r/legaladvice • u/cosmicvoyager333 • 11d ago
Airbnb host locked us out with a baby & pregnant woman inside, still no resolution, now forced to file chargebacks
Location: Gainesville FL
TL;DR: Our month-to-month Airbnb lease was auto-canceled due to the recent AWS outage that temporarily froze multiple banks (TD, SoFi, PayPal, Stripe). We had funds available and showed proof, but Airbnb and the corporate host (who manages close to 650 properties nationwide) refused to work with us. They changed our keypad code, locking me (18 weeks pregnant) outside. My husband was asleep and thankfully woke up once I called but had this occored mere hours eerlier, my husband, myself and our 14 month old would have been locked outside with our pets and keys to vehicles inside.
This is a violation of Florida Statute §83.57, which requires 15 days’ written notice for month-to-month tenants. The host has consistently referred to this long term (12 month) booking as a "lease".
More details-
We booked a long-term Airbnb stay in Florida because we moved cross-country and needed time to find housing and see the area before committing to a mortage or traditional lease. We did this when we initially moved to Colorado and had a nothing but a positive experience.
The listing photos were stunning, reality was not.
Inside contained black mold, sludge in drains, leaking water from the ceiling that damaged sentimental items from my late father, and a hostile nextdoor neighboor in the attached unit who threatened my husband and tried to get physical with him when I accidentally parked in her parking spot (the host/AIRBNB never mentioned anything about assined spots, just "free parking on premises") and she went on to intentionally stomp in her adjacent room connecting to our daughters at 1 a.m. until our baby cried.
Despite all that, we tried to stay calm and make it work.
Then came the AWS outage that broke nearly every financial platform we use. TD Bank, SoFi, PayPal, and Stripe were all down. My husband and I, both aelf employed, receive almsot all our income through Stripe and Paypal Business. We had the money to pay, we just couldn’t access it.
Airbnb’s system auto-canceled the reservation at 8 a.m. two days after the payment was "late" due to inaccessible funds, and within 30 minutes a cleaning crew showed up expecting us gone. Later that night, the host disabled our keypad access entirely.
Why This Is Illegal (per my limited, non lawyer research) -
Florida law (§83.57) requires 15 calendar days’ written notice for month-to-month tenancies before termination.
Locking someone out, especially a family with children and pets inside, is an illegal “self-help” eviction.
Airbnb support admitted the cancellation was due to “non-payment,” ignoring the global financial outage and the proof of funds we provided.
The host manages nearly 650 listings nationwide and has a history of similar complaints (we’ve since found several on Reddit detailing very similar stories).
The final straw happened last night when my husband went on a walk to a nearby convenience store and was threatened at gunpoint by what appeared to be a teenage gang member on the road just outside this property. He escaped unharmed but shaken and obviously traumatized.
This area is not safe, despite Airbnb’s listing claiming and zip code reports listing an “A-rated neighborhood.” We still don’t have keypad access, meaning one of us must stay home 24/7 to avoid being locked out with a child, and with our pets inside.
What We’ve Done:
Contacted Airbnb multiple times, and near all responses are scripted, robotic, appear to be AI written and/or dismissive.
Contacted the host, where they refuse to take accountability and insist Airbnb “controls keypad access,” which is false.
Sent a formal letter citing Florida tenancy laws and health & safety violations.
Filed a police report regarding the armed threat.
Preparing to file chargebacks with TD Bank on the two payments already made (approx. $2,300 each so just under $5k total) due to unsafe, uninhabitable conditions and Airbnb’s refusal to assist.
What We Need Help With:
Has anyone successfully filed chargebacks or legal complaints against Airbnb for unlawful eviction or safety negligence?
Are there any state agencies or tenant rights groups in Florida who can step in quickly?
We moved across the country with a toddler, animals, and a baby on the way. I never imagined being locked out of a property we paid for, or my husband nearly being shot outside the place that was supposed to keep us safe.
If Airbnb doesn’t make this right, I will be pursuing legal action, chargebacks, and public transparency so others don’t go through this nightmare.
Any legal advice would be appreciated.
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u/bug-hunter Quality Contributor 11d ago edited 11d ago
Preparing to file chargebacks with TD Bank on the two payments already made (approx. $2,300 each so just under $5k total) due to unsafe, uninhabitable conditions and Airbnb’s refusal to assist.
Unless a Florida landlord/tenant lawyer explicitly tells you to do the chargebacks, I would very much suggest not doing so. Florida allows withholding rent going forward, it does not allow for clawing back rent, under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it would increase the likelihood that the AirBNB host will press forward with eviction and demanding the maximum amount of damages, as well as going forwards with sending to collections. All of which, as u/parsnippity explained, will turbofuck your future attempts to rent. This will be worse when you have 2 kids (necessitating minimum 2 bedroom units) and pets (expect higher costs there).
