Airbnb: damage charge after a rental or stay
A host must ask you to pay through the Resolution Center within 14 days of checkout; you are notified and can respond before Airbnb charges your card.
What does this mean?
Grade B (good: mostly official pages; check the flagged values before relying on them). 88% of 40 sources are the organization's own pages or government sites.
Collect
- your check-in and check-out photos or video
- messages with the host
- the host's request and photos
- checkout instructions
Steps
Take photos or video at check-in and check-out.
When a host request arrives (email or Resolution Center), ask for photos, invoices or estimates, and the date the damage was found.
Decline or answer the request in the Resolution Center with your own evidence. If the host asks Airbnb to step in, send your evidence when Airbnb contacts you.
If Airbnb charges your payment method and you dispute the decision, contact support in writing, then use the card dispute or arbitration notice.
More contacts for this issue
Facts you can cite
- Deadline
Under the Host Damage Protection Terms, a host must try to recover the loss from the guest (for example through the Resolution Center) and notify Airbnb within fourteen (14) days of the guest's checkout, and file the payment request form within thirty (30) days of checkout.
Source: airbnb.com, verified 2026-10-12
- Process
The Terms of Service say a guest is notified of a Damage Report and given an opportunity to respond; if Airbnb finds the report valid, Airbnb Payments can collect the amount from the guest.
Source: airbnb.com, verified 2026-10-12
- Process
Airbnb Payments may charge the payment method used for the booking, or another method on file, to collect Damage Report amounts, and says it notifies you in writing before charging Additional Amounts.
Source: airbnb.com, verified 2026-10-12
- Fee
Guests pay a service fee of 14.1% to 16.5% of the booking subtotal; it is shown in the price breakdown before booking.
Source: airbnb.com, verified 2026-10-12
- Policy
The US Terms of Service require binding individual AAA arbitration after a 30-day Pre-Dispute Notice, with a class action waiver; either side may use small claims court.
Source: airbnb.com, verified 2026-10-12
If that fails, escalate
Go up one step at a time. Keep the reference numbers and dates from each contact.
Customer service
Message the host first; then ask Airbnb to step in.
Written complaint
Card or bank dispute
Fair Credit Billing Act billing-error and purchase-dispute rights (Regulation Z)
Electronic Fund Transfer Act error resolution and unauthorized-transfer liability (Regulation E)
State agency
Your state’s attorney general. Find it in the list of state agencies (also as JSON:
states/<code>.json, for example states/ny.json).Arbitration
MailPre-Dispute Notice and arbitration notice address (US Terms of Service, Section 23) CSC Lawyers Incorporating Service, 2710 Gateway Oaks Drive, Suite 150N, Sacramento, California 95833Send a Pre-Dispute Notice 30 days before AAA arbitration; small claims court is allowed.
Watch out
- Contacting Airbnb support and using the Resolution Center require sign-in by the account holder.
- Only the guest who made the booking can report a Reservation Issue.
- Mediation requests must be answered within 1 hour.
Let your AI agent handle this
Escalate Anything is a free, open-source MCP server for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Codex and other AI apps. Your agent gets this playbook, keeps a case log with reference numbers and follow-up dates, and drafts each message for you to approve.
1. Set it up (needs uv):
uvx escalate-anything setup2. Ask your agent:
Airbnb charged me [amount] for damage I did not cause. Use Escalate Anything to dispute it.Source code, other install options and the Claude Code plugin