Airbnb Reviews 

What a disgraceful business this is. They tell you your account is not yet verified but they still make the booking and charge you. Then hours later when you have made other arrangements they confirm the booking?? Dodgy Crooks
No stars

Cheap but very bad experience as check in is too late and check out too early

I will add to the throng of other reviewers who have had terrible experiences with airbnb’s customer service.

The long and the short of it is this:
Airbnb made unauthorised transactions on my credit card. When they refunded the transaction, they refunded the wrong amount to the wrong card, resulting in yet more charges (to clear the refunds) and more refunds. All this back and forth has now cost me money due to currency conversions and bank charges. Airbnb refuse to refund this even though it was their mistakes that caused all the unnecessary transactions.

They are an unethical and dishonest operation, in my experience. I have used them only twice now and will certainly never use them again. I would recommend caution to anyone reading this review because, when something does go wrong, you will get no resolution or assistance from Airbnb!

DO NOT USE THIS SITE EVER! Their customer service is worse than any other company I have ever used! It is just as bad whether you are a guest or a host. Use VRBO instead!

Please find below honest account directly written to air bnb (apologies to spelling/grammar gurus...I was quite upset)

Hi Air BnB,

I hope you are having a fabulous day. I am not and I am writing here to let you and others know why.

In a few weeks one of my best friends is getting married in the gold coast (we never thought it would happen - he is not that pretty). I am the only member of friends and family from our side that is in the southern hemisphere so I am absolutely delighted to be going.

Today I decided to book my accommodation through Air BnB. You have such a good following and cheaper rates I thought why not. That is definitely the kind of service I need as I am on a budget and the rates seem fab. I made my booking with a lovely woman who immediately contacted me and we cannot wait for our trip.

Where is the issue you wonder????

After booking this my partner and I thought that doing a small food shop would be a good idea. I checked my bank account just to see how much we could splurge after booking our trip. I was expecting to see between 400 and 600 dollars. Wasn't it just a great surprise to me when there was a measly 28 dollars in the account. Obviously this was a great shock. When I investigated this further it was clear that Air BnB had double charged me and also refunded me on their system.

This is all good and well and if I was a millionaire would find it slightly irritating, however, a millionaire I am not!! I was a bit upset but because I am a reasonable person figured I would contact you and just ask what was going on. Firstly I struggled to find contact details on your website - I just kept getting redirected in a loop to your FAQ pages (on a side note this is extremely irritating). So next step was Facebook where I found a telephone number. This was an 02 number so I assumed I was calling someone in NSW.

The first 2 agents that I spoke to (in South East Asia Pacific - this is where they told me they were) hung up on me when I said I needed to find a solution to procuring the money that had been refunded. The 3rd agent told me I did not know what I was talking about. At this point I am willing to admit that I lost my temper a little and demanded to speak to someone more helpful. Again, somebody hung up on me.

During this time my partner contacted the bank and told them about our little conundrum and they said there was a really very simple solution to resolve this. Air BnB had to e-mail or fax commbank on an email address and/or fax number that they provided with some details. After receiving this information the good people at commbank said the money would be released within 2 hours. At this point can I just say that all of the details required on this fax or email were about myself and the only thing Air BnB had to provide was a headed fax or signed e-mail.

After some cereal, a bit of a cry and being a little bit stressed I called back. This time I spoke to someone who was a little more helpful. She went and found a supervisor. This person got on the phone and relayed back the same ridiculous diatribe that the first couple of people did and only when I mentioned the word fraudulent and legal advice was anyone on the phone remotely helpful.

When I pointed out that I was expecting to call NSW and actually ended up on the phone to south east asia "would i be getting charged a fortune for that on top of having no money in my bank account?" - the supervisor hung up - and called me back.

After 45 minutes of being on this call I was told the call was very irritating. I was also told that the managers and payment teams that had the capacity to deal with my unfortunate situation were in another country and there was nothing you could do.

I am a human being and understand mistakes happen, however, in our modern age of technology and communication I am struggling to comprehend the fact that nobody in a global company can send an e-mail or fax to resolve this situation. It would take less than 5 minutes.

I won't keep going on but what I will say is this. You took a charge out of my bank account twice - and actually tried to take it a 3rd time. Because of this (and you not being able to send an e-mail or fax) I have 28 dollars in my bank account. Because I only have this much money in my account, either my partner or I, are going to have to sacrifice going to work as we will not be able to both afford fuel and/or public transport to our employment. I apologize that we are not more well off and able to cope but even though both of us work 60+ hours a week we are still struggling to make ends meet.

