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Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding w

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being malicious here and trying to make a quick buck by double-dipping - getting some money from the cancelled booking and then relisting the property back on the market. I am always surprised how many people don't know about payment card disputes/chargebacks or refuse to use them, even right here on HN. The bank and card networks are biased towards you to begin with, and there's no downside to losing one as long as you're not being outright fraudulent or acting in bad faith. Card chargebacks (or litigation, if you have the means) is the only thing companies understand, especially in a country where consumer protection isn't a thing.

dakial1 4y ago
First you should check with your consumer protection laws, where I am from (Brazil) any cancelation fee that is more than 10% of the service value is considered abusive. So you are totally entitled to ask for your chargeback (just be sure to cite the regulation/law your applying) and if AirBnb does any retaliation (as banning your account) you can sue them for that.
avalys 4y ago
I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Probably just removes the temptation of using the shitty service again. Not a huge loss.
- darknavi 4y ago
  Not a huge issue probably because after loosing that much money I'd be surprised if they ever use AirBnb again.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I don't think this person will use Airbnb ever again anyway.
- davidw 4y ago
  See my other comment elsewhere, but they did not ban me even though I did a chargeback and won.
- nixpulvis 4y ago
  Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate. So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
    - tromp 4y ago
      He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.
      - vkou 4y ago
        Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account Reporting this back to your bank, better yet, with your state financial regulator and maybe a federal copied, usually gets this swiftly reversed.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I am curious how this would work. I have not heard of a US government forcing a business like AirBnb to do business with a customer unless there was a violation of discrimination against a protected class.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      I think it's less about forcing them to do business and more about the regulator/consumer protection agency getting wind of what is obviously malicious and potentially illegal behavior from the company - a lot of companies will fold when a case gets anywhere near litigation/consumer protection/arbitration just to not attract attention. In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Sure, but refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed. Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.
- bboygravity 4y ago
  I'm confused by the banning comments. Can't you just create a new account with a new payment method and different email address? Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      They use heuristics, but yes in general you can work around them if you're persistent enough.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      >It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        With the same name? I think the probability is low enough to accept the false positive.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        ncallaway 4y ago
        How fuzzy of a name check are you doing? If I get banned as Joe Smith and address X, what if I register my new account as Joseph Smith?
      - 4y ago
- steveBK123 4y ago
  So you use another email address next time if you must
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    And phone number, and fake name and address (you can do very creative things with billing addresses and have it still match - the matching is very fuzzy). But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  And nothing of value was lost.
- burnte 4y ago
  Yeah, but if I have to file a chargeback, I probably don't want to do business with them again anyway.
- miohtama 4y ago
  Uber, others, ban you on a chargeback immediately.
  - fencepost 4y ago
    Heck, years ago Uber used to ban you for having an old credit card on the account and trying to book a ride - no warning that the payment method had a problem, just boom, banned. Procedure for resolving was apparently sending a picture with the physical card (showing just the last 4 digits) that was on the account, but since it'd been changed months before I didn't have it and didn't care enough to pursue unbanning. I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.
- GiorgioG 4y ago
  Firing your customers is not a good long term strategy.
  - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
    It very often is. Not firing certain ones can often be catastrophic.
- bsg75 4y ago
  I would be fine with that. The problem is both with the host and AirBnB, neither of which I would want to do business with again after this.
- soul_grafitti 4y ago
  Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address. And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.
  - indymike 4y ago
    > here are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain. There's also the part where the merchant agreed to abide by chargeback rulings and not ban the cardholder.
  - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
    Isn't government ID upload a requirement for AirBNB? A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up. If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban. The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
- m-p-3 4y ago
  Personally I'd never want to use AirBnB ever again if I lost 900$ and they didn't care at all about good customer service.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  lol who cares if airbnb cancels your account? There are a million other ways to get a room . I mean it's convenient and I use it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they banned me.
