AirBNB
Complaint 306591 Details

My girlfriends scattered all around the world and I had been looking for an apartment for 8-10 people in Miami for my bachelorette party this coming May. We had been looking at VRBO and AirBnB and contacted a few places (none of which we have used before, but many of us had friends that had. We tried a couple of reservations and were rejected. Then one of the girls in her searching found a place which was exactly what we were looking for and had requested and even that much better.

We discussed and wondered why we hadn't seen the listing before. Decided to reserve on the AirBnB site and were rejected but received a message from the host to email them one line about the guests at the email on the first page photo to be "verified" before they can accept the reservation. After doing so and agreeing with the "host" I received an "acceptance" email from "express" at and airbnb.com email address asking me to wire transfer to an AirBnB account at Barclays UK account within 24 hours as this host does not accept credit cards.

Given the time difference of all the ladies, we went ahead and did the wire transfer right then. When I woke up in the morning to send the apt pictures and went back to the AirBnB site I still saw that the apartment was declined. I contacted the "host" again and asked why and he said it was because the funds hadn't been cleared by AirBnB yet. However, my alarm bells had already started ringing.

I went online and saw that it was a possible scam and tried to stop the transfer as soon as the bank from which the wire transfer was requested. The transfer had gone through. It was noted by the bank in the stop request that fraud was suspected but we were told that the recipient had to accept the wire transfer withdrawal in order to cancel it. Obviously, not likely to happen.

I contacted AirBnB's safey email address and only received a standard form no contact should be made off of their portal. I can understand that they don't want to accept any responsibility for fraud, but I would assume they would want to protect their customer base. From the other comments it appears that that is not a priority for them.

The "host" and link to the listing has now disappeared, even all messages from the "host" on the AirBnB site are gone so I don't have a record of the in portal communication and the link with the email contained in the picture has been taken down. We contacted AirBnB and just got a their standard, don't communicate/pay outside the website. No personal response whatsoever.

I am not as technically sophisticated as the person in Complaint 283428 to be able to see the phishing exactly and how they get the airbnb.com extension or use the AirBnB Bank Account name... but AirBnb is definitely not protecting its customer or the use of its information well. The "acceptance" email even links to the AirBnB site embedded.