Here's the update, I'll try to keep it brief. Yes, we booked direct through AirBnB. The host was "Turnkey Vacation Rentals" and full payment upfront was the only payment option. We learned the host is not an actual personal host but a vacation rental management company. It seems Turnkey VR's incentive is to book rentals for home owners at volume on various platforms: AirBnb, VRBO and their own website. Turnkey VR was recently acquired by a larger management company: Vacasa.
My wife got caught up with the pictures on the AirBnb's rental listing that she neglected to notice $400+ in excessive cleaning fees added to the rental upon booking. Of course I blew my cool when I saw the cleaning fees and why she didn't notice when she saw the final amount and why the need to pay all upfront when she booked. That's another story. We immediately checked with the host company asking to cancel, they were happy to and cited the cancellation policy of 50% refund so we said no thanks. We checked for any recourse through our credit card company and they noted the transaction cannot be cancelled but we can dispute the charges, as any transaction and the credit company will review and investigate. So, we asked for the transaction to be disputed and we kept our reservation.
Within a few days, we received the fraudulent listing message direct from AirBnb and the refund would be processed. We were relieved at the time and looked for our refund. Two weeks, then four weeks, then 3 months passed and no refund. We were contacting support via AirBnb app and phone throughout and after multiple attempts finally connected with an agent who saw the transaction dispute on file. She told us if we drop the dispute with our CC, the refund would be processed. To our surprise, almost immediately, the refund was processed, minus the $400+ cleaning fees.
For the last 5 months, we called and opened tickets once a week to process the refund for the cleaning fees for the rental that we never used. Most agents/analysts cited "oh this was a fraudulent listing (correct)" or "you have a dispute on file (it was dropped)" or "I am not authorized to issue refunds" or "I just tried to process the refund but it's not working on our end, our tech team is looking into it" or "I see we processed your refund (partially)" or "rental cancellation refunds do not include cleaning fees (we never used the rental, what's to clean)" . If we didn't respond and acknowledge through AirBnb app within a few hours (most often during off hours), the ticket would auto close and we would need to call and open a new ticket, again and again and again.
After using the advice from
@TiogaLion we opened a Twitter account, signed on to follow a few accounts. After a week, we then sent messages to @Airbnb and @Airbnbhelp (their dedicated public response handle) warning all to not use AirBnb because of posted fraudulent listings and another stating Airbnb steals money and won't issue refunds. The tweet was retweeted a few times but no response or action from Airbnb.
A few days later (which was last Wednesday), we sent a third tweet tagging @Airbnb and @Airbnbhelp saying our reservation was cancelled by AirBnb, we never used the rental and we didn't receive a full refund. @Airbnbhelp reached out after 30 minutes asking for a DM to investigate further. Over Twitter DM, we provided the name, phone number and email that the account was registered to along with the reservation number. They responded within an hour over Airbnb app with all the current information summarized from the support tickets and apologized for the issues and delay. The next day they mentioned they were reviewing the refund status internally and would keep us posted. On Friday we received a message again thanking us for our patience and notified that the $400+ remaining refund would be returned to us within 5-15 business days. The refund was posted to our CC this morning.
Lessons learned and we are relieved. Thank you all.