grandpoobah 4y ago
> Nicky (from the movie Casino): Where the f** do you get off talking to people about me behind my back going over my head? I'm guessing if he does a chargeback he gets banned from AirBnB.
- goshakkk 4y ago
  This is correct. I had an issue with an Airbnb at some point that Airbnb was struggling to resolve. When I said "whatever, I'll just dispute the charge", the rep said that it is their policy to permanently suspend an account when a user initiates a chargeback. Not "may" but "definitely will". The issue did end up getting resolved after countless phone calls and escalating the issue to supervisors of supervisors but
  - the_af 4y ago
    It doesn't seem like the author intends to use AirBNB ever again, so a chargeback seems like the right solution...
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    That seems like more a ‘pro’ than a ‘con’
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    Yes at the very least chargeback gives you leverage.
londons_explore 4y ago
Are you actually likely to win this chargeback? I'm sure that airbnb made the terms very clear in their million page T&C's document...
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  It will depends on the local laws/regulations that apply to distance-selling and the card network rules. Considering there is clearly no bad faith involved from the buyer (he's not even trying to weasel out of the booking - he was looking forward to use the service he paid for), I'd say he has a good chance.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  He paid for a service they didn’t provide. So there is definitely some argument to it. I guess they could say they will still provide the service? lol
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Why would you reduce the transaction to a single sentence and think that overrides a many page fully qualified set of terms agreed upon for service?
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      You can’t “terms and conditions” your way out of the card network rules which you agreed to when setting up a merchant account to accept card payments - those will take precedence regardless of what your own terms say and generally favor the cardholder.
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  If it was an Amex card, very likely to win, from my experiences with them.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    paying colossal annual fees on a credit card does come with a few perks edit: they do have cards that have no annual fee. disregard my comment.
che_shirecat 4y ago
Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  If this is how the service is going to work - why would I want to be part of it? I'm not interested in playing some VC's network effects game. The era of free money is over for now, they're going to want business soon.
  - che_shirecat 4y ago
    You assume you have a choice in playing. Most of the supply will never consider listing on multiple marketplaces, because its a massive hassle. $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market, they have strong financials and are massively profitable. The growth-at-all-costs play DID work, and now you have no choice but to bend the knee. Edge cases like this will never materially affect their business.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      Just have a friend use their account. Or make a new account. Or use VRBO or a number of Airbnb’s competitors. Or use a sock Airbnb account to connect with a host and then negotiate directly.
      - srcreigh 4y ago
        There was a thread this week (?) about how AirBNB will ban you for traveling with a banned person
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
rcruzeiro 4y ago
I was in a very similar situation and requested a charge back through Visa. it got denied after 2 months and AirBnb sent me a stern email saying they will ban my account if I try something like this again.
dghlsakjg 4y ago
An important thing to remember is that the chargeback doesn't necessarily absolve you of the legal need to pay. Just because the credit card company claws the money back doesn't mean that a merchant can't come after you in court/debt collection. It's not common, but for a big enough transaction, there's nothing stopping a business from coming after you.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Airbnb won't sue them since it's not their money. Host won't sue them since they would be laughed out of court for trying to recover a thousand bucks for nothing.
- User23 4y ago
  Likewise there’s nothing preventing you from suing the scammy host in small claims court. You probably won’t get the money for a while, but once you get the real estate lien you’ll see it sooner or later.
  - tedivm 4y ago
    Are you sure there isn't an arbitration clause hiding somewhere in the tos?
    - User23 4y ago
      “You and Airbnb each retain the right to seek resolution of the dispute in small claims court as an alternative to arbitration.”[1] Also I don’t think that applies if you sue the host directly. [1] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908#23 https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908#23
- shusaku 4y ago
  On a related know, I wonder if an Airbnb can effectively sue you or there is some kind of mediation clause
  - ape4 4y ago
olliej 4y ago
Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized after entering a contract that the contract was not what they wanted. Similarly the “host” is not breaking the contract: the person agreed to these terms of the contract, apparently having not read them. So this is not a fraudulent transaction, and claiming it is (for a charge back) just sounds like fraud (2) charge backs are not free to the merchant - as I understand it the merchant is subject to penalties from the processor and/or bank that can easily be hundreds of dollars. So even if the bank doesn’t take you to court for fraud, airbnb maybe unhappy at having to cough up a few hundred dollars. (3) it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host, and frankly they don’t seem like people who will take a no harm, no foul response to this, especially if they not only don’t get paid but if Airbnb offload any of the chargeback costs. Fundamentally your running into the reason that there are regulations governing hotels and rental, and why Airbnb insists that in spite of all evidence that is not what they are providing.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  This is fraud.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Sadly parent's point is correct. Chargebacks are not to protect from jerks and bad customer service. If there was a contract you first agreed to, but you find out afterwards that one of the clause is problematic in your case, and the other party is a jerk about it, chances are your card issuer won't even accept the chargeback. Most of the time you need proof that the merchant is the one breaching the contract.
    - olliej 4y ago
      More over most honest businesses would rather you contact them for a refund rather than a chargeback. A chargeback should not be your go to for someone stealing your credit card or whatever as that costs the business (which is itself a victim) money. For Amazon etc that might not matter, but for smaller businesses it can be an expensive event. The payment processors charge them significant fees for any charge back (to “discourage” the need for them). (Ignoring that those companies may sell through Amazon or whatever, and those intermediaries take double digit % of every purchase, but don’t pay a cent of any refund).
kornish 4y ago
One danger of chargebacks: companies may ban your account or otherwise treat your activity as fraud. It can be extremely difficult to get through to a person to correct the situation. I know a couple folks who still can't use Lyft, for instance, because they charged back an NYC Citibike subscription. You can allegedly cancel a Citibike subscription by contacting customer support — but after no response, they issued a chargeback and Lyft banned them a couple days later. Since the accounts are tied to the phone number, they simply can't use the service. Support actually managed to reverse the ban for a few days, but then it was re-triggered (presumably by some automated system).
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Get a new phone number/email/etc. These companies will lie to you when it’s convenient, no reason not to lie back if it becomes convenient for you. However, in this case I don’t believe the author will ever want to do business with this disgusting company, so nothing of value will be lost.
- ergocoder 4y ago
  It is cute to think that a person who was scammed on Airbnb for $950 where Airbnb refused to help resolve a blatant scam would even touch Airbnb again.
- dubcee349 4y ago
  I don't think I would want to ever use Airbnb after that experience so charging back would be worth it.
- WheatMillington 4y ago
  Why would you want to keep using a service that just ripped you off anyway?
VectorLock 4y ago
Changebacks aren't guaranteed that your bank or credit card issuers will allow it. I've had a bank tell me several times that I can't do a chargeback when there were fraudulent purchases made on my account on the Playstation Network. Even better, Sony threatened to ban my account and I'd lose all the content I legitimately purchased if I did a chargeback against them. I buy physical game copies now and I've found CapitalOne is better at doing chargebacks than my credit union is (guess credit unions aren't all they're cracked up to be in certain aspects)
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  They aren’t guaranteed, but the author has nothing to lose trying it anyway. I’ve had great success with them personally.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
You make it sound like chargeback is an easy thing to do, with 100% success rate. I tried twice in my life to chargeback, for items not delivered. Both times unsuccessfully. It looks like banks usually side with merchants, because merchants pay them, not the customers, and because companies are generally considered more trustworthy than individuals.
klipklop 4y ago
This will result in an immediate ban by Airbnb. I got screwed by Oculus and spent almost half a year getting my account back after a chargeback ban. Don’t ever chargeback big tech. You will lose every time.
- dubcee349 4y ago
  Why would you charge back Oculus?
  - klipklop 4y ago
    I bought one oculus quest 2 while their site was blowing up during preorders. They shipped and charged me for 3. Nothing showed up on the order page or confirmation email. I didn’t notice the 3 charges until 3 of them were at my door. A total nightmare to fix. Kinda hard to RMA an item that didn’t show up on my order page. They offered to RMA but no assurances I would get my money back. I didn’t order this many and the screwup was on their end. So in the end I did a chargeback for the 2 I didn’t order. They banned me. Making my quest useless. I could not make a new account because at the time they were moving to FB and banning people with alt accounts or asking for ID to verify them. In the end, I undid the chargebacks, sent back the extra two quest units (which I held sealed with no intention of profiting from them and I mailed after the chargebacks) and of course they didn’t refund me for one of them. I had to keep escalating as they closed tickets. Was close to trying to use HN and internal friends to help. In the end they did a “one time” unbanning. Still lost $400+. Never again. EDIT: It took me like half a year to resolve this. At first I could not even figure out what happened. I got no email I was banned. Just adding any form of payment failed with an esoteric error message. I’ll never buy direct from any big tech company again. Go ahead and down vote.

