I never managed to contact a human about it.

The airbnb dispute process allows you to request money from the host, but doesn't let you get a full refund - only ~80%. In my view, the house not existing warrants at a minimum a full refund.

Instead I took it to my credit card company and got a full refund from them.

The money is released to the home owner 24h after the arrival date if no complaint has been raised by the renter. Luckily haven't had a reason to test this though.

This so much. Uber/Lyft were shockingly better than taxis. I tried AirBnB expecting the same and wow was that not the case. Went to a beach and was hoping to have a destination ready _with_ cooking facilities(hard requirement traveling with an allergic child). Arived ther & spent 45 minutes wandering up and down the beach showing the listing/owner photo to everyone in sight. Nobody's ever heard of them. Later that day the owner who lives hundreds of miles away airbnb messages us to say that the name of the beach resort and the contact info aren't what's actually shown in the listing. Of course we don't have internet then & have already given up and chosen another hotel. By the time we got back to civilization/internet we've already missed the window to leave feedback/dispute. First time in my life I've ever done a credit card chargeback. What a colossal PITA. I figure I wasted 2 to 4 hours fighting with their website between signup(reproducible bugs), trying to dispute/leave feedback/contact them(gave up eventually), and the chargeback. Totally not worth it for 30 something bucks but darn they need some sort of feedback, because I really _want_ to like them. They _should_ be uber/lyft for apartments because that would be awesome, but my experience was a million times worse than agoda/travelcity/whatever.

The girlfriend and I wanted a cheap experience in South Beach, Miami. We found a reasonably priced one bedroom (queen bed and a pullout couch) apartment a block from the beach with tons of restaurants and bars nearby. If we got a room in any of the hotels down the street, it would have cost double to triple the rate. We used some of the money we saved from not getting a hotel for a rental car and were able to get groceries and tour the rest of Miami on our own. We were pretty lucky to find the apartment that we did, it was recently renovated, was spotless, and the owner was the nicest person ever. The major selling point was just the price and the ability to have our own kitchen, something you usually don't get unless you upgrade to a huge room. We could have easily split the cost with another couple and saved even more but the place was just right for us. I would get the same place again if we ever go back. My parents are a fan of the hotel experience, they have the money to afford it. We could have too but we valued the "living" experience more than the "visiting" experience.

> Seems similar to my experiences - AirBnB neighbors throwing a rooftop party and their 'emergency' support won't help unless I can provide them with the airbnb listing of the owner (which I don't obviously have), rather than just the address.

> In situations like mine it's easier to call the police - AirBnb aren't interested in helping and having a record of consistent antisocial behaviour (and illegal letting) will help you take action against the owner.

It seems that the situation that your parent describes:

> > Called that and was left waiting in the queue for 3 hours (about a house I had booked which didn't exist) before I gave up and had to sleep in the car.

is different. That is a situation where a product that AirBnb had sold did not exist, and for which they should be held accountable. Any guarantees AirBnb makes about guests' behaviour (I don't remember if there are any) are to hosts, not neighbours; it seems to me that, if the hosts are not properly monitoring their guests' behaviour, then that should be a matter for the police. (What would you want AirBnb to do in that situation? It seems that at best they could address the issue of future parties, but not do anything about the one currently going on, which was, presumably, the problem.)

Thanks for politely understanding and agreed I could have worded that better. :^)