Name: airbnb.fr
Telephone: 000000000
Rating: 1.2

Celestia H. Guest

bad experience -no credit card refund in due time after a cancellation by the host

After having booking an apartment in Barcelona, the booking has been cancelled by the host 3 weeks before . Then Airbnb told me that I will be refund on my credit card but 3 weeks later I still not see any refund on my bank account. The contact at Airbnb always told me the same thing when I try to reach them: it has been done and I should see the paiement in 5/7 days,, but nothing. I am really afraid not to have my money back.

Date of experience: Sep 18, 2014

Linus B. Guest

12 years ago

Review integrity is unique @Airbnb. All pay per booking Airbnb competitors are scam operations or in

This review applies to Airbnb US and HQ. However since many French guests use Airbnb when they travel in the US, this applies to them as well. Also Airbnb uses the same platform worldwide.

Review integrity is unique at Airbnb, not only in its industry but also among all internet companies. This is a huge win for guests as any intelligent person who is risk averse will select a host with many good reviews and be fairly sure that they will get a good experience. This is because on average Airbnb reviews are very accurate. Possibly only Ebay can compare with Airbnb as far as Review integriy. Many other internet companies like Yelp and Tripadvisor cannot compare with Airbnb and pose severe risks to users and guests. From my experience Yelp and Tripadvisor are corrupt and unreliable and their reviews are junk on average and/or do not have the right people and right systems to handle what they try to sell to the public.

Airbnb invests massive resources and very smart and nice people to ensure the integrity and accuracy of reviews. They keep improving although there is still room for improvement. I would like to see Airbnb add star reviews for guests too not just hosts; similarly to what Ebay does where both buyers and sellers are star rated (not just description rated). This would ensure that each Airbnb transaction is smooth for both guests and hosts and that Airbnb would succeed even more.

Airbnb has no competition; all its competitors do not have the resources, ethics, integrity, people and systems that Airbnb has. In fact some of Airbnb competitors, including well recognized names such as Tripadvisor, are essentially scam operations. I am not familiar with VBRO and other non pay per booking operations so I cannot rate them but if VBRO and other were smart they would switch to a pay per booking model so that hosts do not have to pay a huge fee upfront.

In essence many of the recent reviews of angry guests about Airbnb are either fake or the guests did not take the appropriate precautions such as choosing a host with many positive reviews so they get what they ask for.

Another area of improvement for Airbnb would be adding the ability for hosts to include special amenities such as indoor pool vs outdoor pool, private garage etc because many guests do actively look for special amenities but the current Airbnb menu does not allow for that search while many of Airbnb competitors do allow more options in search.

Airbnb has made huge improvements recently. I had an old Truspilot review of Airbnb with 2 stars that you can read below.

OLD REVIEW BELOW
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Potentially great but lots of risks for guests and hosts that money just can't buy

This review applies to Airbnb US and HQ. However since many Airbnb France guests use Airbnb when they travel in the US, this applies to them as well.

Airbnb has an excellent platform and customer service is often great. There are many wonderful professionals in customer service at Airbnb. I would have liked to give a 5 star review to Airbnb because they definitely have the potential and resources; however some of their leadership in customer service and possibly overall is very questionable and that can create huge problems for Airbnb guests and Airbnb hosts and for their safety.

I have not been a guest on Airbnb yet but I have been a host for a few months and I have over 30 reviews from guests and my average star rating is 5 star ratings on every category. I have met some great guests on Airbnb but I have also had a couple of horrible experiences where I have received inadequate support from Airbnb or where Airbnb customer service actually made my experience much worst.

I have met a couple of lying, deceitful, or racist guests on Airbnb and Airbnb is unwilling to fix this.

I had a horrible U.S. Airbnb customer service experience with Jessica H and Delilah B, who were rude, deceitful and abusive and their manager who refuses to speak with me.

I have noticed some bias on several occasions from Airbnb representatives. Airbnb seems to favor guests over hosts, now that there is an abundance of hosts on Airbnb, and women over men many times if there are disputes thus making the community unfair.

They are also sometimes very slow in addressing urgent concerns, and do not always follow their own Airbnb rules but bend them according to "case manager" is on duty so it is unfair and biased and there is no accountability mechanism as sometimes they won't allow or discuss complaints or in fact retaliate instead of appreciating the feedback.

I have also been contacted in the past through Craigslist from Airbnb hired people who claimed to be non-associated with Airbnb but were trying to push their service and make hosts sign up on Airbnb.

One Airbnb guest from Malaysia stole from me, lied to me, harassed me damaged my property and made racist remarks about people from India (I am not from India but I do not like racist people). Airbnb did not protect me appropriately and I lost money and a lot of time. In addition, Airbnb penalized my listings in the search results so that my listings are much harder to find for guests who want to book in the area.

Another Airbnb guest, an organization from Oakland, CA, recently contacted me through Airbnb to stay at one of my locations to do their work. They misled me and I had accepted their reservation based on the information they gave me. After receiving booking confirmation, I found out their name and immediately learned through a google search that they are involved in illegal activities on a regular basis. This guest / organization later confirmed this in writing by messaging me on Airbnb.

As my guests' safety is my priority, I do not allow any guests who are involved in illegal activities to interact with me or any of my guests. I informed Airbnb about this group immediately, Jessica H canceled the reservation, without my authorization, and then lied to me and her colleagues. Airbnb never paid me (of course I did not want any money or any relationship with this group), and then blocked my calendar so I could not accept any other reservations for that date, fined me $100 for the cancellation that they made without my authorization, penalized my listings in the search results so that they harder to find for guests who want to book in the area. They also told me that I was "policing".

As a courtesy, I also informed the guest / group immediately, after consulting with Airbnb on how to do it best, that my locations were not available for them for that date or any future date as they wanted to book additional dates with me.

Airbnb penalized me while in fact I was just protecting the Airbnb community and my guests. I hosted a single mom and her two young children the day that this illegal group representative was supposed to stay with me; so they would have stayed in the same location.

Apparently Delilah B. and her manager were supportive of this group's agenda as they also helped them secure a more expensive room with a different host and donated this guest about $50 to book a room with the other Airbnb host (and they collected the fees from the other host as well in addition to mine).

Delilah B.'s manager won't talk to me even after I was assured that a case manager would contact me but she never did and then I was told that no one would contact me.

I regularly pay my fees to Airbnb, introduced many new happy guests to Airbnb and worked hard to make Airbnb look good, regularly provide valuable feedback to Airbnb about their web site and service and how to improve it, so this is unfortunate, biased, unfair and uncalled for. Delilah B.'s conduct and her manager's were unacceptable, unreasonable and rude.