I've used AirBnB four times.
Two of those times were just fine, and two were awful. What I particularly did not like, and why I'm blaming AirBnB is that it was their customer service that is awful.
I can understand, with so many listings, and so many renters, that there will be problems. But they should go out of theri way to resolve listings that are fradulent or misleading, and help the stranded customer. Instead, they have an unacceptably cavalier attitude that is not acceptable.
The first awful one was when I booked a room in Utreckt several months before a conference I was scheduled to attend. Just by co-incidence, it happened to be the exact same weekend that the world championship soccer tournament was taking place in Utrect. Neither the host nor I knew this would happen when the booking was made.
A few hours after I checked in, the host was downstairs yukking it up with his friends. He then entered my room to tell me that his uncle was sick in the hospital in Germany, he had to leave, and I did, too. So now I'm stuck in a strange town, with no place to go. I found a computer, but it was in Dutch, so I could not log on to AirBnB to see about finding another place. AirBnB takes no responsibility when the hosts leave you in a lurch. Since he cancelled, I could not write a review. AirBnB gave me a $25 credit which expired a year after it was issued, so it went to waste.
The last time I used AirBnB to book a room in Palm Springs, the room was not as it was represented. I didn't have a thermometer, but the host looked up the temperature on the internet, and she said it was 88 outside, and the room, which had no air conditioning, was hotter than outdoors. Her website said, "Do not touch the air conditioning, it is set for 82 degrees. If you want it colder, I will have to charge more." She has since removed the words "air conditioning" from her description, but it was there before. She told us that if we didn't want to sleep in that room, which was tiny and stuffy, we'd have to go somewhere else. So, 7 at night, after a day of travelling in 90+ degree weather, we have to find a hotel. I told her I would ask for my money back, and she said she would call in the morning to find out what to do.
When I got checked in to the hotel, I spend hours trying to find help on AirBnB's site. I found a resolution center, where I filled in the form, and they said they would give the host 72 hours to respond, and to wait until then. Three days later, I went back, and they said that the host accurately described the room, and would not give a refund. I've received several emails since then from AirBnB. I can't decide if they were computer generated by a program that was poorly written, of it they were written by someone who is semi-literate in English - they were rather confusing, and could not be parsed into exactly what they were saying. Some said the matter was done, a decision had been made. Others said, if you are satisfied with this, you need do nothing. I think that's the jist of the emails - as I said, the writing was very poor - missing verbs and weird sentence structure. So I wasn't sure if the matter was still open for discussion. I didn't put in everything in the form I filled out, and if there was a place to add more info, and challend the decision, I wanted to do that, but I saw no way to do that, and earlier emails had said the decision final.
Then I got an email giving me a $97 dollar credit.
I called my credit card company to cancel the charge. They give the host 90 days to respond, and then they'll make a decision. I'll come back and report what my credit card company said.