A luxury villa on Ibiza advertised on the Airbmb website turned out to be non-existent when a customer booked it and paid £3,450 on request to the non-existent owner. Sadly the payment was made to the fraudsters by wire transfer, which offers no fraud protection, unlike credit cards.

Unsurprisingly the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) have regularly warned of the growing dangers of booking accommodation through any websites, because of the risk of fraud. Airbmb reject the accusation that fraud warnings on their website are not prominent enough and point out that in the above example the customer, who had not used Airbmb before, made the mistake of paying to the “owner” directly, rather than through Airbmb, which then offers protection for customer payments. (Source. Mail on Sunday Travel News)

A current Super-Complaint against the banks by Which? accuses them of not doing enough to protect consumers duped into transferring money to fraudsters.

For many it seems curious that Airbmb cannot check their own website regularly for fraudulent entries, which only they can do, and delete them.