Airbnb Scams

Fintan wrote: [QUOTE=Salzburglilly] Fintan clearly owns one of those hotels. [/QUOTE DAY 5......of the witch hunt and abuse for having a ddifferent opinion and outlook to tthe great and good of YBIG. Nice. Great bunch of lads altogether.

" aren't going to endear you to anyone. It seems you're the one intolerant of anyone doing anything differently.

one of the scams I see are places for rent in say Italy/Spain etc when you contact them to rent they will say they are the owner and are abroad at the moment in another country but they have a leasing company to handle the property and give you a number for them usually in another country again....this leasing company (fake) need a deposit of 1k€ and to save administration fees etc it's best to use western union etc and you guessed it you just sent money to some scammer

They even have websites set up for these fake leasing agents

Here is a FAKE one based on a real Irish company
http://www.ceppip.com/services.html (safe to open just don't contact them note the address is in Ireland but they are all UK details elseware)

Here is the real Irish estate agent they copied: http://www.castles.ie (again note the address)


IF IT'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT PROBABLY IS........GET A SECOND OPINION OR LOOK INTO THE PROPERTY .....AIRBNB has ratings use them like you use eBay ratings

No your right.....the point im making is you need to be careful. Alot if places are booked out and will give rise to more be People being desperate for accommodation and taking chances

2 places have cancelled on me for Paris. Had to pay a bit more and got something on booking.com. I'm fearing that Bordeaux and Lille might do the same. But I've booked them back in December or January so I'm thinking they would have already done it by now.

I booked a small apartment in Montmarte for 3 nights in January. I haven't heard anything from the owner since so emailed him yesterday just to confirm. Anyone know how late a host can wait before they cancel?

Salzburglilly wrote: A host can cancel whenever they chose but they will face a fine and you will of course be refunded your money,does the place have plenty of reviews?

Looked at a couple of places in the Suburbs and can confirm that if a place has been cancelled by the host an automatic message to that effect is added to the account.

How does the security deposit work with Air BnB? Am I better avoiding places you have to pay one? Looking at places in centre of Lille but most decent ones have no reviews so should these be avoided?

Had an apartment cancelled in Lille, airbnb were very good about it. They automatically cancelled all bookings for him for the dates he cancelled on me and it seems other people and offered me a few other places. I emailed them back saying none of them were in the location the original place was (city centre) and the cheapest on offer now was £140 more than I paid for the cancelled apartment, they replied within an hour saying they were giving me a voucher to make up the difference and I booked the new place that had better reviews and is actually a nicer apartment.