Airbnb on bbc watchdog this evening!

Airbnb on BBC watchdog this evening! Mentioning how guests were scammed by people pretending to be hosts and putting up bogus homes / pictures stolen from estate Agents. Silly people though not going through Airbnb to pay! Although saying that Airbnb should be monitoring the site more closely! When people list a property its actually optional to verify an ID!

Yeah - I never had to be verified when I joined as a host. So many guests push trying to get out of paying via AirBnB system. To avoid the fee I guess, I always refuse as the fee to the host is quite low, and the protection is much better.

1 Like

Definitely! As Airbnb didnt refund them poor peoples money back. Some people were out thousands of pounds.I guess they’ll live and learn. I can see Airbnb’s side, and also the unfortunate people who were out of pocket (They seemly were new users and didnt read up on the terms and conditions). However, even though the people informed Airbnb that the bogus listings was still live on their site, Airbnb failed to take them down!

I just watched it on iplayer. I just think the scammed people are a bit silly. It just seems to not make sense for the scammer to ask you to transfer over internet banking. Airbnb is set up in such a way for users to never have to go outside the platform, its just like many other booking sites! Another red flag for all these so called amazing properties would be the fact they would have no reviews.

2 Likes