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/u/literatureandlentils
Hello r/travel! Hoping y’all can help me make sense of a puzzling Airbnb interaction I’ve had happen twice in the past month. I am holding two Airbnb reservations for an upcoming Europe trip—one in Slovakia, one in Lithuania, if location matters—both Superhosts, both well rated with a lot of reviews and relatively recent stays, and both currently still within the window for free cancellation. Not immediately after booking, but seemingly a random amount of time later, each Airbnb sent me a message on the Airbnb messaging platform trying to lure me into clicking a third-party off-site URL. The Lithuania Airbnb’s message was a pretty obvious scam (“oh we need to reverify your payment, transfer a deposit here and we’ll transfer it right back”—yeah no), while the Slovakia Airbnb’s was a more generic “go to this link to finish your registration and confirm reservation.” I obviously did not click on either link.
Where it gets weird, however, is that in both cases, before I could report the scam message to Airbnb (I’m in the US, so both of these interactions occurred 7/8 hours ahead on Euro time, i.e. overnight when I was asleep) I got a follow up message on the Airbnb messaging platform from each host, telling me to disregard the scam messages with the bad links and reaffirming that my booking is still confirmed. The Slovakia host said something to the effect of “we asked Airbnb to delete that previous message, but they said they can’t.” So I ask you, what’s going on here?? Is it that common for Airbnb hosts to get hacked and have fraudulent third parties try to insert themselves into the middle of a transaction? Are the hosts trying a very halfhearted scam to get at the most gullible travelers and then back pedaling when they don’t get an immediate taker (seems like a poor risk for getting your Airbnb shut down)? Any other conceivable explanation?
More importantly, can I trust the follow up messages from the hosts that these are still legit reservations? Should I cancel while I’m still in the free cancellation window? I would prefer not to, since now we’re getting closer to the trip and I suspect the selection of replacement Airbnbs will be smaller, plus who’s to say I won’t just happen to encounter the same weird scam from another Airbnb? I appreciate any insight y’all might have
submitted by /u/literatureandlentils
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Where it gets weird, however, is that in both cases, before I could report the scam message to Airbnb (I’m in the US, so both of these interactions occurred 7/8 hours ahead on Euro time, i.e. overnight when I was asleep) I got a follow up message on the Airbnb messaging platform from each host, telling me to disregard the scam messages with the bad links and reaffirming that my booking is still confirmed. The Slovakia host said something to the effect of “we asked Airbnb to delete that previous message, but they said they can’t.” So I ask you, what’s going on here?? Is it that common for Airbnb hosts to get hacked and have fraudulent third parties try to insert themselves into the middle of a transaction? Are the hosts trying a very halfhearted scam to get at the most gullible travelers and then back pedaling when they don’t get an immediate taker (seems like a poor risk for getting your Airbnb shut down)? Any other conceivable explanation?
More importantly, can I trust the follow up messages from the hosts that these are still legit reservations? Should I cancel while I’m still in the free cancellation window? I would prefer not to, since now we’re getting closer to the trip and I suspect the selection of replacement Airbnbs will be smaller, plus who’s to say I won’t just happen to encounter the same weird scam from another Airbnb? I appreciate any insight y’all might have
submitted by /u/literatureandlentils
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Continue reading...
