Airbnb has — with no hyperbole — changed the way we vacation. For those few of you who don’t know, Airbnb is a peer-to-peer website which connects people with extra space to rent with travelers who will soon be visiting the area. These accommodations range from extra rooms to guest houses to complete apartments or homes. For the first time in history, tourists can stay in homey to luxurious accommodations often for a fraction of the price of a hotel suite. And the system works great for the most part. Sure, you have to be cautious as there are tricksters and a-holes on both sides of the equation. Honestly, minor complaints are so rampant, there’s even a site dedicated to the day-in, day-out trials of Airbnb. Most of them don’t rate very high on the “nightmare” scale. Every so often, though, there comes along someone who really goes out of their way to get creative in the way they disrespect their fellow human beings. This is in no way meant to dissuade you from trying the service as a host or guest, but here are and handful of Airbnb horror stories you should be aware of.
1. The Palaiseau Murder
Let’s start on the more horrific side of the scale. When a group of 20-somethings spent a mere $435 at a 7-bedroom mansion (complete with swimming pool), they were most likely anticipating an evening of wine-soaked revelry in a swanky Parisian neighborhood. Unfortunately, what they got was a body, decomposing on the edge of the property. The corpse had been there for the better part of a month, though no identification was made at the time of the discovery. An Airbnb spokesman pledged to help in any way possible, adding, “Over 80 million people have traveled on Airbnb and problems for hosts and guests are extremely rare.” Nobody wants to stumble upon a corpse while on vacation, but you can’t blame this one on either host or guest.
2. Tourist Cubbyholes
Looking to spend a night in Brooklyn for a mere $31? So cheap it sounds illegal, right? Yeah, it was, which is why New York’s Office of Special Enforcement (aka, the illegal hotel raiding squad) shut down a 950 square foot apartment that had been divided into 8 separate rooms. The apartment was shut down because there was, “no natural light and ventilation.” In addition, the OSE stated that the apartment had inadequate means of egress (which is building talk for “it’s hard to leave quickly,” which is bad when, you know, fires happen). Sure, travelers may have only gotten a single, cheap Ikea bed and the opportunity to share 2 bathrooms with seven strangers, but they did get free WiFi, which is almost worth the thirty bucks. The moral is, do your homework before making your Airbnb arrangements, especially if it sounds too good to be true.
3. The New Year’s Bash
Anyone who’s ever used Airbnb can tell you that part of the initiation process is communicating with the proprietor of the place you intend to rent (or the person who’ll be staying with you, depending on which side you’re on). Most of the time, it’s a pretty painless process; you exchange names, pleasantries, payment info, times and dates to exchange the house key, that kind of thing. Of course, that all depends on whether or not both sides are being honest. Reshma Vasanwala and Jim Santi Owen thought they were renting their place out to an aging man from Chicago. Unfortunately, what they were getting was a local kid who just wanted to throw a kickass New Year’s Eve party. And throw he did, leaving thousands of dollars in damages. Airbnb issued a statement saying it had “reached out to the host to work with them under our $1 million host guarantee” and had banned the guest from ever renting from the site again.
4. The Kidnapping
This one is straight out of a Law & Order episode. According to the New York Times, on the evening of July 4, 2015, Jacob Lopez called his mother to claim that his Airbnb host was holding him hostage. Lopez claimed the host locked him in a room, stole the key and then proceeded to taunt him, “rattling knives around in the kitchen drawer and pressing him to submit to a sexual act.” When Lopez’s mother called Airbnb to get the address, they stonewalled her, giving her the number for the local police — a number which didn’t work — and then forwarding her calls directly to voicemail thereafter. Unfortunately (and obviously), help didn’t come in time. Lopez eventually convinced his captor to release him, but not before being sexually assaulted. Said an Airbnb spokesman in an email, “We realize we can learn a lot from this incident and we can do better … We are clarifying our policies so that our team will always contact law enforcement if we are made aware of an emergency situation in progress. Safety is our No. 1 priority, and we want to get our hosts and guests as much help as possible.”