dakial1 4y ago

First you should check with your consumer protection laws, where I am from (Brazil) any cancelation fee that is more than 10% of the service value is considered abusive. So you are totally entitled to ask for your chargeback (just be sure to cite the regulation/law your applying) and if AirBnb does any retaliation (as banning your account) you can sue them for that.

avalys 4y ago

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

smsm42 4y ago
Probably just removes the temptation of using the shitty service again. Not a huge loss.
darknavi 4y ago
Not a huge issue probably because after loosing that much money I'd be surprised if they ever use AirBnb again.
Nextgrid 4y ago
I don't think this person will use Airbnb ever again anyway.
davidw 4y ago
See my other comment elsewhere, but they did not ban me even though I did a chargeback and won.
nixpulvis 4y ago
Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate. So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
  - tromp 4y ago
    He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.
    - vkou 4y ago
      Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account Reporting this back to your bank, better yet, with your state financial regulator and maybe a federal copied, usually gets this swiftly reversed.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I am curious how this would work. I have not heard of a US government forcing a business like AirBnb to do business with a customer unless there was a violation of discrimination against a protected class.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    I think it's less about forcing them to do business and more about the regulator/consumer protection agency getting wind of what is obviously malicious and potentially illegal behavior from the company - a lot of companies will fold when a case gets anywhere near litigation/consumer protection/arbitration just to not attract attention. In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Sure, but refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed. Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.
bboygravity 4y ago
I'm confused by the banning comments. Can't you just create a new account with a new payment method and different email address? Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    They use heuristics, but yes in general you can work around them if you're persistent enough.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    >It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      With the same name? I think the probability is low enough to accept the false positive.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - ncallaway 4y ago
        How fuzzy of a name check are you doing? If I get banned as Joe Smith and address X, what if I register my new account as Joseph Smith?
    - 4y ago
steveBK123 4y ago
So you use another email address next time if you must
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  And phone number, and fake name and address (you can do very creative things with billing addresses and have it still match - the matching is very fuzzy). But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
And nothing of value was lost.
burnte 4y ago
Yeah, but if I have to file a chargeback, I probably don't want to do business with them again anyway.
miohtama 4y ago
Uber, others, ban you on a chargeback immediately.
- fencepost 4y ago
  Heck, years ago Uber used to ban you for having an old credit card on the account and trying to book a ride - no warning that the payment method had a problem, just boom, banned. Procedure for resolving was apparently sending a picture with the physical card (showing just the last 4 digits) that was on the account, but since it'd been changed months before I didn't have it and didn't care enough to pursue unbanning. I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.
GiorgioG 4y ago
Firing your customers is not a good long term strategy.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  It very often is. Not firing certain ones can often be catastrophic.
bsg75 4y ago
I would be fine with that. The problem is both with the host and AirBnB, neither of which I would want to do business with again after this.
soul_grafitti 4y ago
Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address. And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.
- indymike 4y ago
  > here are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain. There's also the part where the merchant agreed to abide by chargeback rulings and not ban the cardholder.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  Isn't government ID upload a requirement for AirBNB? A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up. If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban. The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
m-p-3 4y ago
Personally I'd never want to use AirBnB ever again if I lost 900$ and they didn't care at all about good customer service.
lost_tourist 4y ago
lol who cares if airbnb cancels your account? There are a million other ways to get a room . I mean it's convenient and I use it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they banned me.

grandpoobah 4y ago

> Nicky (from the movie Casino): Where the f** do you get off talking to people about me behind my back going over my head? I'm guessing if he does a chargeback he gets banned from AirBnB.

goshakkk 4y ago
This is correct. I had an issue with an Airbnb at some point that Airbnb was struggling to resolve. When I said "whatever, I'll just dispute the charge", the rep said that it is their policy to permanently suspend an account when a user initiates a chargeback. Not "may" but "definitely will". The issue did end up getting resolved after countless phone calls and escalating the issue to supervisors of supervisors but
- the_af 4y ago
  It doesn't seem like the author intends to use AirBNB ever again, so a chargeback seems like the right solution...
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  That seems like more a ‘pro’ than a ‘con’
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Yes at the very least chargeback gives you leverage.

londons_explore 4y ago

Are you actually likely to win this chargeback? I'm sure that airbnb made the terms very clear in their million page T&C's document...

