AVOID LASTAY AT ALL COSTS! THE HOST TRIED TO SCAM US!
We had booked this place with the special 24 hour cancellation policy, that allowed us to cancel for free up to 24 hours before check-in. Less than 24 hours before check-in we received a message from the host saying that due to unforeseen circumstances we needed to change properties. This message contained a link to the new property. The first red flag was when this new property was partially booked for our stay. After a bit of googling I realised that this is not accepted practice on the Airbnb platform - the second red flag. A little bit suspicious I phoned the host. The host informed us that the gate remote was not working and that is why we needed to change properties. She pushed us to accept the new property which she said was an upgrade. It was a bigger property but not a nicer property and was in a slightly less nice neighbourhood. We declined the new property and said we wanted to cancel our booking. She offered for us to stay in the original property with the broken gate remote and offered to look for alternative properties, however she said that there were alternatives that were out of our price range. This comment was facetious and I found it odd that the host would firstly, assume our budget and secondly, not be willing to offer nicer properties when there was clearly a fault on her side. We did not want the alternatives so we pushed to cancel again. However, if we cancelled the booking we would only get half our money back as per the cancellation policy. Since this was an issue on her end we asked her to cancel the booking. She refused to cancel the booking because then she would get a $100 fine. We insisted she cancelled the booking because it was her fault.
THIS IS THE UNSAVOURY PART:
She told us we should cancel the booking and she would make sure she got the rest of the money to us the same day on the next day. She said she would send the money via paypal. Since I was not born yesterday, I knew this was an instant red flag and refused the offer. Her response was "you can google me, I am a real person and not going to ruin my reputation on this". As I am well aware that the internet is not all true, I told her this was unacceptable. She refused to cancel the booking and told us she would get back to us with a solution. We never heard from her again.
I raised this with Airbnb support who were able to cancel the booking and give us a full refund. A huge thank you and to all the Airbnb reps who helped us through this! You guys were all amazing and really responsive.