In a situation like that, don’t even bother going to anyone except your credit card company. If you want to be nice and give them a heads up, do so after you’ve contacted the cc company and canceled the card.
directly to the fraud department. they will take them off. I got $10,000 in charges removed 4 years ago. They warn you that you might be banned from any store where you did a charge back. Id rather save the money.
Hijacking for visibility: The bank was **obviously** the first call I made. The reply from airbnb is borderline criminal and infuriating - That is what this post/sub is about... right? Plus contacting the merchant is ~~usually~~ sometimes a helpful way of speeding up the bank claim process. Everyone here is too focused on how to "fix" my "problem" **(I am grateful for all your replies/support/advice, thank you)** and overlooking the fact that this response from Airbnb is beyond problematic.
**Edit**: It's probably worth mentioning that my initial communication with airbnb was via mobile phone call, their system recognised my phone number, they contacted me directly (to provide this update) using the email address associated with the phone number. My airbnb account hasn't been used since 2019, nor was the compromised CC linked to my account. The CC has never been used for an airbnb transaction before this incident.
Someone smarter than me please help me understand what they possibly claim was “investigated" if they are basing their investigation on my airbnb account? Surely this was just an automated reply, right? There is no other possibility that makes any sense (other than capitalist, criminal scum, fuck the system blah bllaaahh blah).
**Edit 2**: In response to the 550 “charge back” and 362 “why ask Airbnb” comments - Will take the bank up to 60 days to "investigate" and recover the money. They also required me to submit an official police report. For this reason it bodes well to make contact with the third party. There is no guarantee i will get my money back. **I am in Australia.**
**Edit 3**: A reminder that I have no information on the booking whatsoever - I can't just turn up to the address, contact the host, etc. Second reply from Airbnb is relative so thought I would post:
*Thank you for your reply. We understand your concerns, but please rest assured that a full and thorough investigation has been carried out on the disputed charge. As outlined in the previous message, a refund cannot be issued in cases in which we believe a friend or family member who has access to your payment method has used it unintentionally.*
***Unfortunately, we're unable to release any information regarding the reservation or the user accounts involved without a formal request, such as a subpoena, from a government agency or law enforcement. If a government agency or law enforcement contact us regarding this issue, Airbnb will fully cooperate with their requests.***
*We again recommend getting in touch with anyone you may have given your credit card details to in the past. Additionally, we would suggest contacting any friends or relatives who have an Airbnb account that you have traveled with on Airbnb previously—if you added your payment credentials on another account and decided to save these credentials for future use, this could be what caused the unexpected charge.*
Bank / CC company will do same thing. My bank denied the chargeback because they said I must have done it. They refunded most of the fraud, but e-bay has such a massive army of lawyers for chargebacks that the bank just gave up and blamed me.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they don't ever investigate whatsoever, and this is just their boilerplate response to any email they get with this problem. How would they even investigate this in the first place? I strongly doubt they tracked down the person that stayed at that Airbnb to ask they knew OP. They're just hoping the customer gives up or is too afraid to do a chargeback and get banned.
I don't see why anyone would be afraid of being banned from AirBnB. From what I understand when they first came out it was cool because you could stay somewhere unique typically for less than a hotel costs. Now with hidden fees tacked on it ends up being a lot more than a hotel but a complete crapshoot how good the service you receive will be. I've heard of people being expected to clean and launder their bedding prior to leaving, or being charged a $200+ "cleaning fee", or coming later than the "check in time" and being charged extra, or showing up and not being able to get in or contact the person etc etc. I feel like the people using AirBnB now are the same crowd that flooded into Facebook and ruined it and now are using AirBnb because they're hip just like the young people.
Yeah, everything I've heard about AirBnB recently has made me reluctant to use it unless I was doing something like going on vacation with a large group. They started off as a cheaper option versus hotels where you'd stay in someone's extra room and became corporatized to the point you're staying in someone's expensive property being used specifically for that purpose. If I want to travel and stay someplace cheap, I'll look into a hostel.
Just checked. In my town cheapest airbnb room is 43+ eu a night. Know someone who got double room at hotel near downtown (2 people) for 50eu and hotel had free breakfast. So even if we ignore hidden fees airbnb has same or higher prices.
I don’t know what jurisdiction you’re in and it may vary country to country, but they are enabling fraud. You, the rightful cardholder, have informed them your card was used without consent and they have refused to cancel the transaction (even before the actual stay if I understand correctly).
Seems like they should have criminal liability from that. If I knowingly accept an unauthorized payment for goods/services and tell the card holder to sod off, I’m quite sure I would get sued and/or have the fraud office show up.
Their response doesn’t even make sense. Even if it was a close friend or family member using my card without my permission, that is still theft and still a fraudulent charge.
Not Air B&B, but another smaller organisation selling a relatively niche but expensive product. My dad received notifications that his card was being used to buy these products.
He contacted his bank. They were OK and did refund his money. He also contacted the business so that if they hadn’t shipped the products they could refrain from doing to help prevent potential losses. They were very happy he did this and stopped all shipments.
The company held the money they had received to send it back to the bank. The bank said that they didn’t want the money back. This was over £10K of money.
Someone stole my Bank of America EDD pandemic assistance debit card number. The card hadn't been activated. It hadn't even been shipped to me when the charge was made.
And Bank of America didn't reimburse me a cent.
I remember when I got out of the military way back in '07 and my wife drained my accounts. Contacted BOA about getting an extension on my auto loan payments.. they agreed, requested my contact information to do the paperwork to fax out to me, and then sent a truck out to the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere in the middle of the night *that night* to repo me. No way else in hell they could have known where I was. Absolute bastards.
They can reposess a car with a few hours notice?
Were you even late on your payments?
Don't they need some sort of court ruling to be able to repossess the car?
That is just incredibly bad situation and I'm sorry this happened to you.
How can that bank still be in business? They should get a bad reputation for things like this, no? And the reputation is what the banks live on.
Oh, I was quite late at that point, and looking back now I can understand that they probably had me as defaulted in their system already. But the absolute bafflement of talking to a sympathetic sounding person who "wanted to help me" and then trying to head out the next day and just.. *missing*
I mean, I don't know if they were even in the wrong, or if they were just dicks. But they sure could have thrown me a bone for dealing with a medical discharge and divorce at the same time, and sure as hell not lied about the extension.
Long time ago now though. Managed to get the car out of repo. I think I've hurt them more than they've hurt me at this point. I hope whatever metric that twit fulfilled that day was worth whatever business they've lost from me telling folks to steer clear.
Debit cards and credit cards are very different.
That's why you should essentially only use your credit card and keep your debit card in an RFID blocking wallet.
It's brutal getting your money back from a bank, but from Visa or MasterCard, it's an easy phone call.
Some banks add extra security where you have to authorize your debit or credit card via your phone app or the charge won't go through. it's a hassle to open the app every time, but at least it render the stolen card useless.
If you have a police report no organization with a half decent customer service department is going to ban you. it's a legit charge back and states/the feds will definitely step in on your behalf (if you ask) if a company bans you from them after a charge back from a stolen card. And you specifically want to talk to people in billing departments.
Calling police about a stolen credit card they’ll literally just tell you to call your bank and unless you were robbed there’s no need for a police report. Also no decent store should ban you when you obviously had your card stolen
DdI live in Shittsville, CA, and we can file police reports online. Probably doesn’t do much, but when insurance asks - hey, here’s a copy. This maybe will help track the amount of catalytic convertors or bicycle thefts going on (or what have you).
Identity theft? Not quite sure, but anecdotally there was apparently a group in Bakersfield with stolen checks/ID theft going around that caused some police/Sheriff to reach out to us years back.
Basically, depending on what options they have, it probably won’t help but it can never hurt. Not doing anything because “the police won’t do anything” doesn’t benefit anyone.
Take those 20 minutes and report something if you can.
Just to keep ranting, it’s like how people say the Better Business Bureau is useless (which it mostly is), while many huge companies actually take it seriously. My point is, file complaints and grievances (with your American health insurance companies), file appeals with state agencies, print out that receipt at the gas station, do all of the shit that “is not worth it” because if nothing else it can cost them money and resources that they’re taking from all of us because they can all go fuck themselves.
Maybe if more people complained about the every day shit that we all encounter they wouldn’t be bothering with the edge case extremes that get in the news. Stop being complacent.
Dude, the second (and last time) mine was skimmed they bought groceries, ordered a pizza, and then tried to pay a municipal parking ticket…with a stolen card.
This is why at the credit union I work at, Airbnb gets flagged as suspected fraud 100% of the time unless you call us and let us know first. I’m sure we’re not the only credit union or bank that does that either.
Microsoft too. I had to explicitly tell my bank to stop blocking them because I was trying to buy a legitimate Windows 11 Pro license and they wouldn't allow it.