Nextgrid 4y ago
It will depends on the local laws/regulations that apply to distance-selling and the card network rules. Considering there is clearly no bad faith involved from the buyer (he's not even trying to weasel out of the booking - he was looking forward to use the service he paid for), I'd say he has a good chance.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
He paid for a service they didn’t provide. So there is definitely some argument to it. I guess they could say they will still provide the service? lol
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Why would you reduce the transaction to a single sentence and think that overrides a many page fully qualified set of terms agreed upon for service?
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    You can’t “terms and conditions” your way out of the card network rules which you agreed to when setting up a merchant account to accept card payments - those will take precedence regardless of what your own terms say and generally favor the cardholder.
the__alchemist 4y ago
If it was an Amex card, very likely to win, from my experiences with them.
- baremetal 4y ago
  paying colossal annual fees on a credit card does come with a few perks edit: they do have cards that have no annual fee. disregard my comment.

che_shirecat 4y ago

Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
If this is how the service is going to work - why would I want to be part of it? I'm not interested in playing some VC's network effects game. The era of free money is over for now, they're going to want business soon.
- che_shirecat 4y ago
  You assume you have a choice in playing. Most of the supply will never consider listing on multiple marketplaces, because its a massive hassle. $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market, they have strong financials and are massively profitable. The growth-at-all-costs play DID work, and now you have no choice but to bend the knee. Edge cases like this will never materially affect their business.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Just have a friend use their account. Or make a new account. Or use VRBO or a number of Airbnb’s competitors. Or use a sock Airbnb account to connect with a host and then negotiate directly.
    - srcreigh 4y ago
      There was a thread this week (?) about how AirBNB will ban you for traveling with a banned person
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago

rcruzeiro 4y ago

I was in a very similar situation and requested a charge back through Visa. it got denied after 2 months and AirBnb sent me a stern email saying they will ban my account if I try something like this again.

dghlsakjg 4y ago

An important thing to remember is that the chargeback doesn't necessarily absolve you of the legal need to pay. Just because the credit card company claws the money back doesn't mean that a merchant can't come after you in court/debt collection. It's not common, but for a big enough transaction, there's nothing stopping a business from coming after you.

smsm42 4y ago
Airbnb won't sue them since it's not their money. Host won't sue them since they would be laughed out of court for trying to recover a thousand bucks for nothing.
User23 4y ago
Likewise there’s nothing preventing you from suing the scammy host in small claims court. You probably won’t get the money for a while, but once you get the real estate lien you’ll see it sooner or later.
- tedivm 4y ago
  Are you sure there isn't an arbitration clause hiding somewhere in the tos?
  - User23 4y ago
    “You and Airbnb each retain the right to seek resolution of the dispute in small claims court as an alternative to arbitration.”[1] Also I don’t think that applies if you sue the host directly. [1] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908#23 https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2908#23
shusaku 4y ago
On a related know, I wonder if an Airbnb can effectively sue you or there is some kind of mediation clause
- ape4 4y ago

olliej 4y ago

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized after entering a contract that the contract was not what they wanted. Similarly the “host” is not breaking the contract: the person agreed to these terms of the contract, apparently having not read them. So this is not a fraudulent transaction, and claiming it is (for a charge back) just sounds like fraud (2) charge backs are not free to the merchant - as I understand it the merchant is subject to penalties from the processor and/or bank that can easily be hundreds of dollars. So even if the bank doesn’t take you to court for fraud, airbnb maybe unhappy at having to cough up a few hundred dollars. (3) it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host, and frankly they don’t seem like people who will take a no harm, no foul response to this, especially if they not only don’t get paid but if Airbnb offload any of the chargeback costs. Fundamentally your running into the reason that there are regulations governing hotels and rental, and why Airbnb insists that in spite of all evidence that is not what they are providing.

