Terrible! It’s not right though. It’s a really terrible thing to go through being scammed and on top of that no one cares. With my ordeal I met quite a few of very nice people: detective, public procecutor, and police officers but nothing could be done
Oh, I do not have to convince the police force.
They will pick this up right away, they are quite active in this.
Even if I do not get my money, they guest will be registered and will have to be very careful when traveling in my country again.
In some states there are laws about “defrauding an innkeeper” and the guest can face jail time with a felony on their record. I don’t see what would stop a host from being able to press charges. I would contact the guest immediately and let them know I intend to move forward with reporting them to the police and pressing charges, and let them know maximum jail time and fines.
Credit cards are great for the consumer. But they are horrible for a merchant.
But I am not so sure that Air is covering all chargebacks like they have said before. I am sure Air deals with a lot of chargebacks. There are just too many reports of Air not having any explanation for siding with a guest and then saying they will take the money from any future host payouts. It could be that the host is only giving part of the story. I don’t know. Or a chargeback happened and Air is going after the host - and just not providing any real reason/explanation.
But with Air making it so that a guest only needs to create an email and provide a phone number, with no verified ID - they will be getting more and more fraudulent transactions, and they won’t be willing to keep covering those losses.
Just look at all the reports we hear of last minute booking with a stolen card. Air is accepting it, but then they are not paying out the host if it is reported stolen fairly quickly.
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Hi @cabinhost,
Yes, indeed. All good points. I don’t see why Airbnb would cover chargebacks. Why would they accept these losses? They’ve already shown they don’t care about hosts. Maybe they are pretending to cover chargebacks but not really doing so, as you say.
But compared to all the charge backs we hear about with VRBO users… Why do we never hear of a chargeback with Airbnb? have they somehow come up with a way to prevent guests from doing this?
Hi @konacoconutz,
I think @cabinhost is speculating that because the Airbnb process isn’t exactly transparent, there are chargebacks happening, but Airbnb is not saying there is a chargeback, just siding with the guest re a refund. I.e.
I may have misinterpreted or misunderstood what she is saying.
forgot to add: I did place a stop payment on VRBO withdrawal of the funds for the charge back , so for now VRBO does not have them but they are threatening to place me in collections if I dont allow them access to the funds
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Have you contacted the guest who stayed (by phone and email)?
What chargeback reason code did the cardholder use when filing:
Ex: services not rendered, merchandise detective, fraud, etc.?
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Hi @alex1! How do you activate stop payment on VRBO? We got one request a month on average through VRBO and now I am afraid not to get paid. Last request was from a call girl and I am happy I googled her phone number and did not allow her to stay at our place
That is the trip up. The name on the credit card wasn’t the same. So technically, the cardholder didn’t stay. Of course Yapstone will still process it, and it’s unfortunate that there aren’t settings available to make that a requirement.
You can stop payment on ach debit when they are trying to take the money out of your account. Just call the bank, easy!
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UPDATE 11/16/2016
So I tracked down the guest online who appears to be living with his parents. I talked to his mom then she gave me the phone to speak person. On the phone he did say that charge-back was a mistake that was done by his company , that he was sending me a new check. 3 weeks later no check and the person in questions is not replying to emails anymore.
At least I know I have the correct address where his parents live. Do I file a small claims at this point? He is in PA and I am in CA
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This law firm in California offers free consultations. They wrote a blog post about charging someone with “defrauding an innkeeper” - call and see if this applies to your situation:
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Thank you Il check it out!
I have a charge back from €1700 from Marat Khalilov from Ukraine and what I do is make a photo from each guest on arrival from pasports, they must fill in an arrival form and sign it, but Yapstone din’t make work from it, I must pay instant cash to them to fight for me, thats ridiculous …
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That’s why I stopped doing VRBO. Could not deal with them, their system sucks and people in customer service as well! Unbelievable!