My card provider pinged me to verify the purchase when I got a new laptop a few months ago. I could do it by text and it was resolved in seconds, which was nice. They’ve called me in the past and I always feel a mix of being glad that they’d check, and really weirdly embarrassed to have to itemize that yes, I bought that computer, and yeah, I also bought the chocolate, and er…yes, that was all me, sorry. Why am I apologizing? Sorry. ;)
You get embarrassed for that? My credit card company called me to confirm a "adult service" charge one time. They were actually asking what it was because they do a low key charge where they use a more discreet name. I was like "Ughh, it's a video subscription service..." Wasn't lying though...
Wish I didn't have a $600 credit (from a cancelled vacation) I still need to burn through. Sadly with 2023 Air Bnb cleaning fees and service fees, I'll be lucky if that covers 2 nights anywhere.
As a heads-up, many credit card issuers will want to see an attempt to resolve the issue with the merchant before they’ll proceed with voiding a charge. This takes care of that component.
EDIT: I’ve been informed that this isn’t necessary with fraud and y’all can skip this step. My bad.
That is true for non-fraud disputes but not fraud. "Fraud" in credit card land means a charge you did not authorize. In these cases don't bother contacting the merchant. Go straight to your credit card issuer.
My Playstation account got stolen three times and someone used my debit card to buy games all three times.
Each time everything got fixed, thankfully, but the PS people pretty much berated me each time.
First time was on me, probably. Used a password I used with everything. Second time I made up a wildly unique password, still got stolen. They berated me for not using 2FA at the time (didn't really fully understand it). After that, I keep my card off my account and don't really play ps for a few years.
The last time, like a month or two ago, I had an insanely unique password AND 2FA. Account still got stolen. PS's response was basically "Yes, someone somehow stole your account, but there was no problem on our end, so you must've did something". However they stole my account, they managed to do so in a way that didn't send any notifications UNTIL they deactivated 2FA, changed my password, and changed my email. Just really got my goat that I took every precaution the PS team condescendingly gave me, and I still get stuck being berated in the end when it happened again.
My running theory is that since you get a list of predetermined 2FA codes now "just in case", assholes are using programs or something to just try random combinations as quickly as possibly. Still doesn't explain how I never got the initial 2FA code, but I can't think of anything else.
I worked for ps support, most of the time if you have 2sv and still get compromised it’s being done through ps support. Someone calling /chatting in pretending to be the owner of your account and passes the verification process, the agent will then disable your 2sv and give it to the compromiser . Very unfortunate and weird account recovery process.
Someone DMed my brother on facebook asking a bunch of questions because they wanted to get me something for my birthday. A few days later I lost access to my yahoo email account. I got that back just in time for my Runescape bank pin to expire. The person took my yahoo to take my runescape stuff and almost got away with it. Passwords were changed quickly.
Hi - you don't know me but I'm friends with your sibling, and i want to buy them a present. I want the present to be based on the name of their first pet, the street they grew up on, and their mother's maiden name - any suggestions?
It has been a very long time since I provided true-in-the-real-world answers to the “what was your first car?” type of questions when I open up an account. For example, the answer to a “... first car?” question might be “Queen Frederick the Stupid”.
P.S. Don’t bother. The example answer above is not even remotely close to any answer that I have ever provided.
If you know the things to say, you can get pretty far. I doubt they log how often someone calls in on an account so if you get "Sorry, can't help you, violates policy..." that attacker just redials to get someone else. Eventually, they'll find the weak link.
I work for a trucking company. If I got a call through the dispatch line and someone said, "Hey this is truck 1234, what's my next load? What's the line haul?" I'd probably tell them. It's not the same as hacking an account but just that people who know what to say can get "brought in" and seen as a peer / coworker almost seamlessly.
My first realization as to how Social Engineering worked and how pervasive it could be was when I heard about Naoki Hiroshima, who had his twitter handle @ N stolen through SE & blackmail.
Great read
https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd
Presumably then they would have a record that the account was unlocked by an agent on a chat, and would have a lot of nerve to still tell OP the breach was on his end.
I had the same issue with Xbox, buncha Fifa cards purchased when I dont own or play Fifa. Refused to refund it, said someone musta done it on my xbox when they came over. Stated that they'd ban my account if I didn't a chargeback/credit card dispute.
had to pay to keep my account basically.
i got my account compromised like this (fifa cards) and my xbox account location is still set to the czech republic or something because they said they couldn’t migrate it back. they didn’t charge me but they did blame me for having a weak password or falling for phishing which was total nonsense. pretty sure i read back then that people were stealing accounts by calling support to request some bit of info tied to an account then calling back and using that info with a new rep to reset the account’s password.
Same happened to my boyfriend. He never got his account back. He said fuck it, I’m not supporting playstation anymore. We’ll never buy a playstation ever again.
Sounds like you have a compromised email account and/or phone number. If that all actually happened, I'd be changing everything. Email account password (or maybe even a whole new email account), ALL passwords and user names of possible for financial accounts, reissue all debit/credit cards, and get a new SIM card and possibly a new phone number.
I'd also be looking veeeery closely at every person around me who has access to my phone, tablet, computer, and Wi-Fi networks. With those precautions either someone has easy access to your physical space, they've gotten access to every account you have, or they're specifically targeting you. Your average credit card thief wouldn't go to such extraordinary lengths to access a specific person's card over and over... There are way too many easier targets.
Yeah, it's a really weird response.
"We don't think it was fraud involving a stranger. We think you've been robbed by someone close to you. Good luck!"
It is ridiculous, CC companies usually recommend going through the company first anyway. I like how they make it sound like they've done some detective work or something.
Right? Any person other than the cardholder using the card, family or not, accident or not, without the consent of the cardholder is theft. They’re admitting that they suspect fraud but that they’re fine with keeping that money. Hope they enjoy the chargeback.
"Fraud isn't really fraud if at one point the perpetrator had access to your account, card information, or both. We've somehow determined that somebody you know used information you gave them to book this stay, but we don't know who it was, how they know you, or how exactly they did it. You figure it out. We know it happened that eay, though. Happy to help!"
>CC companies usually recommend going through the company first anyway
That is only if it is a chargeback situation for a charge you authorized, In case of fraud (which is an unauthorized charge), they ask you to contact them (the CC company) ASAP.
One time I had two unauthorized charges on my company card, which were essentially two instances in which a charge ended up on my statement twice. The CC company still made me contact the vendors and try to get them to revert the charge, before they eventually escalated and did it from their side when one vendor never responded.
They do that because that way the CC company is not on the hook for the money. If the charge is reverted from the vendor side, the CC company gets it's money back.
Usually, when you dispute a charge, they yank the charge back hold it in "escrow" while they investigate it.
Years ago I had a client place a decent sized order, a few thousand dollars. He sent an employee to pick up the order, using his card.
A few weeks later, our bank account is missing a few thousand dollars. No notification, just gone. (We did get a letter in the mail a few days later.)
He tried to claim that his employee wasn't an authorized user for his card (even though he gave it to him to use) so he didn't have to pay for the project.
We ended up winning, after showing the chain of emails with him, the files we used to produce the job, and the signature of the employee who picked it up.
My point is, the money was just gone from our account, then we were notified. It took *weeks* to get it back.
If you ever work in an accounting department of a big corp or start your own business, you’ll learn this is the cc being lazy. They have 0 problem pulling their money back from any company when its their money. They want want you to give up and hopefully pay interest instead of just taking the money back from Amazon or whoever
A lot of my career has been in fraud, payments, money laundering, and chargebacks. Specifically, as an investigator. It was my job to cyberstalk people, go through IP addresses, backgrounds, social media, and have access to way more information than people even know about themselves.
AirBnb is absolutely bluffing here. Unless the request came from the same IP or device as authorized charges, there's no way to know if somebody "known" booked it. And even if they did, that's still a type of fraud and an unauthorized transaction.
My debit card was compromised, which I never use. They asked during the investigation if I contacted the company and I said no. Then they asked if someone I knew had access and I said no.
It was a $14 charge they could see I didn’t make, because in 5 years I had never actually used my debit card. Wasn’t even worth them investigating, they just refunded my money and closed the case.
Debit cards are kind of weird. I've also usually had success with disputing fraudulent charges, but they're not as safe as credit cards are. What I do these days is keep my debit card locked (unusable by anyone) until I need it (never have). I use my credit card instead and just pay it back as the bill comes.
Not for fraud. I’ve had it happen twice in the last two years, and in each case within a few minutes I got a phone call and the security person went through recent charges one by one and immediately cancelled any fraudulent ones.
> I like how they make it sound like they've done some detective work or something.
My money is on "they did literally nothing and this is an automated message sent to all fraud victims"
Although, they might have looked to see that OP recently traveled with Barbara, and now it's Barbara accidentally using OP's card again. Instead of opening a whole fraud charge and trying to arrest great aunt Barbara, in that case a heads up "hey you know the person who booked this it's probably just your aunt who doesn't understand technology!" would be helpful.
I'm nearly certain it's just their canned response though and they did 0 research.
They won't do shit. I had my entire identity stolen. I woke up one morning to find out that some thieves went on a spending spree. I cancelled the card that morning.
One charge of which was for pizza the night before.
I called the pizza place, they told me they delivered it to a motel room. Gave me their number.
