Complaint Review: Airbnb

Before using Airbnb, you might want to do an Internet search and see just how many complaints there are against this company.  I did this and was extremely reluctant to use their service, especially since I would be leasing a space in London and I live in the U.S. 

But, after spending several hours researching other sites and communicating with my potential host, I decided to give it a go.  After all, he was willing to give me a pretty good deal, and everything helps when converting USD to GBP.  Well, when I went to book the space, our agreed to GBP price had been converted to a much higher USD than was currently, or even recently, been utilized. 

My host explained to me that he had no control over the conversion rate being utilized by Airbnb and that it favors the host.  So I contacted Airbnb and spoke with Valarie in their customer support department who agreed that the GBP to USD conversion rate was wrong and was even more beneficial to me than I had figured.  So she tried to enter the correct GBP to USD conversion rate but couldn't.  She created a support ticket and explained to me that someone would get back to me w/in 48 hours, and that she would email me confirmation of the support ticket.  Well I received the support ticket but NO ONE from Airbnb ever contacted me again. 

BEWARE!!!  This is apparently a common issue, wherein Airbnb converts the currency in favor of the host and NOT the guest, so that Airbnb can charge a more expensive service fee on top of the total. 

I will never use this service.  They don't care about customer service - AT ALL!!