Re:Anyone else run into this AirBnB problem?
by stephenr on Wednesday May 15, 2013 @02:49AM
(#5710567)
I tried to use airbnb twice to book whole houses (ie no one else there) in March/April during a 4 week trip back to Australia.
First place, the host accepted (so we were billed) but 20 minutes later she sent a message to say she had to cancel because someone her husband knew died. She never cancelled the booking, it took several days of me complaining to airbnb before they agreed to cancel it themselves, so we could get a refund.
Stupidly I didn't learn my lesson and tried to book another place through airbnb later in our trip. It was only after they had authorised my card for $1100 for the stay that I got a message to say "you need to provide more information" - I don't have a LinkedIn or Facebook account, so my only options left were to upload a photo of my drivers licence add then they wanted to verify me by my card, so they charged < $1 and said I needed to tell them how much they charged (from my transaction history). They gave me 11 hours to do this - my banks visa transactions are about 2-3 days delayed.
When I emailed them about this, they suggested I create a video.
I never did stay at any of their places. One of their phone support staff tried to tell my refund was taking so long because "Austrlaian banks can't believe we want to give your money back".
I will never (attempt to) use airbnb again. The fucking around is simply not worth it.
Both times when airbnb let us down, we stayed in a short term rental, organised directly with the owner over the phone, both times at late notice because of airbnb.
The second time we stayed, he left a bottle of wine for us. It's not a huge thing, and neither of us are big wine drinkers but it was enough to cement that place as somewhere we will go back to whenever we are in Melbourne.
Re:Anyone else run into this AirBnB problem?
by jspiral on Wednesday May 15, 2013 @03:03AM
(#5710599)
thanks for sharing, the 11 hour countdown with no hope of fixing it seems to be a standard move. Perhaps getting us to make videos is the real purpose of this fiendish system?
First place, the host accepted (so we were billed) but 20 minutes later she sent a message to say she had to cancel because someone her husband knew died. She never cancelled the booking, it took several days of me complaining to airbnb before they agreed to cancel it themselves, so we could get a refund.
Stupidly I didn't learn my lesson and tried to book another place through airbnb later in our trip. It was only after they had authorised my card for $1100 for the stay that I got a message to say "you need to provide more information" - I don't have a LinkedIn or Facebook account, so my only options left were to upload a photo of my drivers licence add then they wanted to verify me by my card, so they charged < $1 and said I needed to tell them how much they charged (from my transaction history). They gave me 11 hours to do this - my banks visa transactions are about 2-3 days delayed.
When I emailed them about this, they suggested I create a video.
I never did stay at any of their places. One of their phone support staff tried to tell my refund was taking so long because "Austrlaian banks can't believe we want to give your money back".
I will never (attempt to) use airbnb again. The fucking around is simply not worth it.
Both times when airbnb let us down, we stayed in a short term rental, organised directly with the owner over the phone, both times at late notice because of airbnb.
The second time we stayed, he left a bottle of wine for us. It's not a huge thing, and neither of us are big wine drinkers but it was enough to cement that place as somewhere we will go back to whenever we are in Melbourne.