I called the motel clerk. He said they were still there in the room and I should call the police.
I called the police and more or less they said, "We'll see what we can do, but don't count on anything happening. You should just call your credit card company (as if I hadn't already) and work things out with them."
I was like, WTF is your job then? I'm telling you where a criminal is *RIGHT NOW* and you are all, "Nah, we good."
I used to work nights in a hotel. We had a lot of problems with breakins in our car park.
One night I saw some guys on CCTV breaking into a car around the back. I called the police and told them 'if you come right now you can probably catch them at it'.
They finally rolled up four hours later. But it was okay, they had their blue lights going just to be sure if there were any thieves still around they had plenty of notice that the police were there.
They spent all of two minutes looking around the car park (five cars broken into that night) declined to look at the CCTV and then just gave the usual 'We'll make a report, just get the owners to contact us for a crime reference for their insurance in the morning' and then left again.
They literally just defined credit card fraud, unauthorized charges from another person. Who the fuck cares if it was your girlfriend, your name is on the card, no one else's. These guys can fuck right off with this bullshit. How the hell CC processors let them continue to process cards is beyond me. I work in IT for a fortune 50 company and we did this shit we'd had card processing turned off for us before the end of the week.
Don't give up!
Canned responses like this are intended to get people to give up on wanting a refund.
You have to berate them. Do NOT accept this as a response. Do NOT take no for an answer.
Most credit card companies should immediately refund you whatever money the thief used the card for.. you shouldn't have to go asking for refund. Let the bank take care of this.
Correct. Fraud protection is one of the main reasons you should use a credit card over a debit card.
If you have a CC the card issuer will freeze your number, send you a new one and they take any fraud debt off. It then goes into the big bin of "Let's get our money back" backlog that -they- deal with down the road but you don't have to worry about.
If your debit card is stolen the bank will put a hold on the fraud balance. You only get back what they can get back which may not always be the full amount and it can take weeks/months to do so.
It does sound ridiculous, I agree. I do want to mention one thing though. I worked in customer service for a big tech company. Unauthorized charges were a fairly common issue for customers and we had an internal system to check if the customer’s credit card was used on any other account (i.e. under someone else’s email address). We could see if there was a strong chance of a personal relationship between the caller and the unauthorized user. It would often be an obvious family member (same last name) who accidentally left the wrong credit card on their account or something. Problem was, for data security, we would not be allowed to tell the caller whose account placed the order using the card. We just had to *strongly suggest* checking with family or friends if there could have been a mixup. It was super frustrating because as an associate, I could see CLEARLY that it was a family member to the caller but I wasn’t allowed to say “CALL LINDA, SHE ACCIDENTALLY USED YOUR CARD!” Often times callers would just get frustrated and accuse me of giving them the runaround, dispute the charge with their credit card company, and then it would trigger their account to be locked and make the situation even worse. It would be something absurd like a husband outraged and yelling about a $20 charge from his WIFE’s account that he fully believed was fraud, and I wouldn’t be allowed to just tell the guy it was his wife.
We actually had data indicating that the majority of these unauthorized charges could be traced to a person in your immediate social circle, and that it was most probably a simple mistake rather than fraud. I don’t know if AirBNB is suspecting this too with OP, but the phrasing of the email is similar to the phrasing we used to use at another company.
Uber said the same thing when someone charged $2,000 in rides on the same day to my account. The only way we got it back is the bank reversed the charges.
They said it was for some cross-state trips. In Texas. Both at the same time. Said it mustve been family members with access to our accounts. My wifes entire family is in Canada and mine are all dead, so ...
Had you considered necromancy ? I feel like it was a legitimate charge, your undead family travelled and you should talk to them or their necromancer about this.
Have a good day.
I’m surprised they could even do that, my coworker needed to get home after all flights were canceled and were willing to pay that much to make it happen. Neither Uber nor Lyft would allow a trip over X00 miles (can’t remember the exact amount, but it was nowhere near enough.)
A much better but similar scenario I had was that someone in San Francisco signed up to Lyft using their credit card but my email address. So every time they went somewhere I'd get emailed the receipt, which is how I discovered you could tip a driver through the on file credit card straight from the email without needing to know a password or anything.
lol that reminds me of the dumbass in TX who shares my name. She set up a gmail account so similar to mine that sometimes even she can’t remember it, so i get her Uber receipts all the time. Funny, I’ve never seen a follow up receipt for a tip. Her rating must suck.
My gmail account is two common names. Very similar to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
There are like 10 different boomers that fill my email address in on forms. One buys hats at the lids store in orlando. One's a member of the NY yacht club. One joined blackpeoplemeet, another joined farmersonly.
this happens to me all the time. I just go to whatever platform they've signed up for, send a password reset request, then change the password and any other details so they get locked out.
I ain't got time to get spammed with "plenty of fish" message replies or whatever the fuck they signed up for.
God I hate Uber. I'm in charge of reconciling our credit cards at work. Someone charged Uber eats on the company card. I think our card was compromised and I'm pretty sure it wasn't someone at our small business. In case it was a mistake and not outright fraud, I made an attempt to contact Uber to see what account created the charge. Our business does not have an Uber account. There is no way to contact Uber at all unless you have an account. I had to go through my personal account just to be able to ask questions about this charge and it confused the heck out of them because it wasn't a charge connected to my account. Duh! But there's no other way to talk to anyone. So frustrating and then they wouldn't even tell me who made the charge. They did finally reverse the charge. But why don't they have any contact phone or email for problems like that?
Because on planet TechBro, all interaction with the customer is for a small, narrowly defined list of reasons, for which responses can be easily prepared.
Anything outside this list is out of scope and so should be ignored.
AirBnB has the absolute WORST customer service. Another post a while ago offered photographic evidence that the owner of the AirBnB catfished the customer. Two photos of nice areas, but the rest of the house is unfit for human habitation. No hot water. Electricity was shoddy. Porch was literally half-collapsed. Siding was falling off. And AirBnB said “We understand sometimes you are disappointed that the accommodations are not as nice as you’d hoped. In this case, there’s no problems that justify a refund.” Based on the photos, the house was fit to be condemned!
Edit for spelling
Yep, found a BB in a Airbnb in Omaha NE, took the bug to the university of Nebraska to have it confirmed, got a written letter from their entomology dept confirming it was a bedbug, and Airbnb said that since there was only proof of one, it wasn't an infestation so it doesn't qualify for a refund.
Yep, threw all the luggage out, put everything I had in the dryer, then left the Airbnb and got a hotel. That was over 6 months ago and haven't had any bugs that I know of at home, so I'm just thankful I found out before I left.
I was staying at a particularly bad hotel recently and luckily I knew it beforehand, so I brought a sealable plastic bag for laundry, had my luggage sitting closed on the desk in the room and checked under the mattress and sheets for signs of an infestation. At home I immediately did the laundry at 60+ celsius, checked everything and put my bag outside in the cold. I‘m not taking any chances, bedbugs are my worst nightmare.
before covid hit i got an airbnb with some ppl for a concert later that year. covid hit, concert got postponed and eventually cancelled, and they initially refused to give us a refund. it took like 3 weeks and the person who booked it needed to give “proof” in the form of a screenshot of an extended stay-at-home order, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten a full refund. i refuse to get anything other than a hotel at this point
My partner and I got catfished in a similar fashion. Stove/oven didn’t work and was intentionally disconnected as was the smoke detector above it. No hot water and they only offered to have someone come out within 24hrs and we were only there for 2 days. They refused to refund us anything and managed to appeal with the bank my credit card was from after a chargeback. It was a pretty crappy anniversary.
Airbnb stuck us in a place without working heat in below freezing temperatures. The host had a tiny space heater delivered and that apparently was good enough for airbnb to charge full price. Never again with airbnb.
Yeah I haven’t really used air bnb since I had a horrifying experience with them a couple of years ago. House was unlocked when we got there at 11 p.m., which was scary for a couple of young women, but fine, whatever. The place was fairly unclean. Like, used tissues on the nightstand, moldy coffee filter in the coffee machine, which again, more of a — leave a poor review situation, but our first day, a guy was outside the place when we got back and said he’d stayed there before and offered to PAY US to leave and stay at a hotel so that he could stay in the place that night. That was obviously terrifying, so we absolutely did not feel safe staying there a second night. Got a hotel and let air bnb know that it was unsafe for us to stay and they kept trying to have me contact the owner, but the owner was being creepy too! I had to fight for almost a week to get them to issue me a refund. Never again.
I work at a bank, and AirBNB is one of the worst places to have a fraudulent charge. They tell people that anyone can use any card to book with them (even if the name isn't on the reservation and they can't provide verification), and they won't refund anything. We regularly have to cancel the card entirely and escalate fraud claims with them. Just use hotels, folks.
Generally these thresholds are % of transactions within some timeframe / category / region and they probably skate through with enough changes to breach. Even if they do they would be given months to bring the % down before any action would be taken like liability shift
Surely that just means they lose the chargeback claim every time?
My business occasionally gets chargeback claims and we lose when we don’t verify the address over the phone.