If either of us lose our employment I will be seeking legal advice.

Thanks

Louise

Still no e-mail, fax or money

In the midst of our 5 months travels using ABB they suddenly decided that they needed to check our ID. We had booked our ACCOM but didn’t yet have the address, and were standing waiting for a car to the train..We were stranded.
My wife QUICKLY signed up to the ABB account so we could get accom, That prevented a disaster.... A month later lo and behold they then wanted a confirmation of our bank details (we had been paying all our accom and had great reviews) 4 days later still no verification, the train to our next city is booked and we are due to leave here 2 days from now, once again no communication from ABB... What’s wrong with these clowns?

Airbnb in Ibiza.
Day 1.
We discovered that of the three keys we were given, none would lock our room’s door, so I telephoned our host who returned and said that none of the bedroom doors locked in his property, but no one else complained! I asked how I could secure our passports, money, camera etc. he then said that no one had reported anything stolen previously so he said it wasn’t a problem. Furthermore, the second key for the front door was never locked by anyone and regarding the third key for the gate to the entire property, this lock was actually broken! I now felt all our valuables were accessible to anyone passing by the whole complex / building. Our host really did not seem to share our concerns and made no effort to rectify the situation.
Further to this inside the property:
1. our windowless hallway had a light fitting but no light bulb, making it pitch black and quite unsafe.
2. My single bed was surrounded on three sides by a protruding surround, similar to cot. I am six-foot-tall and have quite serious back issues, consequently I had to put a pillow over the bed’s end board to rest my feet on whilst sleeping, sadly there was also a broken strut in base of the bed.
3. The cleaners lived on our floor and seemed to own the communal bathroom/toilet. They did keep it spotless but they were almost permanently using it day and night. This meant we had to go downstairs to use the one on the ground floor, day and night with no light in the hallway.
4. However, the downstairs toilet was dirty and damp with wet towels dumped in the bidet.
5. This bathroom also had a very low beam doorway which we both banged our heads on going into the shower.

Our second venue:
My heart sank as the van slowed down on approaching a building right next to Ibiza's busiest motorway.

The host pointed to a concrete block and said that was the front entrance. I couldn't see a door, only concrete. He then drove off the road into scrubland where we entered the house from the rear.

1. This ‘hippy pad’ only had a cold shower, if we wanted warm showers, there were black buckets of water left in the back garden in the sun to pour over our heads. The webpage did state, “Other things to note - At the moment hot water is limited” however we did not expect that to mean there was NO hot water.
2. Additionally, the drinking water was from a blue 25 litre concentrated bleach i.e. not drinking standard, container with a tap. I am without doubt that this is was food grade plastic.
3. Furthermore, there were again no door locks, so again I enquired about a safe place to keep money, passports and various valuables etc. and yet again I was informed there was no safe place. Once again when we went out I had to carry a bag with all our passports, money, camera etc.
4. Further issues existed, on walking through the opened front door a mere few metres in front of me was a 2-metre-high concrete block running the width of the house, this was the only barrier between the house and the actual motorway.
5. Our bedroom window had no glass or shutters, it was a bare hole in the wall and was only approximately 10 metres from the actual motorway. This caused great difficulty sleeping.
6. I was repeatedly woken by screaming mopeds and thundering heavy traffic. At 2am there were an average of 12 vehicles / minute. At 5am the were on average 9 vehicles / minute. This is the main motorway between Ibiza town and Saint Antoni. Adding insult to injury, not even Abigail slept in the main house, but further away from the road.
7. I think I finally fell asleep about 5.30am, however at 8am a JCB pile driver started work on the building site attached to the property, this noise was even worse than the motorway.

I woke my son, we got dressed and left before 10am taking everything with us in search of appropriate accommodation for myself and my young son. I am 54 and have a bad back and felt thoroughly let down and disappointed by this. I value basic comforts and while this might have been fun pad 30 years ago, I would not have booked it if I had known the conditions I would be staying in with my 14-year-old son.

I am now thoroughly disappointed with my first Air BnB experience:

1. The lack of consideration by hosts.
2. The inappropriate and impossible circumstances of our pre-booked accommodations.
3. The lack of accuracy in photos and descriptions of our bookings etc.

