I almost always do that, and certainly would if I was going to be booking an even slightly unusual situation (for someone else). I've booked for third parties before too and did exactly that, during a COVID lockdown when we needed to find a place for an old couple.
I'm not sure I believe the host either. Perhaps AirBnB have changed things, but as far as I knew from talking to hosts before, the host could always refund up to the booking date, they had tools to do more than guests in exceptional circumstances. And it's in their interest as this dude is now going to give the host a 1-star rating.
Maybe to you it seems like an unusual situation, but to people who maybe don't travel very much, "booking a room for my spouse" isn't something they'd think is "unusual". It's a little absurd that it's "unusual", in fact.
Yeah, if I were booking a trip with a spouse or friend and I was maybe joining a couple days later, I would absolutely book for them. I would make sure the hotel had their name whether through the booking form or another channel. But that would be something bog-standard for just about any normal hotel on the planet.
I actually find it downright weird that you can't book a reservation for someone else on AirBnB.
Too honest for that world. Could have just said yes I will be sleeping there with Marilyn every night. They wouldn't know unless there are cameras installed in the bedroom.
what a greedy-ass host! they probably turn around and book these dates with someone else after ripping off the author. I think a chargeback is definitely worth a try here.
The last few Airbnbs I stayed in had self-checkin. I never saw a person, host or owner. There’s an easy way around this issue, as crafty as it might be.
At this point I would just contact the bank for a chargeback. It would be a cold day in hell before I rolled over and lost $1,000 for something like this.
He should have just stayed the nights then if it was that important and he would be there anyway. And then misplace his frozen fish in a vent somewhere.
Sometimes some hosts make up some ridiculous excuse to lure you into cancelling yourself to make a quick buck. A minority but they do exist for sure.
When I had an issue with "funny" hosts, I reached out to the Airbnb supported and I actually got a full refund and a discount for a future booking as an apology for the situation.
To be fair, your host was extremely rigid. Reach airbnb support, maybe you'll get a full refund.
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 malicious here and trying to make a quick buck by double-dipping - getting some money from the cancelled booking and then relisting the property back on the market.
I am always surprised how many people don't know about payment card disputes/chargebacks or refuse to use them, even right here on HN. The bank and card networks are biased towards you to begin with, and there's no downside to losing one as long as you're not being outright fraudulent or acting in bad faith.
Card chargebacks (or litigation, if you have the means) is the only thing companies understand, especially in a country where consumer protection isn't a thing.