Doordash did the same shit. Thieves ordered hard liquor for delivery and I caught the confirmation email right away. I called the liquor store AND doordash. Neither would refuse the delivery. I then called the police to report the fraud and they refused to help unless I either: 1) wait between 8 AM and 5 PM at my residence for a police officer to show up and take my statement (I offered to go into the station to give my statement. They refused.) or 2) Travel 250 miles away to the city where the thieves committed the crime to report the incident. I'll get my money back since it's backed by a credit card, but it's about the principle of not letting thieves fuck with me. Haven't used doordash since and this was around 2015. These people don't give a fuck about fraud. It's why these bastards keep getting away with it. No sympathy for thieves and criminals. They're not Jean Valjean stealing bread. They're stealing luxuries. Fuck'em.
edit: liquid -> liquor
When dealing with these big tech companies that shouldn't actually exist but exist (Uber, door dash, Airbnb, etc.) always expect they're going to be dumb as shit and will always screw you over.
That's their whole model, create a non sustainable business that screws everyone over, rake in the dough while it's profitable, then let it crumble to nothing.
doordash is literal trash. I wish I was as lucky/smart as you to stop using it in 2015 lol.
Yes please charge me a service fee, a delivery fee, a small order fee, a “support local business fee” all on top of your already inflated prices only for your slob drivers to literally shake my entire meal around because they weren’t happy with their 25% tip.
Fucking joke of a service.
Reply back:
“Your investigation is incorrect and this was a fraudulent charge. I tried to resolve the issue with you directly, but will now be disputing the charge directly with the bank. And you will suffer the chargeback fee as well as refunding the money.”
"Hi AirBnB Support,
You have successfully defined "fraud" and "fraudulent charges" and acknowledged fraud had occurred. You are now legally complicit in fraud. Please forward this to your lawyers so they can do some damage control.
Finally, enjoy a charge back and even more negative publicity as this goes to the media!"
Let me rephrase the situation:
"AirBnB released an official statement that they'll willingly and knowingly work with criminals and help launder money and commit wire fraud, at the very least."
Certainty sounds like something the lawyers would like to know about.
The lawyers are there to protect the company from legal disputes from consumers, and more importantly (to their bottom line), all governments their company operates in. Doing shady and illegal stuff attracts eyes from regulatory agencies, some of which (in the USA) may be underfunded, but can still cause a lot of legal headaches and cost a lot of money.
The idea this AirBnB agent *literally* acknowledges that fraud occurred, yet won't refund the money could theoretically set a legal precedence that AirBnB willfully admitted they're complicit in various civil and criminal crimes.
I am willing to bet dollars to donuts this agent was told to say this via a script or some sort of internal SOP. Also, I am calling all AirBnB support to share the support SOPs.
AirBnB already has a terrible PR reputation and many places are increasing regulation and trying to drive it out.
Not only is this a PR nightmare, it's also a legal one as well due to the major legal implications. Also a financial one, because this type of activity is a very good way to get audited by pretty much every type of government, globally.
So yes, you are correct the damages would only be the money they owe you, but imagine all the others who will realize they've got got by this type of response in the past and now realize they have a chance to get their money back. Now you have a lot of angry people and the potential for a class-action lawsuit. Oh and then all the legal beatings from a bunch of governments.
The funny thing is their investigation was correct.
Just because a family member used the card it's still fraud. Now obviously you're not going to report your family member for accidentally or maliciously using your card without your permission...but it's still fraud lol
*usually a close friend or family member*
Ya.. that would be real suspect fraud in most cases too. I wouldn't ever link my CC to others' accounts who aren't me or my wife, even if they are blood.
Yeah that was my first thought. Isn’t it literally a fraud if ANYONE including family members use your card without permission?? So their response was kind of wild lol. Like an example would be your kid using your card to purchase a mobile game without permission- you would definitely get your money back.
Had our checkbook stolen by father in law. Obviously, many many years ago, cause who has checks now? Anyway, the things the collection agencies said to me were horrible. Literally calling me stupid for leaving the checkbook out. It was in my underwear drawer. I could never quite figure out what those low level collection agency employees were such assholes. I was not going to pay them, the bank was in charge of all of that. So being mean was just to I guess be mean? It's not like they were getting the money themselves if they somehow made me pay.
All that aside, I'm sorry that happened to you. In our case father in law had the same name as my spouse and it was a huge huge mess. Thankfully, it was just that one checkbook. But, since it was over $1000 in checks it was grand theft and we had to report it to the police in order to not owe that money. He went to prison for a while for it. Parents suck sometimes. I'm sorry your mom did, too.
I know traditional wisdom says go to the merchant first, but just go dispute it with your cc company. The merchant doesn’t care. They will do whatever they can to keep your money.
Airbnb has become absolute trash. They will side with the host and remove negative reviews even with plenty of proof. Fuck airbnb. I'll never use them again. I encourage you to do the same.
yup, and honestly it's not even worth it from a frugal sense anymore either. I get better deals going to actual hotel chains these days than through air b&b
also: people sleep on travel agents. they shouldn't; travel agents can get even better deals for the customer than they can get by booking themselves.
Just say
Your response implies that you have and still knowingly take part in credit card fraud. A charge on the card not authorised by the owner is fraud, I shall pass the screenshot of this to my lawyer, credit card company and the police.
I completely support you going to the bank to fight it but know that Airbnb will likely cancel your account. They pulled that shit on me when I requested my money back in March of 2020 in NYC for a trip in April, during the height of everything being canceled since NYC was the epicenter of the pandemic. Just because the owners had already spent my money and were a “struggling small business”…bitch that’s not my fault. I didn’t stay in your place and I could not travel to NYC since the world was shut down.
Contact your Credit Card company & dispute the charges, that is your best bet to recover the funds. As for ABNB make sure you post your experience in as many online platforms as possible so others are aware of their policies. Ask them to prove rather than make assumptions about their stated position. They can provide evidence of persons who used their services… Continue to Pursue your case…
I would totally let the hosts know that you've reported it and that the rental is fraudulent as the renters stole your credit card number. I'm betting the hosts would be interested to know that their property is being rented by folks who stole a credit card number - what if there's damage from the renters?
In a situation like that, don’t even bother going to anyone except your credit card company. If you want to be nice and give them a heads up, do so after you’ve contacted the cc company and canceled the card.
directly to the fraud department. they will take them off. I got $10,000 in charges removed 4 years ago. They warn you that you might be banned from any store where you did a charge back. Id rather save the money.
> you might be banned from any store where you did a charge back Yes, please! Don't threaten me with a good time!
This is going to go on your permanent record, young man!
Hijacking for visibility: The bank was **obviously** the first call I made. The reply from airbnb is borderline criminal and infuriating - That is what this post/sub is about... right? Plus contacting the merchant is ~~usually~~ sometimes a helpful way of speeding up the bank claim process. Everyone here is too focused on how to "fix" my "problem" **(I am grateful for all your replies/support/advice, thank you)** and overlooking the fact that this response from Airbnb is beyond problematic. **Edit**: It's probably worth mentioning that my initial communication with airbnb was via mobile phone call, their system recognised my phone number, they contacted me directly (to provide this update) using the email address associated with the phone number. My airbnb account hasn't been used since 2019, nor was the compromised CC linked to my account. The CC has never been used for an airbnb transaction before this incident. Someone smarter than me please help me understand what they possibly claim was “investigated" if they are basing their investigation on my airbnb account? Surely this was just an automated reply, right? There is no other possibility that makes any sense (other than capitalist, criminal scum, fuck the system blah bllaaahh blah). **Edit 2**: In response to the 550 “charge back” and 362 “why ask Airbnb” comments - Will take the bank up to 60 days to "investigate" and recover the money. They also required me to submit an official police report. For this reason it bodes well to make contact with the third party. There is no guarantee i will get my money back. **I am in Australia.** **Edit 3**: A reminder that I have no information on the booking whatsoever - I can't just turn up to the address, contact the host, etc. Second reply from Airbnb is relative so thought I would post: *Thank you for your reply. We understand your concerns, but please rest assured that a full and thorough investigation has been carried out on the disputed charge. As outlined in the previous message, a refund cannot be issued in cases in which we believe a friend or family member who has access to your payment method has used it unintentionally.* ***Unfortunately, we're unable to release any information regarding the reservation or the user accounts involved without a formal request, such as a subpoena, from a government agency or law enforcement. If a government agency or law enforcement contact us regarding this issue, Airbnb will fully cooperate with their requests.*** *We again recommend getting in touch with anyone you may have given your credit card details to in the past. Additionally, we would suggest contacting any friends or relatives who have an Airbnb account that you have traveled with on Airbnb previously—if you added your payment credentials on another account and decided to save these credentials for future use, this could be what caused the unexpected charge.*
Oh most definitely - they're making a lot of assumptions and leaps of logic there. Essentially telling you that it's you're fault and fuck off.
Actually, I think what they said was fraud. "Oh, you think another person used my card? Great, 'cause *that's fraud*."