However still determined to give my son a great summer holiday and wanting to retrieve something meaningful of our time together, on the bus back to Ibiza town, I searched the internet, Laterooms etc. and found the cheapest hotel possible. I was now forced to book into a hotel costing £636.88 for the final four nights of our holiday. Due to such terrible past experiences and now being in absolute agony with my back, and not wanting to put my son through further upheaval I cancelled all our future Airbnb bookings; I had no intention of repeating the last three nights.

This was my first Airbnb holiday experience, I can only afford to take my son on holiday once a year and I am so very disappointed by my experience with your company. I value time away with my son and as he is getting towards an age where he may not want this type of holiday with me much longer. I am so saddened and disappointed at the wasted opportunity this holiday was for my son and I.

I felt our accommodations with Air BnB were:

1. Dirty
2. Inaccurate
3. Inappropriate
4. Unsafe for a young person
5. Extremely uncomfortable
6. Unbearably noisy
7. With hosts that did not show any concern or care for our concerns, safety and general well-being.

It is almost impossible to contact Airbnb. A host helped me through their account to speak to an agent on the telephone. They were very reluctant to give me an address to send my complaint to. It has taken me five weeks to be able to complain.

Complain to: response "at symbol" airbnb . com
ps. I haven't received a reply yet.

I will never use Airbnb again.

I've used them several times and it's always been pleasant.

This Company is so bad. As an owner you have very few information on the guests, no copy of ID, no postal address once somebody want to book your property. Most of time there is no review as guests when they have a bad review register otherwise... they don't follow the identity of the guests ...they can register again and again... even if they are really bad!!!
You don't know who is coming in your property, you don't even have all the names of all the guests... so Airbnb just ask you to say "YES" to your guests without any informations. Once the booking is accepted, most of the time guests are reluctant to give more information , even just a copy of ID or the postal address. Also you don't have any contract signed by the guests, if you have pb with him, it's complicated to call Airbnb. By experience I called them one time when a guest did not come for check out and did not give back my keys... the answer of the call center was "I have to close this phone call because you don't give me the right 4 last digit of your bank account number" which BTW was right... I had my bank statement in front of me with the credit transaction AIRBNB...
Anyway no help at all from Airbnb , when you have a pb, don't count on them... no help at all... and they have the deposit ... so if you need to be reimburse of damages by the deposit ... just nothing, no contract, no deposit, no help from Airbnb. Very bad experience and so bad service from the inexistant "call center".I was obliged to change 2 lockers at my charge... 100$...
I must say also that the most of time Airbnb provides bad people who wants travel discreetly without giving their ID and basic information about them. I had several guests visited by several prostitutes ( you always learn that later...). This never happened before with other websites... Airbnb does not care, they manage the payment and the deposit and you just have to shut your mouth...
If you don't want have pb, or you care your home, believe me avoid them...

Processed a booking online, only afterwards the host got back to me to specify that the property had already been booked and was not available on those dates. I paid a deposit of $1,000 for this booking and the money is still not back into my account; if it takes 7 working days to have the funds back into my account, this prevents me from placing other reservations on the same period. Theoretically, I could try and book more than one property (availability unknown until the host gets back to me) and funds would be taken for each booking. If they all come back to me to let me know it's not available, then I have several thousand dollars locked in a limbo for up to 7 working days. Most disappointingly: there is no one to contact directly. The 'chat' service is abysmal and non responsive. As a paying guest you feel very much left to your own devices. From this perspective, this service definitely does not work and comes across as unreliable..

Numerous great experiences with Airbnb, both as hosts & as guests since 2010! In fact, never had a problem. Very trustworthy & much more reassuring from a Host's point of view than any other comparable websites (as regards their payment, id protection & guest verification process) but ............. regardless of the website you book accommodation through, NEVER MAKE PAYMENTS VIA DIRECT TRANSFER! DER!

I felt like using this was really good which is why i used it a few times but i have a feeling the regulations are not the same as a hotel

I've had enough experiences to say I'd recommend it over booking hotels. It's cheaper and you can find some unique and beautiful places that make you feel at home.

I'd advise to check reviews and look for places with heaps of them.

Being a young lady I tend to book the whole apartment instead of sharing or stay with a couple/females.

If you're not alone then this would be perfect. Even with a bunch of people, you'll be paying less than half the price of hotels.

