Spent €1.5k after late cancellation

offered us €94 for not being able to use the pool. We found phoning Airbnb near impossible. The idea is apparently to make it hard and hope you will go away.’

Despite all its glossy pictures of lovely places to stay, experts point out that Airbnb works mainly as a payment platform which charges hosts 3% per booking. According to their website, the service fee for guests ‘ranges between 0% and 20%’. Lawyer Rob Dempsey, of Roythornes Solicitors, says: ‘Within the Terms of Service, which customers rarely read, Airbnb states the contractual relationship exists solely between the holidaymaker and the owner.’

Consumer rights expert Frank Brehany says: ‘The internet is awash with experiences of what can happen when things go wrong. On reading those experiences, it is clear some consumers did not read the terms and conditions of what they should have done when they discovered a problem.’

That’s not easy — the EC report questioned the transparency of Airbnb’s terms and conditions, which are ‘37 pages long’. Get through them all, and you will learn that if your booking is cancelled, it’s at the company’s ‘discretion’ to reimburse the money and use ‘reasonable efforts’ to find you accommodation.

Josephine and Fiona have been fortunate. Until the Mail contacted Airbnb earlier this month, the company had offered them €224 and €112 each respectively to cover the cost of finding somewhere else to stay. When we asked them to comment on Fiona and Josephine’s cases, the company approached the women directly to offer €1,405 and €772 respectively. In Josephine’s case, Airbnb said: ‘The level of customer service provided here fell below the high standards we set ourselves.’

In Fiona’s, they said there had been no complaints from neighbours about the property after all, but ‘the host accidentally double-booked their listing’. They added that they had now apologised.

In Tony’s case, Airbnb said he and his girlfriend did not contact them quickly enough, despite being abroad and pointing out that they had no wifi. The property is no longer listed on Airbnb.

They said Shaunna was given a refund for the lost stay. Yet she says nothing can make up for her husband’s ruined birthday. ‘I will never forget how sick I felt, not knowing if I could find beds for 12 people. I never want the stress of using Airbnb again,’ she says.

‘They say such cancellations are rare, but my husband only had one 50th birthday.’