Chances are Airbnb will have to refund service charges | Money

The platform for housing rental charges service costs to both tenants and landlords, and this is prohibited in the Netherlands, the court ruled in 2020. Airbnb’s arguments that it is allowed to divide these costs between tenant and landlord, according to the Attorney General, does not make any difference. wood.

The prohibition on charging these costs means that they may only be charged to the lessor. The Advocate General now states in the advice to the Supreme Court that these consumers are within their rights with this requirement.

The advice of the Attorney General is usually adopted. The ban may once have been inspired by abuses in the housing market, but it certainly also applies to online brokerage platforms such as Airbnb, according to the advice, which is in line with an earlier ruling in a similar case against Booking.com.

Claims

Several claim clubs, including the Consumer Association’s Claim Service, are demanding reimbursement of those costs. This is an average of about €250 per customer.

Airbnb, in turn, took these consumers to court to prevent the company from getting a boom in these types of claims.

41,000 people have now applied to Claimservice for reimbursement of those costs. In the meantime, other claim clubs have also thrown themselves into this case. According to the Consumers’ Association, a total of one million people have wrongly paid those service costs.

–