In six years as a nomad, I’ve stayed in dozens of Airbnbs. In contrast to headline-making horror stories, most of my experiences have been fine. Even the worst stays amounted to little more than footnotes — such as the bed in Fargo that was so soft, I had back pain after just one night; or the host in Missoula who was renting out the house’s front yard as a campsite.
But by far, the worst Airbnb is the one I never got a chance to stay in.
Pittsburgh
It’s March 2024, and I’ve just booked a month-long stay in Pittsburgh to start on May 19. After submitting a reservation request, some Airbnbs require the hosts to manually confirm. Other Airbnbs are set to automatically accept all reservations; this was such a one.
Nonetheless, I send the host a message through the Airbnb app, introducing myself as a teetotaling digital nomad with no kids, pets, or allergies. She doesn’t respond, but that’s fine — my booking was confirmed.
Two months later, the morning of Sunday, May 19, I wake up in Massachusetts and begin the long drive to Pennsylvania. Before I hit the road, I send my Airbnb host another message, confirming that my reservation begins at 3 PM, I’ll be arriving that evening, and I’ll need the keypad code to enter.
By the time I get to Pittsburgh at 7:30 PM, I haven’t gotten a reply. I’m now standing outside the Airbnb with no way to get in. Everything I own is in my Prius parked on the corner; my bicycle is mounted to the roof rack. The sun is setting, and I need somewhere to put my stuff and myself.
I send the host another message through the app. No response.
Then I notice that the app lists her cell number, so I text her. Still no answer.
I try calling her.
The number’s been disconnected.
I make another call, this time to Airbnb’s customer support. They say they’ll try to get ahold of the host and will follow up with me through the app, but they can’t provide an estimate of when they’ll do so.
Not one to sit idly by while others try to solve my problems, I engage in some light Internet sleuthing, which quickly reveals my host’s home address, just a half-mile away. I drive there and find myself in a narrow, one-way alley of double-decker apartments abutting each other. I squeeze my car as much to one side as I can, get out, and immediately find a cause for concern: the apartment matching the address I found has its windows blacked out. I knock nonetheless. No answer.
At that moment, a cyclist rolls down the street and pulls up next door. Pointing at my host’s home, I politely ask, “Do you happen to know who lives here?”
“Nobody lives there. The house has been empty ever since the owner died six months ago.”
… That would explain the months of silence.
Finding a new home
It’s 9 PM before I hear back from Airbnb: unsurprisingly, they too have been unable to contact the host. I tell them what I’ve learned, but I don’t have any documentation to back it up. Regardless, they cancel my reservation and give me a full refund and this advice:
We advise you to find a safe hotel to spend the night, and tomorrow make a new reservation in a listing that suits you. We advise you to keep your hotel receipt with you and share it with us. If tonight’s night at the hotel costs more than the price of the night you originally paid with us, Airbnb can send you 20% of the value of our original night. The platform covers 20% for just one night.
A night in a hotel would give me time to evaluate my options and decide on the next steps. But hotels have a check-out time of 11 AM, and if I book an Airbnb for the next day, I wouldn’t be able to check in until 3 PM. I can’t have a four-hour gap of homelessness in the middle of my workday, and I don’t want to take more vacation time.
Instead, I immediately start searching the Airbnb app for another place with availability for the next month that has a kitchen, Wi-Fi, and parking. I find one that’s 20 minutes from where I planned and an extra $100/week, but still within budget. I submit a reservation request, which requires a manual confirmation from the host; despite the delay, I prefer this extra step, given what’s just happened.
While waiting, I start driving to the general neighborhood of the Airbnb. By the time I get there, this new host has responded in the affirmative, giving me the flat’s exact address and entry code. Altogether, I was without a place to stay for only two hours. I was surprised at how stressed I wasn’t during that time; I suppose, after five years of nomading, I knew what my options were and that I had the means to ensure I wouldn’t be sleeping in my car.
Ironically, 48 hours later after settling into my home for the next month, I get an automated message asking me to review my stay at the Airbnb that got cancelled. I gave it one star, noting, “I don’t believe this Airbnb is still in operation. Four hours after my reservation was to begin, I hadn’t received the entry code. Neither I nor Airbnb Support were able to contact the host, so they cancelled and refunded my reservation.”
Prior to my review in May 2024, the last review for this flat was from April 2023. The cyclist had told me that the late proprietor’s sister was going to be managing the rental properties, but clearly that never happened. It’s hard to say how many other potential guests were locked out of the flat as a result of these various oversights — or why Airbnb didn’t take swifter action: months after the events of this story, the apartment was still listed as available for rental.
Communication is key
I’ve always made it a point to communicate clearly and frequently with my Airbnb hosts; my experience in Pittsburgh underscored the necessity of expecting the same in return.
For every Airbnb stay, I send five messages:
- When submitting the reservation, I introduce myself.
- 24–48 hours prior to arrival, I confirm the reservation. (If it’s an Airbnb that I’ll be sharing with the host, I use the free Glympse mobile app to provide my ETA.)
- Once I’ve checked in, I confirm my arrival and that everything is working properly.
- 24–48 hours prior to departure, I confirm that I’ll be leaving. If the host has not provided specific cleaning and checkout instructions, I ask for them, so that I can fulfill their expectations.
