Airbnb lets scammers off the hook

Allie Conti

Vice.com

My vacation was ruined when I stumbled into a nationwide Airbnb scam, said Allie Conti. About 10 minutes before my friends and I were set to check into a Chicago rental listed by a couple named Becky and Andrew, I received a phone call from a man saying “our planned visit wouldn’t be possible,” because of a plumbing emergency. “Apologetic, he promised to let us stay in another property he managed.” But there “we discovered what looked more like a flophouse than someone’s home.” The next day, we got a text from the man saying “the plumbing in the original rental hadn’t been fixed,” but new tenants were moving into our flophouse. We weren’t the only ones who fell for the trap. I found four similar accounts managed by dubious “couples” offering nearly 100 fake listings in eight cities. I spoke with other travelers who’d had similar experiences with the same hosts. One found an apartment that was “just beds,” then got charged a $950 cancellation fee that Airbnb wouldn’t refund. When renters complained, often “hosts would turn around and claim that the renters themselves were scammers.” Airbnb knows such scams exist, yet continues to let hosts operate under aliases, “setting up a system that allows scammers like mine to thrive.”