I recently got attacked, physically, by a bad Airbnb host so I had to call the police etc. My bad review was removed a few weeks later without any word or question. Of course, I did warn people not to stay there because the host attacked me for no reason whatsoever. But then every very negative review is slanderous etc. But it's 100% true what I said. I got the reference number for the crime report etc. to back up that my side of the story is 100% legitimate but Airbnb never asked or anything before removing the review. Removed the review, didn't say a word about it and the a******e host who could have easily hurt me pretty badly just keeps renting out on the site as if nothing happened. Conclusion: Airbnb definitely and recklessly delete bad reviews, compromising the safety and welfare of guests. That's why there are no bad reviews on the site.

This review applies to Airbnb US and HQ. However since many Australian guests use Airbnb when they travel in the US, this applies to them as well and the platform is the same around the world anyway.

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
-----------------------------
Potentially great but many dangers to guests and hosts

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

I am a host on Airbnb and I have had a great experience with Airbnb until one day I received a reservation request from a new Airbnb member (thus with no reviews) who is an environmental activist and told me wanted a home office accommodation for her and her colleagues. I was excited because I love helping the environment.

Given the tone of this members profile, that sounded a bit aggressive, asked this potential guest which group she worked for and more information. She named a well respected group. After I received the reservation request and approved it, the full name of the guest appeared to me. I looked at her Linkedin profile and found that her group is very small and has a history of violence, controversy, illegal activities and potential links to dangerous groups.

I contacted Airbnb and spoke to Jessica H in customer service who was not equipped to help me and canceled this reservation even though I told her I wanted to speak to her supervisor first. Our call was disconnected and Jessica H never called me back and she had the reservation canceled. I called back immediately and spoke with Ron in customer service who told me that Jessica had the reservation already canceled against my specific instructions to her. Every time a host cancels a reservation Airbnb severely penalizes the host In a variety of ways so I wanted to find out first from the Airbnb manager if they would waive the penalties as I had been misled by the guest and this guest was representing a potentially dangerous working group with a history of violence.

If the penalties were to stay then I would have not canceled the reservation and would have kept it even though I felt that Jessica H was putting my guests and myself in danger by forcing me to host a guest who had been less than transparent and potentially misled me and was on Airbnb to find work accommodations for her potentially dangerous company.

Instead they canceled the reservation, Jessica H never called me back. Her manager Ms Delilah B never called me either and instead sent me a condescending email over 6 hours later stating that I had canceled the reservation; which is false, and then when I tried to speak to her, she sent me another short rude and disrespectful email and never called me. I asked to speak with her supervisor and never heard back from anyone about this for days to this date; it has been over 2 days.

Furthermore Ms. Jessica H and her supervisor Ms. Delilah B decided to support this radical group financially by giving the guest extra free money to book a more expensive room and charged me $100 for the cancellation that I never made so they stole money from me and gave it to this organization. And then they emailed the guest and told her that I was lying and that I had canceled the reservation as the guest told me in writing.

This guest is really representing a radical group who wants to find work accommodations in my area. This should have been disclosed in full at time of booking from this organization / guest.

Airbnb seems to favor guests over hosts and I feel that Ms Delilah B and Ms Jessica H are putting guests and hosts in danger because they are penalizing the host for alerting them of this situation and not taking any sensible action with the guest. I have children, families and single moms sometimes as guests and the safety of my guests is my priority.

Jessica H and Delilah B also lied to me and about me (even to the guest) and were rude or unprofessional or both towards me.

Although in the past Airbnb has demonstrated wonderful customer service I was really surprised in this instance. The safety of the Airbnb community and of my guests is my priority. The same night that this guest was supposed to stay at my place, I had another guest who was a single mom who contacted me at the last minute as she and her two young daughters had been abused and needed a place to stay for one night and I helped them and let them stay with me and they would have stayed in the same home with this activist and violent company representative if I had not objected to the horrible customer service from Ms Jessica H and Ms Delilah B.

I have been trying to escalate this internally with their supervisors with no success so far maybe because it is the weekend.

Airbnb is fantastic. We have hosted dozens of travellers now without problems. We once had an issue with a non english speaking visitor who was having some difficulties, and airbnb's rep called me back within minutes with a german speaking translator who helped us out. All the travellers have been great, and the payment system and website work beautifully. I can't believe my luck in getting onto this, we are making great money from renting out our spare room.

Airbnb is such a professional company. Small details are seen to smoothly and efficiently, trust and good will are encouraged and rewarded.
A wonderful initiative that does so much more than provide accommodation.