Hey. That’s me, smile and all, in the cab to LAX en route to Austin Texas for the 2012 SXSW (pronounced South-By-Southwest for my non industry/film/music friends) festival. I did not realize that after several weeks of anticipation and round the clock work in preparation for my time in Austin, the Universe would be throwing me a few curve balls once I landed.

In typical SXSW fashion, my housing situation for my time in Austin had fallen into my lap the previous week through a friend. Unfortunately this friends friend had left out the material information that for the bargain price of $250/night, her place was lacking both running hot water and working Interent. Fearing my buddy Meb would kill me when he got into town, the apartment owner and I quickly agreed to go our separate ways and I turned to AirBNB to locate a new place to stay.

Enter Debbie. She was renting a two bedroom house in East Austin in a semi-edgy neighborhood that I knew and liked. After dealing with AirBNB’s ridiculous phone situation (they make it extremely challenging for you to have a normal conversation via the phone with the landlord) I’d decided to go with Debbie after she persuaded me that her place was perfect for what I was looking for and ‘*very* peaceful’ … her exact words.

A few clicks and booked. I had to keep going as I had a very busy week ahead and I hadn’t had a real night of sleep in weeks. After another 4 hour night of rest on my buddies futon, I dreamed of settling into Debbie’s East Austin retreat. In the pouring cold rain, I walked over to Whole Foods and purchased $300 of groceries for the week then through some legit miracle found a cabbie hanging in parking lot to take me, my guitar, my 3 computers, 300 kozies and $300 in groceries across town.

This is where the dream of AirBNB stil has a long way to go. As I did my first walk through of Debbie’s place, the first thing that was obvious was that her two bedroom place was not 2 bedrooms. Anyway you look at it she had one large master bedroom. In an effort to rent her place out as a more desirable 2 bedroom, she had put up a 3 part folding screen separating two parts of her bedroom. Anyone would quickly realize this was a complete joke, but I was tired and worn and trying to make the best of the situation. As I looked at the second bed, it looked like a couch I’d see at a doctor’s office made to look like a bed. Legit. At that time she informed me that she had an inflatable mattress … an option I was definitely going to opt for.

As I started to bring my luggage into her house the next thing I noticed was that Debbie had neglected to tell me she was a chain smoker. As I looked at the ash tray at her desk it became increasingly obvious that she had been smoking inside her house for quite some time. At this point I couldn’t take it anymore. How the hell was I going to tell Debbie that this would not work and was not what I had agreed to? Again, I was pretty sure that Meb would kill me when he got into town and I was sitting there with an insane amount of luggage and perishable food, in the rain, with no where to go or stay in Austin as the smoke from her house creeped into my clothes and skin. I so badly wanted this to work as I had a tremendous amount of load on my shoulders for the week but I could no longer convince myself that this is what was sold to me.

In as polite of fashion as possible, I told her straight up my issues and we agreed to go our separate ways. She had mentioned something about AirBNB not charging me yet so I assumed it would be no issue. This is where the real bitch of AirBNB kicked in. Now homeless in Austin, I walked my stuff over, via several trips, to my buddy John’s place to figure out what my next move was. I immediately contacted AirBNB and cancelled the reservation.

First the CSR (Customer Service Representative) on the other end told me in a condescending tone that I could cancel via their website. Sorry for having a degree in Computer Engineering, but I already tried that and as I walked her through what I saw on my screen, she agreed this was impossible and processed the cancelation.

I thought my pain would end there, but the next I heard from them was that I would be refunded $1200 from the $2120 they had charged my card. Debbie’s false sell of an apartment and the 5 minutes I spent at her place walking through it was going to cost me $920. WTF?! I’ve been bootstrapping my business for the last 3 years and parting with a G for a false sell was not an easy pill to swallow.

I quickly wrote to them

Allen Romero, Mar 09 14:46 (PST):
why does it say my full payment was not refunded?

phone: +1 415 XXX-XXXX

And received back

Sophie B, Mar 11 08:21 (PDT):
Hello Allen Romero

Thank you for reaching out to us about your cancellation.

Please keep in mind that each listing has one of five cancellation policies specified in the Details section of the listing. The cancellation policies range from Flexible to Super Strict. Each host sets their own cancellation policy. You can go to this link to review each cancellation policy in full – https://www.airbnb.com/home/cancellation_policies#flexible_nav

Please note that our guest service fees are non-refundable.

Your reservation with Debbie had a flexible cancellation policy. The reservation was cancelled at 2012-03-09 22:22:06 UTC. Therefore, you were refunded for 3 of the 5 nights for a total refund of $1200.

If you have any further questions please let us know. We are always happy to help.

Kind regards,

Sophie B

https://www.airbnb.com/safety

Seriously? This is how they deal with customer service? I realize some folks rant about this stuff never having been on the other end of the line but I have a tremendous amount of empathy for Customer Support having started my career at Google as a CSR answering thousands of emails and building out their tech support processes for handling hundreds of thousands AdSense publishers in 2003.

In short, there is a time and a place to break protocol and resolve the issue. Not every thing can be answered with a canned response … especially when it involves one thousand dollars of your customers money.

As it stands now, I’ve filed a dispute with American Express and find myself dealing with a major headache going back and forth with airbnb over their channels and protocol. I checked and Debbie’s place is no longer listed on AirBnB. Shocker.

Much like everyone out there, I have a lot going on in my life (yes I am trying to launch a business) and spending hours to resolve this issue is not something I have any interest to deal with. This would have been a non-issue with any hotel I stayed at in the hospitality business. If AirBnB is going to compete in this market with their millions of dollars in venture backed funding their going to need to up their game.

Will I recommend AirBNB to anyone in the future? Not unless you want a headache!