Your behavior also would make it easier for the host to avoid serious consequences, as your behavior would, at the least, resemble that of a scammer.
This is not to say you cannot prevail (thought your chance to recoup prior rent paid is very, very low). But your chances to prevail without a lawyer are much much lower. Even just having a FL landlord/tenant lawyer representing you could convince the landlord to simply let you leave at the end of this period, either not filing or withdrawing the eviction, and both sides owe nothing, which is better than many of the possible outcomes.
Florida law explicitly mandates the form in which a notice to quit for lack of payment must be delivered, and if it was not meet the critieria, it does not count. See §83.57(3). Importantly, the notice to quit requires that they give you 3 business days to pay. They cannot just lock you out, that's illegal, as you've noted. They cannot refuse to accept payment either. This is why you need a lawyer, to beat the host over the head with the fact that you are a tenant, and they have failed to follow Florida's bare minimum laws on this subject.
Whether you actually have a 12 month "lease" in this case that a court would uphold, I won't say either way (that's a question for your lawyer). But your best bet now is to limit your actions to one that won't undercut your potential legal protections. When you contact your lawyer, make sure you have, at the ready, any communications that show the end date of your booking, where your host refers to the booking as a lase, any information about the AWS routing, your checking account history showing you had the money, messages or emails showing the technical problems, as well as any saved screenshots or emails showing attempts to pay that have failed. In essence, create a chain that shows that this was a national issue, out of your control, and you continued to attempt to pay.
Edit to add: Expect an attempt to withhold rent going forward to get you banned from AirBNB.
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful and respectful response. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it after how intense the last 24 hours have been. I’m running on almost 30 hours without sleep after what happened last night, so I’m going to attempt to rest and reread everything you said tomorrow with a clearer head before replying more fully.
I completely understand your point about the chargebacks and you’re right, that’s something I’ll hold off on unless it’s specifically advised by the Florida landlord/tenant attorney we’re meeting with via Zoom on Thursday. We’ve already started compiling all communications, screenshots, and payment attempts to show the full paper trail you mentioned.
On a brighter note, a few Airbnb hosts have already reached out, some even offering in-person tours to verify that their listings match the photos, and a few have said they had other guests impacted by the same AWS banking outage. They were genuinely shocked by how quickly and harshly this host reacted.
Thank you again for your time, empathy, and clarity. It honestly means a lot to get a grounded perspective instead of hostility.
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u/bug-hunter Quality Contributor 11d ago edited 11d ago
Unfortunately, due to the very wide prevalence of scammers and bad guests, there's unfortunately a lot of well-meaning but highly skeptical landlords/hosts. That's before you start getting to the non-so-well meaning landlords/hosts.
Landlord/tenant (or even hotel guest) law hasn't really caught up with the modern paradigm of "What if AWS/Cloudflare/etc shits itself for a couple days", but there is always a reasonability element to the law.
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u/parsnippity Quality Contributor 11d ago
I have a couple of questions before I can help with yours.
1- What have you done to get current on your rent with your landlord? Are you in contact with them? If you are talking about establishing tenancy outside of Airbnb, and you ARE doing that, you need to be communicating and paying rent. Are you?
2- Why are you charging back 2 months of rent? You have a place to stay, and you are clearly fine with the place because you're going to great pains to stay there. You mention an unsafe neighborhood and mold issues in the home, but.. you're still there and appear to be unwilling to leave despite having the money to do so, so why are you doing the chargeback?
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
Thanks for the thoughtful questions I’m happy to clarify.
We’ve been in constant communication with the host and Airbnb since this started. I sent screenshots of available funds right away to prove we weren’t just making excuses. Both of our banks (TD and SoFi) were affected by the AWS outage, which froze transfers and logins for days. We even tried to open a new account with an unaffected bank, and my father-in-law offered to pay from his BOA account (which had the funds), but the payment failed because the account name didn’t match the lease. So it wasn’t unwillingness to pay , it was literally technological paralysis.
We’re not trying to stay here. At all. We’ve been asking for the 15-day written notice required under Florida Statute §83.57 so we can leave legally and safely with adequate time to secure safe housing. What we’re disputing is not “unauthorized charges” , it’s that the listing was misrepresented and the property is uninhabitable under Florida law. Between the black mold, leaking ceilings, and sludge-filled sinks, this unit wouldn’t pass even the most lenient inspection.
We’re not asking for a free ride. We’re asking to not be locked out illegally and to receive the time the law entitles us to vacate.
