AirBNB damage claim

born_again

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

I assume AirB&B have charged £250 to your card, not sure if you could try a chargeback on that. @born_again again  

You could file small claims against AirB&B, they will probably fold. 

Sadly can't see any chargeback rights here.

Aylesbury_Duck

I'm curious.  What's the item you're alleged to have taken?

I'd try a letter before action threatening court action and see what happens.   I presume the host has as much proof that it was there at the start of your stay as you have, i.e. none.

Alderbank

Airbnb is a large multinational company. They have lots of specific policies for different occurrences.

One (article 2869) which might be of interest to us deals with an insurance policy which Airbnb carries against the risk of hosts' property being discovered to be missing after a let.

The policy includes how promptly hosts must report the loss, how to prove ownership and what steps the host must take. To start with, the host must try to recover the property from the guest. If the guest doesn't have it, Airbnb refunds the host and claims on their insurance policy. No need to travel from Ireland.

That sounds a prudent business plan. Airbnb wants hosts with nice, well furnished homes to come forward.

It seems reasonable that the host will discuss missing items with guests. The host knows what their stuff looks like, etc. Apparently is is common in the confusion of packing up that guests gather up stuff accidentally which is not theirs. They are equally likely to leave some of their own stuff behind.

Host Damage Protection terms
 https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2869

justanotherkeeper1

Alderbank said:

Airbnb is a large multinational company. They have lots of specific policies for different occurrences.

One (article 2869) which might be of interest to us deals with an insurance policy which Airbnb carries against the risk of hosts' property being discovered to be missing after a let.

The policy includes how promptly hosts must report the loss, how to prove ownership and what steps the host must take. To start with, the host must try to recover the property from the guest. If the guest doesn't have it, Airbnb refunds the host and claims on their insurance policy. No need to travel from Ireland.

That sounds a prudent business plan. Airbnb wants hosts with nice, well furnished homes to come forward.

It seems reasonable that the host will discuss missing items with guests. The host knows what their stuff looks like, etc. Apparently is is common in the confusion of packing up that guests gather up stuff accidentally which is not theirs. They are equally likely to leave some of their own stuff behind.

Host Damage Protection terms
 https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2869

The item was an emergency battery pack, not something you'd just suddenly carry with you by mistake. I don't understand the policy there, clearly Airbnb should claim against their insurance but I guess it's easier for them to just 'arbitrate' and decide to side with the host to claw back costs here.

I might try the letter before action seeing as chargeback is not of any use to me here. I will attempt another appeal but with 0 evidence it's sort of hard to stand my ground.

Aylesbury_Duck

But it's equally hard for the host to assert you stole something.   What are you supposed to do to prove otherwise, send them a photo of your living room without a battery pack in it?!

Hopefully the threat of court action will elicit a different response.  If it got to court, I'd hope the court would consider that you're unlikely to have stolen something so ridiculous as a battery pack.  Given the context of the similarly-valued refund, I think the balance of probability is that the host has engineered the situation to replace lost revenue.

justanotherkeeper1

Thanks for the feedback, I can still appeal again on their site so will try a few different angles.

Is it worth mentioning my intention of small court action in the appeal? 

Aylesbury_Duck

justanotherkeeper1 said:

Thanks for the feedback, I can still appeal again on their site so will try a few different angles.

Is it worth mentioning my intention of small court action in the appeal? 

Personally, I wouldn't.  It might just get their back up, and then you'd have to try court to get your money back.  Hopefully common sense will prevail, and if it doesn't, that's when you send a formal letter before legal action.

What you'd have to do is make sure you sued the right entity.  I'm not sure what that is in this case, AirBnB or the host themselves.

justanotherkeeper1

For what it's worth:

The payment request from Airbnb got rejected because my credit card conveniently hit its limit. They emailed and said they put a note on my account, that they would pay from their own insurance and that was the end of it.