Don’t let the Airbnb crooks kill your break
AIRBNB is an astonishing success. Since its creation eight years ago, the market-leading accommodation website, where ‘hosts’ advertise spare rooms, apartments and even entire homes for rent, has been used by more than 100million guests. The website now has 2.5million listings around the world.
I have been one of its satisfied customers. In the past year I’ve used Airbnb to rent apartments in Dorset, Dublin, Prague and Bergen in Norway. In each case they were good-value and lived up to expectations, and I encountered no problems with the hosts or with bookings.
But things can go wrong. It’s not just that you’re staying in unvetted, private accommodation – there is also the risk of being defrauded.
Earlier this year, James Gibson found a luxury villa on Ibiza to rent on Airbnb. It looked just the ticket for a summer holiday for his family and friends. In response to his enquiry, he received a plausible email, with the Airbnb logo and design, direct from the villa’s apparent owner (ie outside the Airbnb platform), asking for payment.
It was the first time James had used Airbnb, so not knowing any better he paid the full amount of €4,000 – about £3,450.
But then the Gibsons noticed the villa’s details had disappeared from the Airbnb website and they realised they’d been scammed. The rental didn’t exist, and the owner was a fake.
‘Airbnb could not have been less helpful,’ says James. ‘They told me repeatedly that it wasn’t their problem.’
In a written reply, Airbnb told him: ‘Though the emails you received were created to look like official Airbnb communications, they weren’t authorised or sent by Airbnb. When you contact a host outside of our platform, it’s easier for them to send you fraudulent information.
‘Airbnb will never ask you to pay off-site or through email… Because this loss occurred outside of the Airbnb platform, we are unable to offer compensation.’
To make matters worse, the Gibsons had paid the €4,000 to the crooks by wire transfer – an unprotected type of financial transaction (unlike payments by credit card).
This sad tale is not a one-off. Official bodies such as Abta have warned about the risk of fraud when using accommodation websites such as Airbnb. The methods of the scams vary, but include posting bogus adverts and hacking into accounts to intercept bookings – and they can be very convincing.
So given Airbnb’s growing popularity, is it doing enough to guard users against fraudsters?
The company says it has ‘a global trust and safety team that works 24/7 to protect our community and help prevent fraud’. It also offers information on the website about online security, including types of scams, spotting fake emails, and why it is crucial to communicate with hosts and pay through Airbnb’s online platform.
Doing so means your payments are protected under Airbnb’s terms and conditions. Airbnb also withholds passing payments to hosts until 24 hours after you’ve checked in.
James’s main gripe is that warnings about the risk of being defrauded, and what to do to avoid it, are not prominent enough on the website.
Airbnb points out that last year a new warning was added next to every message thread between guests and hosts on the website, saying: ‘Protect your payments. Never pay for a reservation outside the Airbnb website.’ If you hover over the accompanying question mark, a box pops up: ‘If you don’t pay through Airbnb, you lose access to important tools like the Host Guarantee, Host Protection Insurance Programme, and our secure payments platform.’
In my opinion, this is not hard-hitting enough: there’s no explicit mention of the risk of fraud, and the stuff about guarantees and insurance is confusing. The company should be promoting the fact that you are able to book any listing on the Airbnb platform as a key selling point, given the security (and lack of hassle) it offers.
On some rival sites, such as HomeAway and Holiday Lettings, not all properties can be booked through their own systems. If using these websites, stick to those where you can, not least because you get some payment protection against fraud.