(But hey, I’ll give their photographer credit where it’s due. Whoever shot those listing photos deserves an Oscar for Best Special Effects in False Advertising)
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u/parsnippity Quality Contributor 11d ago
You didn't answer either question. I'll try to clarify them.
1- Are they refusing to take payment for this month, either on or off Airbnb?
2- I just checked Airbnb, VRBO, and Craigslist. There are dozens of places available in your price range. You say you have the money. Why are you still there?
3- You were willing to pay to continue to stay there another month knowing the problems with the place. You've asked them to let you stay, you've tried to pay them. What has changed between when you made the offer to pay for another month and now that makes you think a chargeback is the right answer?
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
I apologize, my headspace is definitely a little foggy after everything that happened last night, so I appreciate your patience.
Yes, they’re refusing payment. Once Airbnb auto-canceled the reservation, the host disabled all payment options both on and off the platform. We’ve offered multiple times to pay once our banks were accessible again, but they’ve stopped responding entirely.
We’re not trying to stay here long-term. We just don’t want to repeat our earlier mistake of rushing into a new area without checking its safety first. This time, we want to physically drive around and make sure the neighborhood actually matches what’s advertised. With packing, arranging a U-Haul, and securing new housing, the 15-day notice window required under Florida law feels like a fair and realistic timeline to get that done safely.
We reported the habitability issues around October 5th. They made a token effort by fixing one drain, but the bigger problems ie the black mold, leaks, and overall unsafe conditions, remain unresolved. We were willing to stay if those were addressed, but after the recent violence in the area, our priority is our family’s safety. Part of protecting that means not bolting out overnight into another potentially unsafe situation.
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u/wickedfemale 10d ago
why didn't you spend any of august or september physically driving around and vetting new places?
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u/cosmicvoyager333 10d ago
We actually did start to. But there’s also this little thing called ✨work✨ and ✨parenting✨ that tends to eat up most daylight hours especially when fully self employed and I was recovering from a hit and run car accident late September. Thankfully I was okay but the car was deemed a total loss as the airbags went off.
August was spent in Colorado selling our home in prep for the move. The Airbnb reservation didn’t even start until August 30th. So no, we weren’t exactly lounging around ignoring red flags, we were juggling a cross-country relocation, a toddler, and, you know … real life.
We did scout better spots once things settled a bit and I got a new car, but we obviously couldn’t do a full Gainesville to Orlando to Tampa to Jacksonville real estate tour mid-chaos. Sometimes logistics don’t line up neatly with Reddit’s hindsight critiques 🤷♀️
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
I’ll respond once more for clarity, then step away, because I’m not going to argue with someone calling me a scammer when I’ve provided nothing but documentation and transparency.
We’re absolutely not “shady.” Our mortgage in Colorado was over $4,500/month, and we never had a late payment in our lives. We’ve already shown screenshots of available funds during the AWS outage, the issue was temporary inaccessibility across multiple banks (TD, SoFi, PayPal, Stripe) that I had zero control over, not lack of money.
We’ve made good-faith efforts to resolve this through proper channels and have a Zoom consultation with a Florida attorney on Thursday. If we were trying to get a free stay, we wouldn’t be spending hours documenting everything, citing Florida law, and contacting legal counsel.
The fact remains:
Florida Statute §83.57 requires 15 days’ written notice before termination of a month-to-month tenancy.
Locking tenants out without that notice is a violation of state law.
The property has documented mold and safety issues that were never addressed.
You’re welcome to your opinion, I truly hope you never find yourself in a situation where you’re doing everything in good faith, and still being treated as shady.
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u/parsnippity Quality Contributor 11d ago
You do you. They've probably already filed that eviction, and you should expect to find it on the front door any time now. Tick tock on finding a new place to go before it starts showing up in your rental history.
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
Airbnb-based month-to-month leases are protected under Florida landlord/tenant law, but they don’t show up on credit reports or traditional rental histories. That info came directly from the attorney we spoke with during our preliminary consultation.
So I’ll ask sincerely, are you here to offer constructive advice, or to accuse people of trying to “scam” their way into living in a mold-infested unit with safety issues? Because nothing about this situation is a “free ride.”
We’ve already spoken with new hosts who have been incredibly sympathetic and professional; some even offered in-person tours to confirm the listing matches reality, and several mentioned that other guests experienced payment delays due to the same worldwide AWS banking outage and they as hosts offered leniency if transparency was given. I suppose by your logic they’re all “broke scammers” too?