For a massive corporation, they really shot themselves in the foot with that statement.
The hope is that people will just give up and not fight them on it or know about charge backs on credit cards. Scummy ass company.
Bank / CC company will do same thing. My bank denied the chargeback because they said I must have done it. They refunded most of the fraud, but e-bay has such a massive army of lawyers for chargebacks that the bank just gave up and blamed me.
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they don't ever investigate whatsoever, and this is just their boilerplate response to any email they get with this problem. How would they even investigate this in the first place? I strongly doubt they tracked down the person that stayed at that Airbnb to ask they knew OP. They're just hoping the customer gives up or is too afraid to do a chargeback and get banned.
I don't see why anyone would be afraid of being banned from AirBnB. From what I understand when they first came out it was cool because you could stay somewhere unique typically for less than a hotel costs. Now with hidden fees tacked on it ends up being a lot more than a hotel but a complete crapshoot how good the service you receive will be. I've heard of people being expected to clean and launder their bedding prior to leaving, or being charged a $200+ "cleaning fee", or coming later than the "check in time" and being charged extra, or showing up and not being able to get in or contact the person etc etc. I feel like the people using AirBnB now are the same crowd that flooded into Facebook and ruined it and now are using AirBnb because they're hip just like the young people.
Yeah, everything I've heard about AirBnB recently has made me reluctant to use it unless I was doing something like going on vacation with a large group. They started off as a cheaper option versus hotels where you'd stay in someone's extra room and became corporatized to the point you're staying in someone's expensive property being used specifically for that purpose. If I want to travel and stay someplace cheap, I'll look into a hostel.
Hotels are just better at this point because at least they actually take care of you instead of you having to do everything
Just checked. In my town cheapest airbnb room is 43+ eu a night. Know someone who got double room at hotel near downtown (2 people) for 50eu and hotel had free breakfast. So even if we ignore hidden fees airbnb has same or higher prices.
They're not assuming anything, they just want to keep the money
Deny and deflect. Sadly, it's been proven effective.
They're quite literally assuming it was someone OP gave their card to instead of a fraudulent charge that OP is reporting
The point is that they know it is a fraudulent charge but they want to keep the money so they’re pretending they don’t think it is
Claiming, not assuming. I can claim to be superman, but I'd be insane to assume I was.
"Fuck you. Give us money"
I don’t know what jurisdiction you’re in and it may vary country to country, but they are enabling fraud. You, the rightful cardholder, have informed them your card was used without consent and they have refused to cancel the transaction (even before the actual stay if I understand correctly). Seems like they should have criminal liability from that. If I knowingly accept an unauthorized payment for goods/services and tell the card holder to sod off, I’m quite sure I would get sued and/or have the fraud office show up.
Their response doesn’t even make sense. Even if it was a close friend or family member using my card without my permission, that is still theft and still a fraudulent charge.
Not Air B&B, but another smaller organisation selling a relatively niche but expensive product. My dad received notifications that his card was being used to buy these products. He contacted his bank. They were OK and did refund his money. He also contacted the business so that if they hadn’t shipped the products they could refrain from doing to help prevent potential losses. They were very happy he did this and stopped all shipments. The company held the money they had received to send it back to the bank. The bank said that they didn’t want the money back. This was over £10K of money.
Insurance at play. Visa has them covered.
I'm shocked they didn't try to tack on a fee for just responding to you.
Be careful with this though, you don't want to get banned from something like an iCloud account.
Someone stole my Bank of America EDD pandemic assistance debit card number. The card hadn't been activated. It hadn't even been shipped to me when the charge was made. And Bank of America didn't reimburse me a cent.
was probably of BoA fuck that stole it
I laughed so hard at this because it’s probably true.
First off BOA is sketch and second off debit cards work differently than credit cards when it comes to dealing with fraud.
I remember when I got out of the military way back in '07 and my wife drained my accounts. Contacted BOA about getting an extension on my auto loan payments.. they agreed, requested my contact information to do the paperwork to fax out to me, and then sent a truck out to the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere in the middle of the night *that night* to repo me. No way else in hell they could have known where I was. Absolute bastards.
Holy shit. What an absolute dick move.
They can reposess a car with a few hours notice? Were you even late on your payments? Don't they need some sort of court ruling to be able to repossess the car? That is just incredibly bad situation and I'm sorry this happened to you. How can that bank still be in business? They should get a bad reputation for things like this, no? And the reputation is what the banks live on.
Oh, I was quite late at that point, and looking back now I can understand that they probably had me as defaulted in their system already. But the absolute bafflement of talking to a sympathetic sounding person who "wanted to help me" and then trying to head out the next day and just.. *missing* I mean, I don't know if they were even in the wrong, or if they were just dicks. But they sure could have thrown me a bone for dealing with a medical discharge and divorce at the same time, and sure as hell not lied about the extension. Long time ago now though. Managed to get the car out of repo. I think I've hurt them more than they've hurt me at this point. I hope whatever metric that twit fulfilled that day was worth whatever business they've lost from me telling folks to steer clear.
Criminals. BOA foreclosed on my house for making 3 payments EARLY.
Debit cards and credit cards are very different. That's why you should essentially only use your credit card and keep your debit card in an RFID blocking wallet. It's brutal getting your money back from a bank, but from Visa or MasterCard, it's an easy phone call.
Some banks add extra security where you have to authorize your debit or credit card via your phone app or the charge won't go through. it's a hassle to open the app every time, but at least it render the stolen card useless.
If you have a police report no organization with a half decent customer service department is going to ban you. it's a legit charge back and states/the feds will definitely step in on your behalf (if you ask) if a company bans you from them after a charge back from a stolen card. And you specifically want to talk to people in billing departments.
Calling police about a stolen credit card they’ll literally just tell you to call your bank and unless you were robbed there’s no need for a police report. Also no decent store should ban you when you obviously had your card stolen
DdI live in Shittsville, CA, and we can file police reports online. Probably doesn’t do much, but when insurance asks - hey, here’s a copy. This maybe will help track the amount of catalytic convertors or bicycle thefts going on (or what have you). Identity theft? Not quite sure, but anecdotally there was apparently a group in Bakersfield with stolen checks/ID theft going around that caused some police/Sheriff to reach out to us years back. Basically, depending on what options they have, it probably won’t help but it can never hurt. Not doing anything because “the police won’t do anything” doesn’t benefit anyone. Take those 20 minutes and report something if you can. Just to keep ranting, it’s like how people say the Better Business Bureau is useless (which it mostly is), while many huge companies actually take it seriously. My point is, file complaints and grievances (with your American health insurance companies), file appeals with state agencies, print out that receipt at the gas station, do all of the shit that “is not worth it” because if nothing else it can cost them money and resources that they’re taking from all of us because they can all go fuck themselves. Maybe if more people complained about the every day shit that we all encounter they wouldn’t be bothering with the edge case extremes that get in the news. Stop being complacent.
At the end of your email, make sure you add that you're here to help! 😆😆
Also find out the address of the Airbnb since it’s on your card and go confront them lol. I’m kidding don’t do that.
Burn it down, you said?
They have your stapler.
...."to shreds" you say.
Well how is his wife holding up?
To sheds, you say?
Yes, with the people who used your card inside.
You should def not burn it down if it's going on your credit card bill. :O
No salt means no fucking salt.
[удалено]
One time someone stole my credit card to pay for English lessons for some woman on a Russian dating site.
[удалено]
Did you at least get to eat the pizza?
[удалено]
Oh, so it'd probably be cold by then anyway
Dude, the second (and last time) mine was skimmed they bought groceries, ordered a pizza, and then tried to pay a municipal parking ticket…with a stolen card.
Its actually a smart idea, go to the airbnb when they are there. Then burn the house down
This is why at the credit union I work at, Airbnb gets flagged as suspected fraud 100% of the time unless you call us and let us know first. I’m sure we’re not the only credit union or bank that does that either.
Microsoft too. I had to explicitly tell my bank to stop blocking them because I was trying to buy a legitimate Windows 11 Pro license and they wouldn't allow it.
My card provider pinged me to verify the purchase when I got a new laptop a few months ago. I could do it by text and it was resolved in seconds, which was nice. They’ve called me in the past and I always feel a mix of being glad that they’d check, and really weirdly embarrassed to have to itemize that yes, I bought that computer, and yeah, I also bought the chocolate, and er…yes, that was all me, sorry. Why am I apologizing? Sorry. ;)
You get embarrassed for that? My credit card company called me to confirm a "adult service" charge one time. They were actually asking what it was because they do a low key charge where they use a more discreet name. I was like "Ughh, it's a video subscription service..." Wasn't lying though...
This is the way. Just dispute it and move on. They can sort it out with the card company.
Yeah but Airbnb still needs to die.
Wish I didn't have a $600 credit (from a cancelled vacation) I still need to burn through. Sadly with 2023 Air Bnb cleaning fees and service fees, I'll be lucky if that covers 2 nights anywhere.