- Immediately after I’ve left, I let them know I’ve checked out, thanking them for the stay. If I’ve departed much sooner than the checkout time, the host often appreciates this note, as it means the cleaners can arrive earlier.
If at any point I don’t receive responses to these messages, I now know that to be a red flag.
Fortunately, my experience in Pittsburgh has been the exception rather than the rule, and my communication protocols have helped me earn reviews such as these:
- “Great guest! Very responsive and easy going!”
- “Such a pleasant guest! Super polite and friendly. A complete pleasure to have. Highly recommended!”
- “Ken was easy to communicate with and left the space in great condition. Would happily host again.”
- “Ken was very open about his plans.”
- “I would host Ken again. He kept in contact great. Was clean, tidy, and great to talk to!”
Epilogue
A few weeks into my stay in Pittsburgh, I was taking a guided walking tour of downtown. The tour guide asked me where I lived, and I explained that I was a nomad staying at an Airbnb across the river.
“That’s an unusual part of town for a tourist to stay in,” she observed.
“Yeah, well, I was going to stay on this side of the river, except my host died,” I lamented.
My tour guide exclaimed, “Oh, you mean Brandy*!!”
Apparently, my tour guide hosts an Airbnb of her own, and she belongs to a Facebook group for Pittsburgh Airbnb hosts — a group run by the late Brandy. It was a shock to that entire Facebook community when she passed away unexpectedly. My guide had also heard that Brandy’s sister was going to manage the properties, and she was going to reach out via Facebook to see why this wasn’t happening.
It’s a tragedy that someone passed away, no matter the circumstances; whatever inconvenience it put on me pales in comparison. But by the time I arrived in Pittsburgh, that tragedy was already months in the past and not in anybody’s ability to influence. In the aftermath of such a loss, it’s understandable how a rental space slipped through the cracks of both the family and the Airbnb platform. All we travelers can do is be proactive in our communication and backup plans to ensure we don’t get overlooked, too.
Do you have an Airbnb horror story? Share your experience in the comments!
* Name has been changed
(Adapted from my previous reddit post)
Whoa! That’s an interesting story on a couple of levels. Always important to think about the human realities that are possible on the other side of the interface. I’m glad it worked out so well for you. I thought this story was going to make me less likely to go nomad for a bit, but nope. :-)
I mostly use booking.com instead of AirBnB nowadays. They have much better policies for guests, whereas AirBnB seems to have policies which are better for hosts. Probably my worst AirBnB story was in 2018 we went to Spain for two weeks. We first stayed in Barcelona, and as were at the train station ready to depart for our next location, Valencia, my wife got a WhatsApp message from the host stating that there was flooding in Valencia. The restaurant where we supposed to get the key from was closed, but the apartment was still available. It was notable that this message came from outside the AirBnB communication channel. We decided it sounded sketchy, so we ended up renting a car and driving to Andorra instead, which turned out to be wonderful. We did have a difficult time figuring out how to get into the apartment, which was stressful at 9 p.m., but we did eventually get it figured out, and really enjoyed Andorra.
My favorite comment, “Ken was very open about his plans.” That is right on point!
AirBnB horror story? Yeah, we’ve got one. Back in 2016, we were wrapping up our Hawaii trip with a couple of days in Honolulu. We had booked an AirBnB in a 30-story Condo complex. Our suite was on the 22d floor I think. Naturally, we had pre-paid the whole thing. We got there, and the place was crawling with roaches. Ugh. I hate roaches. We called the host, who explained that we’re in a tropical region and we should expect some creepy crawly critters; it just goes with the territory. That certainly wasn’t the case in the perfectly clean Holiday Inn where we stayed the first 3 nights of our trip. He said he didn’t believe in using chemical pesticides. Hm. My wife was so grossed out that we actually gave up the full payment, and went across the street to another hotel.
My airBnB horror story was experienced the first time I rented and airBnB.
When making the booking, the payment transaction was a comedy of errors.
I booked the rental using my Paypal account. The paypal account had my credit card setup as the primary funding source. A few seconds after clicking the final button, being a large transaction, I got a fraud alert text msg from my credit card company asking if the transaction was legit. I responded yes and got a response saying that that transaction was declined but is now cleared and to have the merchant run the card again.
Not a big deal, except I forgot that I had a bank account setup as the backup funding source in Paypal. A bank account that I was phasing out and which only had a few dollars in it. To try to prevent a bounced transaction and all the associated fees, I called Paypal and they said they couldn’t do anything to stop it and either the bank would have to block it or the merchant would have to reverse it.
It was after 5pm on a Friday (bank closed), so I tried chatting with and eventually calling airbnb. They basically were no help, after much run around insisting they couldn’t “change the payment method on the transaction”. I got assertive and said, can’t we just cancel the reservation (it was fully refundable) and then place a new one using my credit card directly (instead of Paypal) which had now been cleared for the purchase.
They said, oh, yes, they can do that. So they did that. And everything was fine. I let the host know what was going on and there was no problem getting the new reservation accepted and since the original was cancelled, Paypal didn’t try to process the transaction through my bank and nothing bounced.
That was a hell of a first time rental experience! It was just a comedy of errors. Airbnb could have done better but mostly I see it was just a domino effect of things going wrong.
Wow, what a crazy journey! And then you ended up talking to someone who actually knew your would-be-but-wasnt-alive-host…that’s incredible. I really enjoyed this post. Thank you!!