I have been a host for Airbnb for about a year, very irregularly. As I live in another town, I have to travel a long way to set up my accommodation. Therefore, I do not accept last minute cancellations. Now, a sweaty bicycle traveler with probably ten different types of small plastic bags on her bike turned up in my flat. After a day of staying there (and apparently having done her laundry), this person wanted to cancel the rest of her reservation. She wrote: "My friend is sick! I must help her..." ( What a lousy lie). I received a question through the Airbnb system asking if I accept the cancellation. I clicked on "decline", but nevertheless I soon got a message that the booking was cancelled. When I protested to Airbnb, they told me the host had "moderated" my rule (???!?!!). In one day the person had managed to thoroughly mess up my apartment, left uneaten food in the fridge and washed probably ten loads of laundry (I judged by how much detergent had been used). Yet the person still managed to berate the standard of my apartment as a reprisal for not letting her cancel. The review no longer mentioned the "sick friend", but said the standard of the apartment was so low (for a cycling, sweaty traveller!) that she had to cancel the booking. All the other guests had given the apartment the highest possible score (5). Now, months later, Airbnb is still charging me more than 80 euros for this cancellation, which caused me so much headache. How many days have I spent on this matter and now this! That I am being made to pay (presumably the cyclist who cancelled the accommodation will also have to pay his share to Airbnb). And this is only one trouble with Airbnb I have had. They are so many, that I decided I will no longer continue hosting with Airbnb, as none of the rules I have created apply and everything is really complicated, vague and nothing can be trusted. I had also made a rule that I only wanted to accommodate people who had stayed there before (with reviews), but suddenly I started getting bookings from first-timers. Of course, Airbnb wants to get as much money as possible from both hosts and guests and they are constantly going to the limit of where the rights of the consumer are when the system is really unclear. I will boycott Airbnb for the rest of my life, and I certainly do not recommend booking or hosting to anyone. Now I see from these Trustpilot comments that there are already a lot of us. To summarize, do not, under any circumstances, become an Airbnb host!
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