5. The Working Girl
Okay, so technically this one wasn’t an Airbnb rental, though the arrangement began there. After being contacted by a young woman looking for a rental, a homeowner decided to rent her property for two nights. Unfortunately, she chose not to go through Airbnb for the process. Anyway, the renter took her brief ownership of the property. Soon after she left, though, the homeowner started getting calls from worried neighbors who were a little vexed at the constant stream of men entering and leaving the home. Yep, you guessed it; the woman had rented out the home in order to host a string of johns. The homeowner called repeatedly to ask the renter to leave, to no avail. However, shortly after returning home, the mystery woman took off.
6. The Neighbor Dispute
This one the owners may have brought on themselves … maybe. Here’s the deal: Michelle Huang and her boyfriend Thomas Payne own three apartments in a 6-room apartment building in San Francisco. Two of these three apartments were being used for Airbnb rentals. Okay, before we go further, you should know that there’s a dude named Sandeep Andre Hingorani who also lived in the building and hated both the turn-key service and the couple. Anyway, one day Huang and Payne rented out one of their apartments to one Jim Tako, even though his “Airbnb profile picture was of Don Johnson, circa-Miami Vice and did not have any reviews from other hosts or guests.” Anyway, Tako took up residence in the apartment for two months, only to reveal at the end of his tenure that Tako did not exist, he was in fact Hingorani (shock). And since he’d occupied the apartment for more than a month, he had the rights of a tenant and was entitled to stay. A court case is pending.
7. The Love Fest
This guy wins for grossest infraction on our list (except maybe the murderer). Mark and Star King were reasonably comfortable when they rented their Calgary home to a young man. Unfortunately, they returned home to find out that the renter had actually used their property for an orgy. Among the terrors that awaited the couple were, “bags of trash piled up in the hallway, furniture that was completely torn up and stained, dishes filled with wet cigarettes, a chicken wing that was stuffed into one of Star King’s boots, and worst of all, ‘body fluids’ that included semen and vomit.” The total in damages amounted to $75,000. Too bad the guest gave a fake credit card. Fortunately for the Kings, Airbnb picked up the entire tab. Of course, they could pay whatever they wanted; if I’d unknowingly rented out my house for a stranger’s orgy, it’d be time to move.
8. The Hidden Camera
German tourist Yvonne Schumacher and her SO Kevin Stockton were visiting Stockton, California for a three-week stay when things started to go awry. First, the place was a mess, with the master bathroom so filthy that Schumacher refused to use it. Here’s a personal thing about Schumacher, though: she sleeps in the nude. Sometimes — like in the middle of the night — she’d even walk to the guest bathroom totally naked. Normally, that would have been fine … until she and Stockton found a wide-angle camera behind the bookshelf in the living room. According to the complaints, “not only was [the camera] able to pick up both audio and video, but it was also configured to be controlled remotely.” In other words, the Airbnb host had managed not only to record Schumacher in the buff, he’d also recorded several of the couple’s private conversations.
9. The Total Trashing
Back in the early days of Airbnb, one of the first big complaints was from a host who’s apartment was ransacked by a guest. “They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card and grandmother’s jewelry I had hidden inside. They took my camera, my iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive filled with photos, journals… my entire life.” It was a PR nightmare for Airbnb, but they rose to the challenge and agreed to help out in any way they could, including financial assistance and helping them find a new home. This incident led to Airbnb implementing new security measures to protect both hosts and guests.
10. The Dog Bite
Mike Silverman had used Airbnb all over the world, so had no reservations about using the service on his trip to Argentina. There was never any mention of pets, so he was taken off guard when he awoke to find a Rottweiler staring him down. He put out his hand as a gesture of friendship (bad move) and received a serious bite on his forearm that left a 6-inch gash. He rushed to the hospital where he stayed two nights and had to pay cash. At first Airbnb claimed their liability didn’t cover stays outside of the United States. However, a little bad publicity in the New York Times helped Silverman get his medical bill covered, plus a little something for pain and suffering.
