Welcome to Consumer Rescue
Fiascos and Fixes
These tales cover a variety of Airbnb problems that guests — and sometimes hosts — have brought to Consumer Rescue. Each article tells a dramatic story and highlights our advocacy team’s efforts to investigate and resolve the issue.
Airbnb guests Elizabeth Knox and her husband recently discovered bed bugs aren’t the only pests making accommodations uninhabitable in Paris. Soon after arriving at their cute rental in the City of Lights, they found another family already enjoying the apartment.
Isaac Chambers says an Airbnb host just hit him with an expensive bait and switch scam of sorts. After you hear his troubling story, you’ll likely agree.
Many months after Chambers booked the perfect vacation rental for his wedding party, his Airbnb host abruptly canceled the reservation. Citing “synchronization” issues as the cancellation reason, the management company suggested several undesirable replacement properties in Palm Springs.
Now just two months before his wedding, Chambers’ group has nowhere to stay. That is unless they want to rent the exact same Airbnb vacation rental with this host – for an additional $13,341.
So what are those “synchronization” issues that allowed the host to cancel this Airbnb and relist it at a much higher rate? That’s what Chambers is asking Consumer Rescue to find out.
No one needs more than one vacation rental in Paris at a time. So how did Virginia Wong end up booking not one but two accidental Airbnb rentals in the City of Lights?
When an Airbnb host directs Andrea Walker to use the service elevator in the building where she is renting an apartment, she’s slightly suspicious. However, when she opens the door to the unit, she knows she definitely won’t be staying. The Airbnb host apologizes for the state of the filthy vacation rental and quickly agrees to a refund.
So why does the host later tell Airbnb that Walker spent the whole weekend at the property?
What if you traveled halfway around the world only to find the vacation rental you booked on Airbnb is likely illegal? That’s the situation that confronted Alex Tarce when he tried to check into his Tokyo rental, and the host asked him to sneak in behind the doorman’s back.
What’s going on here?
What if you locked yourself out of your Airbnb rental thousands of miles from home? Would your host or the caretaker immediately come and rescue you?
Xiamin Qi discovered the answer to both questions after she locked herself out of her Airbnb rental in Barcelona. Despite the host warning her about the self-locking feature of the front door, she says jet lag caused an oversight. That fatigue led Qi to walk out of the vacation rental and leave the keys inside.
Now she is asking the Airbnb host to refund $500 for her trouble. But is this a reasonable request?
James Parker just got hit with the most excessive cleaning fee I’ve ever seen as a consumer advocate. Soon after checking out of his recent Airbnb rental, the owner sent him a $1,470 bill to clean up the mess she says his family made.
But what mess was she really cleaning up?
Attention all American Airlines passengers: If you have any flight vouchers stored away somewhere, don’t try to sell them. If you do, the airline might use high-tech security systems to catch you.
If you try it and American Airlines finds out, it will mark your vouchers stolen, leaving you with nothing.
This tale is a cautionary one for anyone considering skirting the terms of their American Airlines vouchers. There are many hacks out there advising travelers about how to make a profit on these bonuses. But much of that “guidance” overlooks an undeniable obstacle: almost every airline forbids this practice, and offering your vouchers for sale can cause them to become instantly worthless.
Airbnb host Nancy Isa recently got a terrible shock when she discovered hackers had broken into her payout account. Unfortunately, by the time she noticed something was wrong, Airbnb had been making regular payments to the scammers – for five months.
In total, the hackers stole $34,250 from Nancy’s Airbnb host account.
Then things went from bad to worse. With all that money on the line, Nancy contacted the listing giant in a panic. She was hoping for some calming reassurance that all was not lost. Instead, Airbnb immediately locked the host out of her own account and then went radio silent.
That’s when Nancy reached out to the Consumer Rescue team. She’s hoping we can convince Airbnb to give back her access to her host account – and her $34,250.
But after six months, is that possible?
What if Orbitz made a mistake and canceled your return flight home from vacation, leaving you stranded abroad?