CRYSTAL, Minn. – Jim Belmonte's new Crystal home was rented out on Airbnb. It's just that he had no idea, until his doorbell rang last Friday.
“Hi, are you Tom?” the man asked, at his doorstep.
“You have the wrong address. That’s not my name,” said Belmonte.
The man told Belmonte he had paid a fee to stay the night at his home. Belmonte told him he had no affiliation with Airbnb and advised the man to call the company.
The man walked away, confused, and when Belmonte logged on, he found an Airbnb listing with his address, for $25 a night, posted by a verified host, but the photos on the listing looked nothing like his home.
“I genuinely felt bad for the gentleman too, he was a very nice guy, very calm. After I decompressed the situation, I thought, this could have gone far different,” said Belmonte. “Where is the security? There is somebody at the front door that thinks he has a right to my home, that’s not OK.”
When Belmonte called Airbnb, he says the listing with his address was reposted, then disappeared. He became more concerned when he says Airbnb did not address his situation in a timely manner.
Two days later, Airbnb apologized for what it called a rare mistake, because of Jim's street, Georgia Avenue North. The company said a formatting glitch mixed up his street with where the host lived, in the country of Georgia.
“An entirely different continent across a massive ocean to here,” said Belmonte. “The correlation is razor thin, hard to equate. There really is a broader reaching safety issue, and you don’t really want people to make plans and have them be shattered.”
Airbnb emphasizes the situation is not a scam.
“We apologize to Mr. Belmonte, his family and our guests for this incident and the delay in our response. We have been in contact with them to offer our full support, and have removed his address from this listing. This was a mistake, an incredibly rare error, but even so, we have launched an internal review. We are constantly working to improve our platform, our policies, and our protections,” said Airbnb, in an issued statement.
“Please know that we take cases of fraud very seriously on our site, and I can assure you that this appears to be a genuine error on the host’s behalf that will not happen again in the future,” an Airbnb spokesperson said, in an email to Belmonte.
Belmonte still has his worries, and wants users to do their research, because a simple Google street search comparing photos could have shown the photos in the listing did not match his actual home.
Photos of mountains and a large, historic tower appeared in the property listing. Belmonte’s home in Crystal is on a quiet, new cul-de-sac street near a wooded area.
“We are technically in a valley of Crystal, and we will take the view that we have,” said Belmonte.
Belmonte filed a police report, and Airbnb says it's conducting an internal review.
Airbnb also has several other safety tips here for guests and hosts. Among them, the company says always read ratings, profiles and reviews, and always pay on the Airbnb website. Never pay a host directly.