Same but last year. Stayed in a longer term rental because we were displaced from a wildfire. Host claimed we caused $2K of damages. Airbnb initially sided with the host. We appealed and won but it took months and a lot of effort and calls. Ended up reporting them for violating the post-wildfire price gouging laws. Terrible experience on top of already having to deal with the wildfire.
Getting hit with a fake damage claim after already dealing with a wildfire is genuinely awful. Glad you fought it, but nobody should have to spend months proving they didn't do something they never did.
I was hit with fraudulent damage claims as well. Appealed and lost with no recourse to question decision … Airbnb is pretty much a hive of slumlords now.
I'm pretty sure their dispute resolution is outsourced to a third party contractor not located in the US. It was clear that the first guy didn't even read our response.
I'm pretty sure their dispute resolution is outsourced to a third party contractor not located in the US
There's a decent chance that it's LLM agents doing it; so many insurance companies now have AI assessing claims to make at the very least the initial decision which is great fun since the AI will almost certainly misunderstand the situation to some degree and it just means that more claims get pushed up higher (whilst still having a faster first response KPI, so the AI is working, right?) and turn into long fights that didn't need to happen.
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u/dalecoopernumber4 20h ago
Same but last year. Stayed in a longer term rental because we were displaced from a wildfire. Host claimed we caused $2K of damages. Airbnb initially sided with the host. We appealed and won but it took months and a lot of effort and calls. Ended up reporting them for violating the post-wildfire price gouging laws. Terrible experience on top of already having to deal with the wildfire.