Not surprised by this article. I lived in Airbnbs for 19 months during the pandemic and can share three similar horror stories. Airbnb's response was terrible. In one case, I had no water for three days and sewage leaking into the bathtub; Airbnb was totally unsupportive. In another case, the unit was run down and had no hot water; Airbnb was not able to help me so I actually had to shell out my own money to cancel the stay and book a new one. In a third incident, the unit was run down, unsafe, and was not following local rules that required it to have a STR license. Airbnb support did not seem to care that the host was breaking the law, and did the bare minimum to support.

The flip side is I had also some amazing AirBnb stays (thank you to my wonderful hosts in Port Angeles, WA and Galveston, TX), and that does give me some hope for the platform.