They had a reservation at this address, but it was not theirs to stay.
A bizarre series of technical failures lead to a homeowner and a group of loved ones having a very bizarre holiday season.
This Christmas, Philadelphia resident Molly Flaherty was returning from a family reunion when she discovered a woman and her parents were trying to break into her home, the group convinced they had rented it out on Airbnb, the Philadelphia plaintiff first reported. And indeed they did, but the listing was not published by Flaherty, who immediately began trying to have the fraudulent listing removed from his home.
She was initially unsuccessful, only getting the platform to stop advertising her home after the Inquirer contacted the company about its protocols for incidents like this. It was only then that the short-term rental company stopped advertising her home and Flaherty claims she was never told directly, which worries her greatly. .
“I don’t know if that [listing] going to reappear or if there are still people who have future reservations and think they have a reservation at my place,” she told the Inquirer.
As for Nicole Brunet, who rented Flaherty’s house for her parents, “there was really no way of knowing” that the listing wasn’t real, especially since it had over 100 reviews and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, she told the publication. .
Airbnb told The Post the incident was rare, Brunet received support and a full refund – and the listing has now been deactivated. The listing, the tech company insisted, was not fake but from a previous owner who experienced what is called a account takeover.
Flaherty, however, said she felt burned by the whole experience.
“I continue to feel frustrated that Airbnb views me, the true owner of the home, as a third party who seemed to have little to no consideration on their part,” she told The Post. . “As a landlord, there is no way to prevent this. Friends told me after hearing this that they checked Airbnb to make sure their home was not listed.”
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