‘If this can seriously save someone…’: Customer tries to cancel $2,000 Airbnb rental 6 months in advance. They won’t let her

A bride who was trying to make her bachelorette party coincide with a Miami music festival in March pivoted once she realized airline tickets would be too expensive for her crew. However, an Airbnb host is getting in the way of those plans by refusing to refund her for her cancellation.

The tale of woe comes from TikTok creator Allie Kozlowski (@alliekoz). In it, she appeals to Airbnb to make the situation right, after cancelling well in advance of the host's deadline for a full refund, the host refusing to give the refund, and Airbnb support siding with the host.

As she explains in the caption accompanying the video, tagging Airbnb in the message, "I’m a 2025 bride who can’t afford to lose a deposit on a place I never stayed at and cancelled a year in advance. Please help!!"

Why she needed a refund

The video has generated more than 14,000 views on it since putting it up on Wednesday. In it, she starts by saying, "If this can seriously save someone from dropping thousands of dollars with Airbnb, I suggest never using them. Only stick with hotels and Vrbo."

She explains she booked an Airbnb in anticipation of Miami's Ultra Music Festival the last weekend in March. "It ended up that when flights dropped these past few weeks, we could not get a flight out," she says. "And if we could, it was over $1,000. I could not ask my friends and family to spend thousands of dollars to go to my bachelorette on top of everything else, and they're flying here for my wedding."

So, she pivoted to a Scottsdale trip, thinking that, since she was well in advance of the December date to cancel and get a full refund, she'd be in the clear. But that's when she ran into her current predicament. She shared the listing in a separate TikTok video.

How Airbnb support responded

"So we get Airbnb support involved," she said. "They are siding with her. Like, sorry, it's up to her. Like, no can do. And, like, listen, even if you can just give us an Airbnb credit for that, I would appreciate it."

She also added, regarding making sure she was in the right, "I read the directions, I read the fine print. I'm not missing anything. This is a you problem."

She concluded the video by considering getting legal advice to get out of the situation, but then she realizes, "But then I have to pay for legal advice. So, it's like, I can't win here."

Airbnb bringing in record profits

A Vox article from November 2023 said that, despite the issues arising between numerous hosts and guests, as well as New York's pushback on Airbnb last September, as the New York Times chronicled, the company is "making more money than ever."

The article noted, "What started as a scrappy idea offering an affordable alternative to hotels has now made Airbnb a target for lawmakers and a magnet for critics. Airbnb may not be collapsing, as some doomsayers are predicting, but it is facing a reckoning—an existential questioning of what it offers and where it will go from here."

What should she do?

One commenter suggested, "Your credit card will side with you, you never got the goods and services you paid for. Just dispute it with them."

Another wondered why this was an issue, noting, "This isn’t an Airbnb problem. If it’s in the cancellation window, hit the cancel button. It doesn’t ask the host and it’s an automatic refund."

Someone else surmised, "Keep contacting Airbnb support, if they say no, hang up and try a diff rep till u get what u want."

A happy resolution?

Kozlowski, reaching the Daily Dot via LinkedIn mail, reports that her persistence paid off.

"After contacting them for the past week and a day, we got our refund back with an additional $500 because the supervisor said that should have never happened and the 11 people in the past week that we chatted with are going to go through training again," she said, name-checking a Vivian with the company for making it happen.

She then added, "It’s extremely sad what we had to go through to get our own money back, which is why I made the video because I don’t want other people to have to go through this. I never thought it would blow up like that but it was worth a shot to just help one other family or group trying to enjoy their vacation."

@alliekoz ‼️????AIRBNB HELP ‼️???? @airbnb I’m a 2025 bride who can’t afford to lose a deposit on a place I never stayed at and cancelled a year in advance. Please help!! #fyp #2025bride #2025wedding #bachelorette @Alix Earle can you help a girl out?! ???????? #airbnb ♬ original sound - alballz

The Daily Dot has reached out to Airbnb via email for comment.

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The post ‘If this can seriously save someone…’: Customer tries to cancel $2,000 Airbnb rental 6 months in advance. They won’t let her appeared first on The Daily Dot.