DangitBobby 4y ago
This is fraud.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Sadly parent's point is correct. Chargebacks are not to protect from jerks and bad customer service. If there was a contract you first agreed to, but you find out afterwards that one of the clause is problematic in your case, and the other party is a jerk about it, chances are your card issuer won't even accept the chargeback. Most of the time you need proof that the merchant is the one breaching the contract.
  - olliej 4y ago
    More over most honest businesses would rather you contact them for a refund rather than a chargeback. A chargeback should not be your go to for someone stealing your credit card or whatever as that costs the business (which is itself a victim) money. For Amazon etc that might not matter, but for smaller businesses it can be an expensive event. The payment processors charge them significant fees for any charge back (to “discourage” the need for them). (Ignoring that those companies may sell through Amazon or whatever, and those intermediaries take double digit % of every purchase, but don’t pay a cent of any refund).

kornish 4y ago

One danger of chargebacks: companies may ban your account or otherwise treat your activity as fraud. It can be extremely difficult to get through to a person to correct the situation. I know a couple folks who still can't use Lyft, for instance, because they charged back an NYC Citibike subscription. You can allegedly cancel a Citibike subscription by contacting customer support — but after no response, they issued a chargeback and Lyft banned them a couple days later. Since the accounts are tied to the phone number, they simply can't use the service. Support actually managed to reverse the ban for a few days, but then it was re-triggered (presumably by some automated system).

Nextgrid 4y ago
Get a new phone number/email/etc. These companies will lie to you when it’s convenient, no reason not to lie back if it becomes convenient for you. However, in this case I don’t believe the author will ever want to do business with this disgusting company, so nothing of value will be lost.
ergocoder 4y ago
It is cute to think that a person who was scammed on Airbnb for $950 where Airbnb refused to help resolve a blatant scam would even touch Airbnb again.
dubcee349 4y ago
I don't think I would want to ever use Airbnb after that experience so charging back would be worth it.
WheatMillington 4y ago
Why would you want to keep using a service that just ripped you off anyway?

VectorLock 4y ago

Changebacks aren't guaranteed that your bank or credit card issuers will allow it. I've had a bank tell me several times that I can't do a chargeback when there were fraudulent purchases made on my account on the Playstation Network. Even better, Sony threatened to ban my account and I'd lose all the content I legitimately purchased if I did a chargeback against them. I buy physical game copies now and I've found CapitalOne is better at doing chargebacks than my credit union is (guess credit unions aren't all they're cracked up to be in certain aspects)

Nextgrid 4y ago
They aren’t guaranteed, but the author has nothing to lose trying it anyway. I’ve had great success with them personally.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

You make it sound like chargeback is an easy thing to do, with 100% success rate. I tried twice in my life to chargeback, for items not delivered. Both times unsuccessfully. It looks like banks usually side with merchants, because merchants pay them, not the customers, and because companies are generally considered more trustworthy than individuals.

klipklop 4y ago

This will result in an immediate ban by Airbnb. I got screwed by Oculus and spent almost half a year getting my account back after a chargeback ban. Don’t ever chargeback big tech. You will lose every time.

dubcee349 4y ago
Why would you charge back Oculus?
- klipklop 4y ago
  I bought one oculus quest 2 while their site was blowing up during preorders. They shipped and charged me for 3. Nothing showed up on the order page or confirmation email. I didn’t notice the 3 charges until 3 of them were at my door. A total nightmare to fix. Kinda hard to RMA an item that didn’t show up on my order page. They offered to RMA but no assurances I would get my money back. I didn’t order this many and the screwup was on their end. So in the end I did a chargeback for the 2 I didn’t order. They banned me. Making my quest useless. I could not make a new account because at the time they were moving to FB and banning people with alt accounts or asking for ID to verify them. In the end, I undid the chargebacks, sent back the extra two quest units (which I held sealed with no intention of profiting from them and I mailed after the chargebacks) and of course they didn’t refund me for one of them. I had to keep escalating as they closed tickets. Was close to trying to use HN and internal friends to help. In the end they did a “one time” unbanning. Still lost $400+. Never again. EDIT: It took me like half a year to resolve this. At first I could not even figure out what happened. I got no email I was banned. Just adding any form of payment failed with an esoteric error message. I’ll never buy direct from any big tech company again. Go ahead and down vote.