L W.

Yesterday night, I got 2 emails from Airbnb stated that I had made 2 reservations in New Zeland (I am in the Netherlands and I did not authorize any reservation at all), totaling close to 800 euros. Right after that, 2 more emails from Airbnb about the cancelation of the reservations without a possilibity for refund. And right after that, another email about my account being canceled.

I called the customer service tried to explain the situation. They kept asking for my account and stated that they could not find any information in their database at all and thus could not help me any further. The customer service guy said that even if the acccount was canceled, there should be information in their system, but since he was not able to pull up any information, he could not do anything about it. At that time, I suspected there was a hack and for some reason, everything related to my account was deleted. I mentioned to him that it is not my fault that all of my data suddenly was missing from your database and demanded to talk to either the IT department or someone in the office that deals with these kind of situations. He refused and stated that nothing can be done without an account (which was canceled and deleted without my authorization). This was after 40 min of me explaining the situation and he repeting the same "I CANNOT HELP YOU BECAUSE THERE IS NO ACCOUNT" sentence for 20 times.

Since my account was linked to paypal, I managed to complain to PayPal right away and filed an unauthorized transaction. They contacted me 5 hours later and confirmed that it was indeed an unauthorized transaction and I managed to get the refund (Can't really say the same if you used a credit card).

A few hours later, all of a sudden my account was back online, and Airbnb send me an email saying that their system detected unauthorized reservations and have taken relevant steps to make sure I am protected. Apperantly my account is still in your database, otherwise how can the account all of a sudden come back if you didnt have the information in your system. I am also pretty sure if I didnt make the call, sent multiple messages on facebook and twitter, they would have done nothing about it, basically telling me to pay it and shut up about it.

My conclusion is that I am never going to use Airbnb again. I looked up online and found out that a lot of people have had the same problem, some of these people didnt even get they money back, Airbnb did not even try to help these people and all they could do is to pay the money. It is clear that Airbnb treats their users like crap and all they care is the money. Their data security is none existent and if you care about your data, dont use Airbnb.