A Philadelphia woman was stunned when she found her own home had been listed by someone else as an Airbnb rental.
Molly Flaherty says she was shocked when she discovered four people trying to enter her home in the city last month.
She says one of the group’s members, Nicole Brunet, told her she had rented the property on the platform for her parents who were visiting the city from California.
But Ms Flaherty had never listed her home on the property rental site, she said The Philadelphia Investigator.
And when Ms Brunet retrieved her Airbnb booking from her phone during the Christmas Eve incident, the address and photos matched her home.
Airbnb eventually removed the listing after the fraud was reported and said it was a case of “account takeover” where a scammer steals an Airbnb owner’s password.
And the company reimbursed Nicole Brunet for the $1,000 she spent on the reservation.
She told the newspaper that “there was really no way of knowing” the listing was not real and had over 100 reviews and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.
“It looked like any other roster, which is kind of the scariest part about it. I’m just like, well, I can’t trust anything,” she said.
The company said The Independent“Issues like this are rare, and we were disappointed to learn about it. We provided guest support at the time to help sort things out, including a full refund, and disabled the list.
Ms Flaherty said the company told her it did not mediate disputes and encouraged her to contact the person who listed her home.
“I continue to feel frustrated that Airbnb considers me, the true owner, a third party who seemed to carry little or no consideration on its part,” Ms Flaherty told the New York Post.
“As an owner, 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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