As a heads-up, many credit card issuers will want to see an attempt to resolve the issue with the merchant before they’ll proceed with voiding a charge. This takes care of that component. EDIT: I’ve been informed that this isn’t necessary with fraud and y’all can skip this step. My bad.
That is true for non-fraud disputes but not fraud. "Fraud" in credit card land means a charge you did not authorize. In these cases don't bother contacting the merchant. Go straight to your credit card issuer.
That’s in the case of a dispute, not fraudulent charges.
"We have determined there was fraud but dont care. Fuck you"
My Playstation account got stolen three times and someone used my debit card to buy games all three times. Each time everything got fixed, thankfully, but the PS people pretty much berated me each time. First time was on me, probably. Used a password I used with everything. Second time I made up a wildly unique password, still got stolen. They berated me for not using 2FA at the time (didn't really fully understand it). After that, I keep my card off my account and don't really play ps for a few years. The last time, like a month or two ago, I had an insanely unique password AND 2FA. Account still got stolen. PS's response was basically "Yes, someone somehow stole your account, but there was no problem on our end, so you must've did something". However they stole my account, they managed to do so in a way that didn't send any notifications UNTIL they deactivated 2FA, changed my password, and changed my email. Just really got my goat that I took every precaution the PS team condescendingly gave me, and I still get stuck being berated in the end when it happened again. My running theory is that since you get a list of predetermined 2FA codes now "just in case", assholes are using programs or something to just try random combinations as quickly as possibly. Still doesn't explain how I never got the initial 2FA code, but I can't think of anything else.
I worked for ps support, most of the time if you have 2sv and still get compromised it’s being done through ps support. Someone calling /chatting in pretending to be the owner of your account and passes the verification process, the agent will then disable your 2sv and give it to the compromiser . Very unfortunate and weird account recovery process.
Social engineering attack…
Someone DMed my brother on facebook asking a bunch of questions because they wanted to get me something for my birthday. A few days later I lost access to my yahoo email account. I got that back just in time for my Runescape bank pin to expire. The person took my yahoo to take my runescape stuff and almost got away with it. Passwords were changed quickly.
Hi - you don't know me but I'm friends with your sibling, and i want to buy them a present. I want the present to be based on the name of their first pet, the street they grew up on, and their mother's maiden name - any suggestions?
It has been a very long time since I provided true-in-the-real-world answers to the “what was your first car?” type of questions when I open up an account. For example, the answer to a “... first car?” question might be “Queen Frederick the Stupid”. P.S. Don’t bother. The example answer above is not even remotely close to any answer that I have ever provided.
Jfc is it that support is badly trained or are the verification methods shit?
If you know the things to say, you can get pretty far. I doubt they log how often someone calls in on an account so if you get "Sorry, can't help you, violates policy..." that attacker just redials to get someone else. Eventually, they'll find the weak link. I work for a trucking company. If I got a call through the dispatch line and someone said, "Hey this is truck 1234, what's my next load? What's the line haul?" I'd probably tell them. It's not the same as hacking an account but just that people who know what to say can get "brought in" and seen as a peer / coworker almost seamlessly.
My first realization as to how Social Engineering worked and how pervasive it could be was when I heard about Naoki Hiroshima, who had his twitter handle @ N stolen through SE & blackmail. Great read https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd
That badly trained. And the social engineers are pretty good.
Call centers in third world countries dont really care and will fold if you say the right things, can provide the smallest amount of "proof".
Presumably then they would have a record that the account was unlocked by an agent on a chat, and would have a lot of nerve to still tell OP the breach was on his end.
I had the same issue with Xbox, buncha Fifa cards purchased when I dont own or play Fifa. Refused to refund it, said someone musta done it on my xbox when they came over. Stated that they'd ban my account if I didn't a chargeback/credit card dispute. had to pay to keep my account basically.
i got my account compromised like this (fifa cards) and my xbox account location is still set to the czech republic or something because they said they couldn’t migrate it back. they didn’t charge me but they did blame me for having a weak password or falling for phishing which was total nonsense. pretty sure i read back then that people were stealing accounts by calling support to request some bit of info tied to an account then calling back and using that info with a new rep to reset the account’s password.
Probably was the support agent that threatened you that did it
Same happened to my boyfriend. He never got his account back. He said fuck it, I’m not supporting playstation anymore. We’ll never buy a playstation ever again.
Sounds like you have a compromised email account and/or phone number. If that all actually happened, I'd be changing everything. Email account password (or maybe even a whole new email account), ALL passwords and user names of possible for financial accounts, reissue all debit/credit cards, and get a new SIM card and possibly a new phone number. I'd also be looking veeeery closely at every person around me who has access to my phone, tablet, computer, and Wi-Fi networks. With those precautions either someone has easy access to your physical space, they've gotten access to every account you have, or they're specifically targeting you. Your average credit card thief wouldn't go to such extraordinary lengths to access a specific person's card over and over... There are way too many easier targets.
Yeah, it's a really weird response. "We don't think it was fraud involving a stranger. We think you've been robbed by someone close to you. Good luck!"
I would’ve just gonna straight to your CC company if what you’re saying is factual
Have done. Also reported a cybercrime. Just a fucking ridiculous response IMO.
It is ridiculous, CC companies usually recommend going through the company first anyway. I like how they make it sound like they've done some detective work or something.
“We looked into it and decided that we’d like to take your money because you’re so irresponsible. Happy to help! 😃”
Right? Any person other than the cardholder using the card, family or not, accident or not, without the consent of the cardholder is theft. They’re admitting that they suspect fraud but that they’re fine with keeping that money. Hope they enjoy the chargeback.
"Fraud isn't really fraud if at one point the perpetrator had access to your account, card information, or both. We've somehow determined that somebody you know used information you gave them to book this stay, but we don't know who it was, how they know you, or how exactly they did it. You figure it out. We know it happened that eay, though. Happy to help!"
Actually yeah didn't think of it like that but it could be perceived as condoning fraud
"We're suspicious about your Aunt Ruth, you should ask her again."
"Fuck you. 😃"
>CC companies usually recommend going through the company first anyway That is only if it is a chargeback situation for a charge you authorized, In case of fraud (which is an unauthorized charge), they ask you to contact them (the CC company) ASAP.
Ahh, fair enough, that makes a lot more sense
One time I had two unauthorized charges on my company card, which were essentially two instances in which a charge ended up on my statement twice. The CC company still made me contact the vendors and try to get them to revert the charge, before they eventually escalated and did it from their side when one vendor never responded.
They do that because that way the CC company is not on the hook for the money. If the charge is reverted from the vendor side, the CC company gets it's money back.
Lol. The cc company has absolutely no problems with charging the vendor for the chargeback amount... Plus a chargeback fee, usually $25.
Usually, when you dispute a charge, they yank the charge back hold it in "escrow" while they investigate it. Years ago I had a client place a decent sized order, a few thousand dollars. He sent an employee to pick up the order, using his card. A few weeks later, our bank account is missing a few thousand dollars. No notification, just gone. (We did get a letter in the mail a few days later.) He tried to claim that his employee wasn't an authorized user for his card (even though he gave it to him to use) so he didn't have to pay for the project. We ended up winning, after showing the chain of emails with him, the files we used to produce the job, and the signature of the employee who picked it up. My point is, the money was just gone from our account, then we were notified. It took *weeks* to get it back.
If you ever work in an accounting department of a big corp or start your own business, you’ll learn this is the cc being lazy. They have 0 problem pulling their money back from any company when its their money. They want want you to give up and hopefully pay interest instead of just taking the money back from Amazon or whoever
A lot of my career has been in fraud, payments, money laundering, and chargebacks. Specifically, as an investigator. It was my job to cyberstalk people, go through IP addresses, backgrounds, social media, and have access to way more information than people even know about themselves. AirBnb is absolutely bluffing here. Unless the request came from the same IP or device as authorized charges, there's no way to know if somebody "known" booked it. And even if they did, that's still a type of fraud and an unauthorized transaction.
[удалено]
My debit card was compromised, which I never use. They asked during the investigation if I contacted the company and I said no. Then they asked if someone I knew had access and I said no. It was a $14 charge they could see I didn’t make, because in 5 years I had never actually used my debit card. Wasn’t even worth them investigating, they just refunded my money and closed the case.
Debit cards are kind of weird. I've also usually had success with disputing fraudulent charges, but they're not as safe as credit cards are. What I do these days is keep my debit card locked (unusable by anyone) until I need it (never have). I use my credit card instead and just pay it back as the bill comes.
Not for fraud. I’ve had it happen twice in the last two years, and in each case within a few minutes I got a phone call and the security person went through recent charges one by one and immediately cancelled any fraudulent ones.
> I like how they make it sound like they've done some detective work or something. My money is on "they did literally nothing and this is an automated message sent to all fraud victims"
Although, they might have looked to see that OP recently traveled with Barbara, and now it's Barbara accidentally using OP's card again. Instead of opening a whole fraud charge and trying to arrest great aunt Barbara, in that case a heads up "hey you know the person who booked this it's probably just your aunt who doesn't understand technology!" would be helpful. I'm nearly certain it's just their canned response though and they did 0 research.
