He never changed his mind. He wanted to amend the name on the booking to rectify what is essentially a clerical error. It’s not his fault if the only way to do that through the software is to effectively cancel and make a new booking.

If we’re talking about laws, the law varies between states and countries and just because something is buried in page 59 of a clickwrap agreement nobody reads doesn’t magically mean the case is a slam-dunk - there will be many nuances a court will consider if it actually gets there, which it will not because Airbnb and maybe even the host has way more skeletons hidden in the closet to risk showing up in court over a cancellation fee - in fact the only reason this wasn’t resolved in favor of the guest is because the entire case was offloaded to someone in a third-world country barely capable of speaking English and definitely not paid nor trained enough to understand and care about the situation - so they’re definitely not going to be flying in a lawyer to argue their case for a few hundred bucks in court.

With regards to a chargeback fee, Stripe charges around 30 bucks last time I checked? Far from breaking the bank I would say.

> it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host

I would absolutely pay good money to see that host argue their case in court when the whole dispute started out of them trying to make a quick buck instead of allowing the guest to change their name. However just as the above there is no way they will show up in court considering it’s very likely they’re not even abiding by their local laws when it comes to short-term rentals, and the writing style of “Claire” suggests the whole thing might be a complete scam in the end.

A contract is a meeting of minds. A valid contract requires that both sides know what they're agreeing on.

He thought he was paying for a reservation for a family member, the host and AirBnB thought he was paying for a reservation for himself.

No actual contract was agreed upon here, as the parties did not actually agree on anything.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffles_v_Wichelhaus for one of the earliest examples of case law on this, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds for more general discussion on this topic

Isn't it fraudulent though? They didn't even use the service.

The other side's argument will be they cancelled the reservation and issued a refund under the agreed policy (so, partial refund only)

No. If you agree to a contract, and then choose to back out of that contract, or not use the service or whatever you agreed to, that’s your choice.

For example: if I rent a car, but then don’t pick it up, the rental agency has not defrauded me. If I buy some food at a restaurant and then don’t eat it all, the restaurant doesn’t owe me a (partial) refund.

If the person believes the host breached their contract, then they can try small claims courts and/or lawyer town.

More realistically given most Airbnb hosts are land lords violating tenancy and hotel regulations it might be worth contacting the local regulatory authorities.

But while you make think the behaviour of the host here is illegal, they placed this person booked was available, and was available under the terms they apparently agreed to, so being told “no you can’t violate the terms you agreed to” is not fraud. This person could still go and stay at this property themselves, they just couldn’t have some other person stay their instead.

Your local laws will dictate what a contract can and can't do, but generally contracts require a "meeting of the minds" and it's up to a court to decide what that means and which clauses are actually enforceable (that's also why we have courts instead of the whole "code is law" crypto-dystopian BS, because not every possible edge-case can be predicted and written in the contract in advance).

In this case the guest did not realize the bookings were nominative, and once he made aware, he wanted to change the booking to the proper person. A shortcoming of the Airbnb platform is that there is no way to transfer a booking to another account, so the only way is to cancel and rebook.

Notice how at no point the guest's intention was to cancel and back out of the deal. The cancellation was suggested by the host themselves being unreasonable and trying to exploit a policy technicality to make a quick buck.

I have definitely had cases though where I've run into "Where did this subscription come from?" and there was no apparent way to cancel. Last was something Yahoo-related a number of years back. Ended up doing a chargeback and canceling the charge.

I would absolutely chargeback in this case. Some non-standard clause WHICH THIS ABSOLUTELY IS RELATIVE TO HOTELS (OR EVEN REGULAR B&Bs) buried in T&Cs somewhere should not be acceptable.

maybe he can sue the host in small claims?

This is fraud.

Sadly parent's point is correct. Chargebacks are not to protect from jerks and bad customer service.

If there was a contract you first agreed to, but you find out afterwards that one of the clause is problematic in your case, and the other party is a jerk about it, chances are your card issuer won't even accept the chargeback. Most of the time you need proof that the merchant is the one breaching the contract.

More over most honest businesses would rather you contact them for a refund rather than a chargeback. A chargeback should not be your go to for someone stealing your credit card or whatever as that costs the business (which is itself a victim) money. For Amazon etc that might not matter, but for smaller businesses it can be an expensive event. The payment processors charge them significant fees for any charge back (to “discourage” the need for them). (Ignoring that those companies may sell through Amazon or whatever, and those intermediaries take double digit % of every purchase, but don’t pay a cent of any refund).

Where? Because recall that if it is fraud they can file a criminal complaint, but my reading of this article is that they agreed to a cheaper booking for a stricter cancellation policy, they agreed that they were booking for themselves (afaik a standard condition for airbnbs, if not airbnb the company), and when told that they were required to adhere to the terms of the contract they chose to cancel, under terms they had explicitly chosen.

I’m not saying that I think the host was operating legally, I’m saying I don’t see a fraudulent transaction, I don’t see the host not providing the agreed upon service, nor agreed upon restrictions.

It’s an Airbnb so 50/50 the host is violating a bunch of laws (claiming simultaneously to not be a hotel, motel, or rental unit, etc), but the transaction for the purpose of a chargeback does not appear to be fraudulent on its face.

They lied about not getting cancellation messages from AirBnB for a while, hoping the person would go away and trying to refund $0, then when the person made it very clear they weren't going away, the host denied the cancellation request saying they "couldn't" give a full refund (lie). I'm sure they then turned around a rebooked the room, since it had only been delisted for that date for a couple of hours. To recap, they lied, cheated, stole, and double dipped. It was fraud.

Hoping to see some regulation going into that space pretty soon.