When renting a space, the place is supposedly for the tenant only. Typically, landlords must ask for permission if they need to visit the property or carry out maintenance work. However, this Airbnb host in Florida forgot this rule and failed to respect the privacy of her guests by invading the property, even though it was the host’s property.
Redditor AloneAsAGod1 shared on r/AmIOverreacting that he and his coworker often travel for work and have been renting an Airbnb for two months. In addition, it is not just OP and his coworker living in the property, as they both travel with their wives and a 3-month-old baby. On the day of the incident, OP and his coworker were out working when OP’s wife called them hysterically. According to OP’s wife, she was wearing all her clothes in bed when she felt someone watching her. Then, OP’s wife realized that it was the host of that Florida Airbnb who invaded the property and was watching her from the hallway. No idea how long the landlady had been watching OP’s wife. The worst was that she didn’t notify that she was coming in, and no one knew how she got in.
The excuse of the landlady was “I thought you left without saying bye“. OP was very upset about her interference, even though it was her house. So, OP immediately contacted Airbnb support, only to be informed that “their privacy policy was not violated“. This would upset anyone, and OP was furious. Mainly because they had to leave the property five days early, and Airbnb wouldn’t refund anything.
The worst part of this case is that OP can’t contact anyone from Airbnb’s support service who is even human. Even the response to the complaint arrived in the same chat; a bot answered. To this, user apathetic-taco responded by saying, “Yall gotta stop arguing with robots. Call and speak to a live person instead of wasting your time with the automated system“.
However, contacting real workers is not always possible. Something that user maury_mountain explained, “I’ve noticed a lot of places hide their phone numbers and make it a requirement to talk to these bots. I get that people today seem to need immediate attention and gratification for an issued but I’d take being on hold for 15 min than talking to a god damn robot any day. PS For the future robot overlords I’m not talking about you, just your rudimentary ancestors.“
It seems that OP, his coworker, and the wives will have to keep pressuring Airbnb to bypass the bots and take action.
