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Fiascos and Fixes
These are the real-life stories of travelers who have encountered dramatic and expensive vacation rental problems or scams and asked our consumer advocacy team for help. From bad hosts to outright scammers and everything in between, we tell the real-life experiences of vacation rental guests and Consumer Rescue’s efforts to fix their problems.
If you don’t smoke, I’m pretty sure you don’t pack cigarettes, marijuana, or a crack pipe when you go on vacation. Life-long nonsmoker Jason Gladden certainly didn’t bring any of that when he recently took his family to a baseball tournament. However, that didn’t stop his vacation rental host from charging the stunned dad a $250 smoking fee.
But the surprises didn’t stop there.
A perpetually leaking ceiling in an Airbnb rental seems like a problem the host should fix immediately. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the experience of one young mom who paid $5,400 for the privilege of living in a soggy apartment.
Can Consumer Rescue help?
If an Airbnb host asks you not to come through the front door of the vacation rental, you should ask some questions before you show up. This group of friends wishes they had done just that.
Few things are more important in a vacation rental than electricity. But when John Burns and his family arrived at their Parisienne houseboat Vrbo, they found it was missing that crucial element. So why won’t Vrbo refund their payment?
Some of our cases get relegated to the dismissed file simply because of the attitude of the consumer. This Airbnb guest’s story was almost one of them.
Almost.
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?
Koji Kawana and his family were looking forward to an exciting five days in New York City. The group had a tight schedule with plenty of activities planned. What they hadn’t planned for is the Airbnb nightmare that was about to confront them.
Now Kawana wants to know: Shouldn’t Airbnb refund him for this nightmare of a vacation rental?
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?
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© 2024 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
