He had a reservation at this address, but it was not for his stay.
A strange series of tech failures leads a homeowner and a group of relatives into a very bizarre holiday season.
This Christmas, Philadelphia resident Molly Flaherty was coming home from a family gathering when she saw a woman and her parents trying to break into her home, convinced the group they rented it on Airbnb , Philadelphia Inquirer informed earlier. And indeed, they had, but the listing was not taken down by Flaherty, who at once began trying to remove the scam listing for her home.
Initially unsuccessful, she got the platform to stop advertising her home when the Inquirer contacted the company about its protocol for such events. That’s when the short-term rental company stopped advertising her home, and Flaherty claims she was never notified directly, which worries her greatly.
“I don’t know if it [listing] Is going to pop back up or if there are still people who have future reservations and think they have reservations in my house,” she told the Inquirer.
For Nicole Brunet, who rented Flaherty’s place for her parents, “there really was no way to tell” the listing wasn’t real, especially considering it had over 100 reviews and It had an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, she told the publication.
Airbnb told The Post that the incident was rare, provided assistance and a full refund to Brunet — and the listing has now been deactivated. The tech company insisted that the listing was not fake, but from a previous homeowner who had experienced what is known as a account acquisition,
However, Flaherty said she felt burnt out by the whole experience.
“I find it frustrating that Airbnb treated me, the actual home owner, as a third party with little or no consideration on their part,” he told the Post. “There is no way to prevent this as a homeowner. After hearing this my friends told me they checked Airbnb to make sure their home wasn’t listed.”