0bfus

Context: I was in Paris staying in a month plus long Airbnb when our airbnb house key was stolen from us. We ended up staying in hotels for two days without our essentials (medicines, clothes, passports, etc), during which our host basically offered no alternatives -- he told us plainly he was on vacation and wouldn't return to help us for two weeks (had an extra key in Paris). After spending two days trying to figure out solutions which were repeatedly shot down by the host, we ended up deciding we had to get a locksmith to cut the lock so we could get in, we couldn't spend any more time without our essentials. Cutting the lock ended up being about $250 and re-keying the locks ended up being another $750. The airbnb was still unusable (we needed a security fob to get into the building each time, regardless of the unit keys), so we ended up booking another Airbnb and starting a claim with airbnb.

Throughout the entire process Airbnb, basically has kept repeating that the host committed no violations so they can't help us. I don't fault the airbnb host for the stolen key, but I do find it fairly unreasonable for us to pay the full cost of this, when the larger problem exposed was the host has no backup plan.

Has anyone dealt with a situation with like this? Am I out of luck because we bothered to help rekey the hosts unit and we should have simply left it unsecured after we got in? Do I have other avenues I should consider outside of Airbnb and the host to get some assistance?

Pretty at a loss for what I'm supposed to do, I just keep getting passed from team to team on the Airbnb support side hearing the same things. Is this just a known risk with Airbnb that you're completely on your own if things go wrong and I was just too naive to count on anyone to help?

Also what would have happened if we weren't fortunate enough to be able to pay for this in the first place? Would we just be out on the streets?