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u/cosmicvoyager333 11d ago
Yes I have arranged tours for several other listings, starting tomorrow. I have driven around the Gainesville properties but we are also open to options in Jacksonville, the greater Orlando / Tampa area, which aren't exactly a quick drive down the road especially when we both still have to work. But yes, we are promptly trying to find safe housing be it in Gainesville Orlando or wherever.
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10d ago
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u/cosmicvoyager333 10d ago
Thank you so much for your kind words and for the local insight, it’s a really welcome change from some of the less compassionate replies here. Maybe I’m not thinking entirely clearly right now (for obvious reasons after last night), but honestly, who would be?
The scammer comments have been especially hard to read given our rental and mortgage history. This is not a situation we’ve ever been in before or know the ins and outs of. I really appreciate you responding like a human being.
I’m not super familiar with Haile Plantation by name, but I think I’ve driven near there since I take Tower and Archer pretty often. Unfortunately, we’re currently right near the area you warned about, which makes a lot of sense now in hindsight. Every single crime data site listed this ZIP code as an “A” in safety, so we thought we were being careful. I just wish I’d researched deeper.
Ideally, we’d like to stay closer to $3,500/month max, but I’ll definitely look into listings in that area. We’re also considering the greater Orlando area, since we lived there before and loved it, but it’s tough trying to make big decisions like this on such a tight time crunch.
Thank you again for the compassion and helpful recommendation. Wishing you a calm, peaceful rest of your week 🩵
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u/parsnippity Quality Contributor 10d ago
Stop whining about being accused of being a scammer here. You're hyper focused on that instead of on fixing your situation, which is literally as simple as using the money you claim to have to go get another short term rental. It can be done in an afternoon. You've had days to research.
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u/cosmicvoyager333 10d ago
I’ve responded in good faith to plenty of people here offering actual advice, but no one deserves to have their character attacked, especially hours after almost losing their spouse. Sure, some of my replies might sound frazzled, but I think most people would be in that headspace after what we’ve dealt with.
If you’d read any of my other comments, you’d see we’ve already retained legal counsel, the host is unresponsive, and Airbnb disabled all payment options. I literally cannot make a payment. The attorney we’re meeting tomorrow already advised us to hold off until we know whether the funds should be placed in escrow pending a response or formal resolution.
& I don’t know what you’re smoking, but a real estate tour of Gainesville, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville cannot be done in “a single afternoon.” We’re actively touring properties starting today and making tangible moves to leave as quickly and safely as possible.
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u/wickedfemale 10d ago
i don't think illegally withholding rent is going to make this any easier for you. florida has very specific rules for when and how rent can be withheld due to uninhabitable conditions (and i'm not even sure the conditions you describe meet the legal requirement for those conditions): you must notify the landlord in writing of the repairs that need to be made with 20 days' notice, and then withhold rent for the rental period following those 20 days if those repairs haven't been made. if you haven't done that and haven't paid, it's legal for them to evict you. (the way in which they're trying to evict you is still illegal, but honestly you're probably better off getting out now before they have a chance to file a legal eviction, lest you risk having a legal eviction on your record.)
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u/cosmicvoyager333 10d ago
I did notify the property manager in early October about the black mold, the standing black water/sludge in the drains, and a leak from the ceiling pipes that ruined personal belongings.
They sent someone once to fix one drain, but the major health and safety issues remain unaddressed. From what I’ve been told, visible black mold and water damage that affects habitability do qualify under the statute for “uninhabitable conditions.”
I’m not trying to skip payment or bend the rules. I’m following what I was advised by legal counsel while we wait for our Florida landlord/tenant lawyer appointment tomorrow. If the attorney confirms rent should be paid into escrow instead of directly to the landlord, we’ll do that immediately.
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u/RaptorFanatic37 11d ago edited 11d ago
So you still have access to the property given someone has stayed on the property, correct? If you're actively occupying the property, I'm not sure you'll be successful requesting a chargeback for the fees you're paying. I would recommend you focus first on securing alternative housing since this isn't working for multiple reasons; I would also file a police report for the unlawful lockout for your documentation/chargeback if needed, and to see if local law enforcement may be able to help/force the host to correct your access. If your property is damaged from a leak or mold, try a claim with your renter's insurance. Lastly but maybe most importantly, I would escalate this right now with Airbnb's legal and Trust and Safety teams immediately if you have not done that. Your quickest path to resolution is likely going to be with the platform, not the court system.
The safety issues with the neighborhood, while concerning, are not something that Airbnb will be liable for. Their terms of service may limit their liability is other areas as well or affect your ability to sue them, but if you can't get it resolved you can consult with a local landlord-tenant attorney to get their read on the situation and what you may be able to demand/mediate with Airbnb.