Help, am I being scammed?!

[amijustnaive]

I have an Airbnb booked for just over two weeks time in France. It’s a small studio, basement, air con but no windows. It cost £350 for 5 nights.

I got a message from the hosts via the app today to say that they were very sorry but the aircon has broken. They gave me two options - stay and get a partial refund, or they would transfer my booking to another of their properties. They apparently can’t get an engineer to fix it until the end of August, after my stay is done.

They explained that the studio was unbearable without the aircon and they would recommend switching. I switched.

I am now in a much nicer property and it was more than double the cost of the original one. It’s in a better location, bigger and brighter.

The booking is now all confirmed in my app, and looks legit. But now I can’t help but wonder if they’re scamming me?! They refunded me and I booked into this new apartment for the same cost as the previous one. They had the thing turned on where you basically have to ask them to book and they decide if you can or not.

Help! Am I being scammed or are they just really good Airbnb owners?!

YABU - they’re just nice people. Chill out.

YANBU - phone Airbnb support tomorrow and get them to check it out

France is in a heatwave. I imagine you can't get an air con repair person out for love nor money. We had to wait four weeks recently near London, and that's without the fact that it is notoriously difficult to get anything done in Paris in August.

I think they're being nice to protect their good reviews. If they have other properties spare, why would they annoyed you when they could just move you?

Have you been to France before??

August is holiday month. Getting anything done is near impossible. Everyone is on holiday!!

Yes, but the bigger property was also empty and probably unlikely to get booked this close. So offering you it at the same price still means they’ve got £350 coming in rather than having 2 empty properties

This. Nothing gets done in France in August.

They are just very good hosts. Enjoy your holiday!

It’s a bit like here at the moment… heatwave and no fans or paddling pools in stock anywhere! It’s summer, people’s air on will breakdown in this heat and air on engineers will be in demand.
The property owners likely have a favoured person they use but if they’re booked up then they’re booked up… a 3 week wait for work to be done is nothing!

Do they have SuperHost status on Air BNB? If they do…they’re legit.

You clearly no little about Paris! August NOBODY works, they all leave Paris en vacances

enjoy your stay, they’ve rented you somewhere that wasn’t occupied for the price of your booking which they’d have to cancel anyway. This way they’re losing nothing.

Definitely contact airBNB because your mind is on alert now and it will spoil the start of your holiday coz you wont know what you are walking in to.

I was scammed via booking.com for apartments in Paris, cancelled, managed to get refund from bank and booking.com eventually, then rebooked another which also turned out to be a scam but I didn't send any money, ended up booking an aparthotel directly to be safe - if it seems too good to be true it probably is - Google the name of the property and ask if it is a known scam and see what comes up

I think they sound like decent hosts who have decided not to risk a bad review by charging you extra for moving you to a different place at short notice..A bad rating on Airbnb can have a big impact on a listing so it’s probably worth the £400 loss to them if they can avoid that. If they have lots of good , recent reviews for each of their properties then they are probably legit I reckon. Hope it goes well OP!

You’re going to France but don’t know that a huge number of people in France take most of August off? And now think you’re being scammed? Maybe do some research about basic cultural norms before you visit a country to save you from bizarre paranoia.

Im on the Airbnb hosts subreddit and they are all paranoid about bad reviews and cancelling guests so I imagine they want to preserve their ratings.

Why would they pay a team of aircon engineers to sit around doing nothing for most of the year? It's much cheaper for them to lose £400.

I had something similar with a holiday cottage in the Peak District. We had booked a very small cottage, a couple of days before they contacted me to say that there was a problem with the boiler which they wouldn't be able to get fixed in time and they offered me a much larger and nicer cottage instead at the same price. It never once occurred to me that it could be a scam, and it wasn't. We left a very good review.

It’s France, not somewhere that’s that different to the UK!

That I’m concerned it’s a scam, because it doesn’t make sense that they’d lose £400

They could lose an awful lot more than £400 if you leave a poor review about being forced to sleep in a boiling non-air conditioned hell hole with no access to ventilation. Good reviews are everything to a business on Airbnb.

I live in Spain, not France , but here its been impossible to get aircon engineers out - they are booked up until September. Plus most companies in France/ Spain have annual holidays during August.

France is very different to the UK with different cultural and business norms. August is holiday month, many, many people leave the cities for the countryside and not much happens.

Le grande vacances is a well known phenomenon.

Clearly not that well known.

What would the point of changing apartments be to a scam though? You’ve already paid your money, they could have just kept it if a scam. No need to bring air con into and changing apartments into the equation.

As pp have said it’s entirely plausible they can’t get anyone to fix it in August in France.

They will not lose money if the property was empty and they will not lose reputation by allowing you to end up like a roast dinner.

Used to be the same in Italy too. Probably still is.

My thinking was they would have me turn up and I’d not be allowed in. I’ve been able to look into it further this morning and it all seems very legit. The company has thousands of brilliant reviews, they’re super hosts, and the most recent review for the new Airbnb is from 3 days ago. This has literally changed the entire trip because it’s literally perfect! So I think I didn’t want to believe it just in case

Well that’s good news OP enjoy your holiday!

France is really different from the UK, in the way that people work generally.

It’s also really hard, if not impossible, to get work done in August; the whole country considers it to be a holiday month.

Have you visited France before?

Although you would need to live in France to discover all the many differences between our two countries.

I hope you have a marvellous holiday.

I think they are good hosts