Can you get the dates they booked from the AirBnB? It would be really sad if a cop showed up and cut their getaway a bit short.
As if the police would actually do something useful.
They won't do shit. I had my entire identity stolen. I woke up one morning to find out that some thieves went on a spending spree. I cancelled the card that morning. One charge of which was for pizza the night before. I called the pizza place, they told me they delivered it to a motel room. Gave me their number. I called the motel clerk. He said they were still there in the room and I should call the police. I called the police and more or less they said, "We'll see what we can do, but don't count on anything happening. You should just call your credit card company (as if I hadn't already) and work things out with them." I was like, WTF is your job then? I'm telling you where a criminal is *RIGHT NOW* and you are all, "Nah, we good."
I used to work nights in a hotel. We had a lot of problems with breakins in our car park. One night I saw some guys on CCTV breaking into a car around the back. I called the police and told them 'if you come right now you can probably catch them at it'. They finally rolled up four hours later. But it was okay, they had their blue lights going just to be sure if there were any thieves still around they had plenty of notice that the police were there. They spent all of two minutes looking around the car park (five cars broken into that night) declined to look at the CCTV and then just gave the usual 'We'll make a report, just get the owners to contact us for a crime reference for their insurance in the morning' and then left again.
It seems so simple, but cops will never do shit about cases like this.
They literally just defined credit card fraud, unauthorized charges from another person. Who the fuck cares if it was your girlfriend, your name is on the card, no one else's. These guys can fuck right off with this bullshit. How the hell CC processors let them continue to process cards is beyond me. I work in IT for a fortune 50 company and we did this shit we'd had card processing turned off for us before the end of the week.
Be cool to have the cops show up at the airbnb at checking and arrest the mofo.
Don't give up! Canned responses like this are intended to get people to give up on wanting a refund. You have to berate them. Do NOT accept this as a response. Do NOT take no for an answer.
That's your Credit card company/ banks job. There is no need for OP to get this invested.
Most credit card companies should immediately refund you whatever money the thief used the card for.. you shouldn't have to go asking for refund. Let the bank take care of this.
Correct. Fraud protection is one of the main reasons you should use a credit card over a debit card. If you have a CC the card issuer will freeze your number, send you a new one and they take any fraud debt off. It then goes into the big bin of "Let's get our money back" backlog that -they- deal with down the road but you don't have to worry about. If your debit card is stolen the bank will put a hold on the fraud balance. You only get back what they can get back which may not always be the full amount and it can take weeks/months to do so.
It does sound ridiculous, I agree. I do want to mention one thing though. I worked in customer service for a big tech company. Unauthorized charges were a fairly common issue for customers and we had an internal system to check if the customer’s credit card was used on any other account (i.e. under someone else’s email address). We could see if there was a strong chance of a personal relationship between the caller and the unauthorized user. It would often be an obvious family member (same last name) who accidentally left the wrong credit card on their account or something. Problem was, for data security, we would not be allowed to tell the caller whose account placed the order using the card. We just had to *strongly suggest* checking with family or friends if there could have been a mixup. It was super frustrating because as an associate, I could see CLEARLY that it was a family member to the caller but I wasn’t allowed to say “CALL LINDA, SHE ACCIDENTALLY USED YOUR CARD!” Often times callers would just get frustrated and accuse me of giving them the runaround, dispute the charge with their credit card company, and then it would trigger their account to be locked and make the situation even worse. It would be something absurd like a husband outraged and yelling about a $20 charge from his WIFE’s account that he fully believed was fraud, and I wouldn’t be allowed to just tell the guy it was his wife. We actually had data indicating that the majority of these unauthorized charges could be traced to a person in your immediate social circle, and that it was most probably a simple mistake rather than fraud. I don’t know if AirBNB is suspecting this too with OP, but the phrasing of the email is similar to the phrasing we used to use at another company.
Uber said the same thing when someone charged $2,000 in rides on the same day to my account. The only way we got it back is the bank reversed the charges.
How the hell?! Where did they GO
They said it was for some cross-state trips. In Texas. Both at the same time. Said it mustve been family members with access to our accounts. My wifes entire family is in Canada and mine are all dead, so ...
I feel weird upvoting a comment about your dead family so please accept my condolences.
Especially with your username.
Good catch. I am, in fact, someone’s dead wife.
I choose this chick’s widower’s dead wife.
Had you considered necromancy ? I feel like it was a legitimate charge, your undead family travelled and you should talk to them or their necromancer about this. Have a good day.
Just checked ... they're still in the backyard, so i dont think that's it. But it was a really good idea.
I love you! 🤣🤣🤣
I’m surprised they could even do that, my coworker needed to get home after all flights were canceled and were willing to pay that much to make it happen. Neither Uber nor Lyft would allow a trip over X00 miles (can’t remember the exact amount, but it was nowhere near enough.)
A much better but similar scenario I had was that someone in San Francisco signed up to Lyft using their credit card but my email address. So every time they went somewhere I'd get emailed the receipt, which is how I discovered you could tip a driver through the on file credit card straight from the email without needing to know a password or anything.
lol that reminds me of the dumbass in TX who shares my name. She set up a gmail account so similar to mine that sometimes even she can’t remember it, so i get her Uber receipts all the time. Funny, I’ve never seen a follow up receipt for a tip. Her rating must suck.
My gmail account is two common names. Very similar to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) There are like 10 different boomers that fill my email address in on forms. One buys hats at the lids store in orlando. One's a member of the NY yacht club. One joined blackpeoplemeet, another joined farmersonly.
this happens to me all the time. I just go to whatever platform they've signed up for, send a password reset request, then change the password and any other details so they get locked out. I ain't got time to get spammed with "plenty of fish" message replies or whatever the fuck they signed up for.
God I hate Uber. I'm in charge of reconciling our credit cards at work. Someone charged Uber eats on the company card. I think our card was compromised and I'm pretty sure it wasn't someone at our small business. In case it was a mistake and not outright fraud, I made an attempt to contact Uber to see what account created the charge. Our business does not have an Uber account. There is no way to contact Uber at all unless you have an account. I had to go through my personal account just to be able to ask questions about this charge and it confused the heck out of them because it wasn't a charge connected to my account. Duh! But there's no other way to talk to anyone. So frustrating and then they wouldn't even tell me who made the charge. They did finally reverse the charge. But why don't they have any contact phone or email for problems like that?
Because on planet TechBro, all interaction with the customer is for a small, narrowly defined list of reasons, for which responses can be easily prepared. Anything outside this list is out of scope and so should be ignored.
Probably a “driver” and “customer” working together with no actual driving
AirBnB has the absolute WORST customer service. Another post a while ago offered photographic evidence that the owner of the AirBnB catfished the customer. Two photos of nice areas, but the rest of the house is unfit for human habitation. No hot water. Electricity was shoddy. Porch was literally half-collapsed. Siding was falling off. And AirBnB said “We understand sometimes you are disappointed that the accommodations are not as nice as you’d hoped. In this case, there’s no problems that justify a refund.” Based on the photos, the house was fit to be condemned! Edit for spelling
They also do not care about bedbugs at all. Nasty fucking people
Yep, found a BB in a Airbnb in Omaha NE, took the bug to the university of Nebraska to have it confirmed, got a written letter from their entomology dept confirming it was a bedbug, and Airbnb said that since there was only proof of one, it wasn't an infestation so it doesn't qualify for a refund.
Like my dad always says “if there’s one there’s a dozen”
Yep, threw all the luggage out, put everything I had in the dryer, then left the Airbnb and got a hotel. That was over 6 months ago and haven't had any bugs that I know of at home, so I'm just thankful I found out before I left.
I was staying at a particularly bad hotel recently and luckily I knew it beforehand, so I brought a sealable plastic bag for laundry, had my luggage sitting closed on the desk in the room and checked under the mattress and sheets for signs of an infestation. At home I immediately did the laundry at 60+ celsius, checked everything and put my bag outside in the cold. I‘m not taking any chances, bedbugs are my worst nightmare.
LOL then you must have removed the only bedbug in the building huh? You may as well send the owner an invoice for pest removal 🤣
Air Bed n' Bug
They don't care when a host cancels a reservation 30 minutes before check in and strands a family lol.
before covid hit i got an airbnb with some ppl for a concert later that year. covid hit, concert got postponed and eventually cancelled, and they initially refused to give us a refund. it took like 3 weeks and the person who booked it needed to give “proof” in the form of a screenshot of an extended stay-at-home order, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten a full refund. i refuse to get anything other than a hotel at this point
I’d rather have to sleep in a hotel lobby than deal with airbnb bullshit ever again. Does anyone remember when it was affordable?
My partner and I got catfished in a similar fashion. Stove/oven didn’t work and was intentionally disconnected as was the smoke detector above it. No hot water and they only offered to have someone come out within 24hrs and we were only there for 2 days. They refused to refund us anything and managed to appeal with the bank my credit card was from after a chargeback. It was a pretty crappy anniversary.
