How that cheap Airbnb villa could be a fake
Even savvy businessman Phil fell for a con — and it cost him more than £3,000
HOLIDAYMAKERS who book rooms on Airbnb are losing thousands of pounds to crooks — even though the website makes hundreds of security checks on users.
The rental site, which has boomed in popularity in recent years, allows ordinary homeowners from all over the world to let out their properties for days or weeks when they aren’t using them.
For travellers, it often works out cheaper and more convenient than a hotel stay.
But criminals are placing fake adverts using stolen photos of genuine properties.
Airbnb says it is ‘ extremely rare’ for customers to lose money to fraudsters. It carries out more than 300 checks to weed out fake listings and searches the internet to see if photos are duplicates.
Yet Money Mail has heard from readers who have been conned out of thousands of pounds, after crooks evaded detection.
In every case, the customer was refused a refund until we intervened.
Phil Moran, from London, booked a family holiday on Airbnb last August, after friends raved about the spectacular properties available.
He and partner Anna found a beautiful villa with a pool on the island of Ibiza, which looked ideal for their children, Nora, nine, and Stan, 11.
The website showed 19 pictures of the Spanish property — and one of a couple, whom Phil believed to be the hosts.
It described in detail the villa’s features and picturesque surroundings.
Phil, 56, who runs an executive headhunting firm, used Airbnb’s online messaging system to contact the villa owner, Elise, about a nine-night stay.
She replied saying Airbnb’s messaging system was faulty and asked him to send a personal email instead. After exchanging eight emails, they agreed on a price of £3,371 for the booking.
Elise arranged for Phil to talk to her husband on the phone to finalise the details.
Then she sent another email, saying that the website’s payment system was also broken, and asked Phil to pay by bank transfer instead.
As soon as Phil wired the money, all went quiet. Hours passed and he didn’t receive the booking confirmation as promised.
Elise and her husband stopped replying to his emails and calls and, when Phil contacted Airbnb customer service, it had no record of his booking.
‘I can’t believe I fell for it because I deal with complicated deals every day,’ says Phil. ‘I was in a rush to book a holiday and, with everyone telling me it was safe, I just assumed it would all be fine.’
Airbnb refused to refund the £3,371 because Phil had paid by bank transfer.
Under the site’s rules, users must arrange and pay for their holiday through its own messaging and payment system. This allows the firm to keep track of bookings and any money paid.
The website makes it clear that, if you contact an owner using a private email address or pay them directly, you have no protection if something goes wrong.
Airbnb attaches warnings to every message you send via its secure system. However, Money Mail could not find any such notices on the pages where you make a booking or a payment.
Airbnb also says it tries to remove owners’ personal contact details from property listings.
But, as Phil found, fraudsters have become adept at luring holidaymakers away from the official Airbnb message and payment systems — and on to their own email addresses.
Skie Powell, 22, from Kent, was caught out last December when scammers put their contact details on a photograph of a villa.
Skie and seven friends booked a five-bedroom property for a long weekend in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, in February.
New to Airbnb, she saw the email address on one of the pictures and used it to contact the owner.
She was asked to transfer £984 to a bank account in payment.
When Skie logged on to Airbnb later that month, there was no trace of the booking. She reported the incident to the company but, as in Phil’s case, Airbnb refused to refund her money because she hadn’t gone through its own payment system.
‘ It comes down to Airbnb advertising something fraudulent,’ says Skie. ‘ We wouldn’t have booked if we thought it was unsafe.’ George Hayward, from Brighton, East Sussex, fell for the same trick when booking an apartment in Amsterdam for his 24th birthday celebration.
Again, one of the photographs of the property had an email address written on it.
He contacted the owner and paid £1,100 by bank transfer for himself and five friends.
Two weeks later, George received an email saying that his booking had been cancelled and his money would be returned.
But the cash never arrived and, again, Airbnb refused to refund his money.
An Airbnb spokesman says: ‘ As long as you only communicate using our secure messaging system, and only send money through Airbnb, you will always be protected.
‘The only way scams can ever work is if the scammer convinces someone to pay them directly.
‘This is why we warn folks not to do that, as well as try to ensure fraudsters can’t give personal information out in the first place.’
After Money Mail contacted Airbnb, it agreed to pay full refunds to Phil, Skie and George.