On a related know, I wonder if an Airbnb can effectively sue you or there is some kind of mediation clause

Perhaps take AirBnb or the "host" to small claims court

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.

Are you sure there isn't an arbitration clause hiding somewhere in the tos?

“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.

[1] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908#23

Don't forget they've already collected a digital copy of your ID so that it's easier to let them track you down to sue you. [On sign up]

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.

This would never go to a jury trial, this would be a small claims court thing.

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.

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.

> 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

Sure and I am in my legal right to sue you for making this post.

It doesn’t mean it will go anywhere if we actually end up in court.

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.

worst case for something like airbnb is gonna be small claims court and +$200 for court costs max and/or collection company.

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.