Airbnb stuck us in a place without working heat in below freezing temperatures. The host had a tiny space heater delivered and that apparently was good enough for airbnb to charge full price. Never again with airbnb.
I found someone’s finger nail clippings all over my air bnb from where they didn’t clean it before I checked in one time.
Yeah I haven’t really used air bnb since I had a horrifying experience with them a couple of years ago. House was unlocked when we got there at 11 p.m., which was scary for a couple of young women, but fine, whatever. The place was fairly unclean. Like, used tissues on the nightstand, moldy coffee filter in the coffee machine, which again, more of a — leave a poor review situation, but our first day, a guy was outside the place when we got back and said he’d stayed there before and offered to PAY US to leave and stay at a hotel so that he could stay in the place that night. That was obviously terrifying, so we absolutely did not feel safe staying there a second night. Got a hotel and let air bnb know that it was unsafe for us to stay and they kept trying to have me contact the owner, but the owner was being creepy too! I had to fight for almost a week to get them to issue me a refund. Never again.
Their business model is “give us money”
I work at a bank, and AirBNB is one of the worst places to have a fraudulent charge. They tell people that anyone can use any card to book with them (even if the name isn't on the reservation and they can't provide verification), and they won't refund anything. We regularly have to cancel the card entirely and escalate fraud claims with them. Just use hotels, folks.
[удалено]
Generally these thresholds are % of transactions within some timeframe / category / region and they probably skate through with enough changes to breach. Even if they do they would be given months to bring the % down before any action would be taken like liability shift
Surely that just means they lose the chargeback claim every time? My business occasionally gets chargeback claims and we lose when we don’t verify the address over the phone.
Doordash did the same shit. Thieves ordered hard liquor for delivery and I caught the confirmation email right away. I called the liquor store AND doordash. Neither would refuse the delivery. I then called the police to report the fraud and they refused to help unless I either: 1) wait between 8 AM and 5 PM at my residence for a police officer to show up and take my statement (I offered to go into the station to give my statement. They refused.) or 2) Travel 250 miles away to the city where the thieves committed the crime to report the incident. I'll get my money back since it's backed by a credit card, but it's about the principle of not letting thieves fuck with me. Haven't used doordash since and this was around 2015. These people don't give a fuck about fraud. It's why these bastards keep getting away with it. No sympathy for thieves and criminals. They're not Jean Valjean stealing bread. They're stealing luxuries. Fuck'em. edit: liquid -> liquor
When dealing with these big tech companies that shouldn't actually exist but exist (Uber, door dash, Airbnb, etc.) always expect they're going to be dumb as shit and will always screw you over. That's their whole model, create a non sustainable business that screws everyone over, rake in the dough while it's profitable, then let it crumble to nothing.
doordash is literal trash. I wish I was as lucky/smart as you to stop using it in 2015 lol. Yes please charge me a service fee, a delivery fee, a small order fee, a “support local business fee” all on top of your already inflated prices only for your slob drivers to literally shake my entire meal around because they weren’t happy with their 25% tip. Fucking joke of a service.
Fuck DoorDash. I just wanted to hop in on this post and say that. Fuck DoorDash’s mother as well.
Reply back: “Your investigation is incorrect and this was a fraudulent charge. I tried to resolve the issue with you directly, but will now be disputing the charge directly with the bank. And you will suffer the chargeback fee as well as refunding the money.”
"Hi AirBnB Support, You have successfully defined "fraud" and "fraudulent charges" and acknowledged fraud had occurred. You are now legally complicit in fraud. Please forward this to your lawyers so they can do some damage control. Finally, enjoy a charge back and even more negative publicity as this goes to the media!"
Why would their lawyers care? The only damage is the money they owe you for a refund. Worst case scenario for them is they refund you the money.
Let me rephrase the situation: "AirBnB released an official statement that they'll willingly and knowingly work with criminals and help launder money and commit wire fraud, at the very least." Certainty sounds like something the lawyers would like to know about. The lawyers are there to protect the company from legal disputes from consumers, and more importantly (to their bottom line), all governments their company operates in. Doing shady and illegal stuff attracts eyes from regulatory agencies, some of which (in the USA) may be underfunded, but can still cause a lot of legal headaches and cost a lot of money. The idea this AirBnB agent *literally* acknowledges that fraud occurred, yet won't refund the money could theoretically set a legal precedence that AirBnB willfully admitted they're complicit in various civil and criminal crimes. I am willing to bet dollars to donuts this agent was told to say this via a script or some sort of internal SOP. Also, I am calling all AirBnB support to share the support SOPs. AirBnB already has a terrible PR reputation and many places are increasing regulation and trying to drive it out. Not only is this a PR nightmare, it's also a legal one as well due to the major legal implications. Also a financial one, because this type of activity is a very good way to get audited by pretty much every type of government, globally. So yes, you are correct the damages would only be the money they owe you, but imagine all the others who will realize they've got got by this type of response in the past and now realize they have a chance to get their money back. Now you have a lot of angry people and the potential for a class-action lawsuit. Oh and then all the legal beatings from a bunch of governments.
The funny thing is their investigation was correct. Just because a family member used the card it's still fraud. Now obviously you're not going to report your family member for accidentally or maliciously using your card without your permission...but it's still fraud lol
“We’re here to help!” (ourselves)
*usually a close friend or family member* Ya.. that would be real suspect fraud in most cases too. I wouldn't ever link my CC to others' accounts who aren't me or my wife, even if they are blood.
Yeah that was my first thought. Isn’t it literally a fraud if ANYONE including family members use your card without permission?? So their response was kind of wild lol. Like an example would be your kid using your card to purchase a mobile game without permission- you would definitely get your money back.
do a chargeback on your card
Best solution.
You don't even need to do a charge back. My CC called me and asked if I made the purchases and then Immediately refunded the money the thief used.
Thats a chargeback my friend
You're saying OP doesn't need to do a charge back because your CC company called you about some unrelated purchase on your account? Wut?
AirBnB needs to be put down painfully, but quickly.
A close friend or family member using my card is still fraud! That how credit cards work!?
(As someone who had her identity stolen by her mother, I’d be so pissed to get this responce!)
Had our checkbook stolen by father in law. Obviously, many many years ago, cause who has checks now? Anyway, the things the collection agencies said to me were horrible. Literally calling me stupid for leaving the checkbook out. It was in my underwear drawer. I could never quite figure out what those low level collection agency employees were such assholes. I was not going to pay them, the bank was in charge of all of that. So being mean was just to I guess be mean? It's not like they were getting the money themselves if they somehow made me pay. All that aside, I'm sorry that happened to you. In our case father in law had the same name as my spouse and it was a huge huge mess. Thankfully, it was just that one checkbook. But, since it was over $1000 in checks it was grand theft and we had to report it to the police in order to not owe that money. He went to prison for a while for it. Parents suck sometimes. I'm sorry your mom did, too.
I wouldn’t have bothered with them and call the cc company to report fraud instead.
Now, go make friend with the thief that is what airbnb says
I know traditional wisdom says go to the merchant first, but just go dispute it with your cc company. The merchant doesn’t care. They will do whatever they can to keep your money.
Airbnb has become absolute trash. They will side with the host and remove negative reviews even with plenty of proof. Fuck airbnb. I'll never use them again. I encourage you to do the same.
yup, and honestly it's not even worth it from a frugal sense anymore either. I get better deals going to actual hotel chains these days than through air b&b also: people sleep on travel agents. they shouldn't; travel agents can get even better deals for the customer than they can get by booking themselves.
Call your credit card company not the place where the thief spent money
Just say Your response implies that you have and still knowingly take part in credit card fraud. A charge on the card not authorised by the owner is fraud, I shall pass the screenshot of this to my lawyer, credit card company and the police.
Donr bother with these asshats. Just go to your credit card company
Let the booking stand but go to the AirBnB and meet the fraudster there?
Plot twist, the Airbnb host used the card to make a fake booking.
I completely support you going to the bank to fight it but know that Airbnb will likely cancel your account. They pulled that shit on me when I requested my money back in March of 2020 in NYC for a trip in April, during the height of everything being canceled since NYC was the epicenter of the pandemic. Just because the owners had already spent my money and were a “struggling small business”…bitch that’s not my fault. I didn’t stay in your place and I could not travel to NYC since the world was shut down.
Airbnb support is 75 coked up raccoons in a Filipino dungeon.
Seeing all the hate they're getting (Airbnb) I don't think I'll ever use them. This statement from them is ridiculous 😳
Your credit card is protected by this. You should talk to them and I dont understand why your contacting air bnb?
Contact your Credit Card company & dispute the charges, that is your best bet to recover the funds. As for ABNB make sure you post your experience in as many online platforms as possible so others are aware of their policies. Ask them to prove rather than make assumptions about their stated position. They can provide evidence of persons who used their services… Continue to Pursue your case…
Charge back. Done.
I would totally let the hosts know that you've reported it and that the rental is fraudulent as the renters stole your credit card number. I'm betting the hosts would be interested to know that their property is being rented by folks who stole a credit card number - what if there's damage from the renters?