An Ontario family is out $20,000 after the dream Christmas vacation they had planned turned into an online booking nightmare.
Wendy and Peter DaSilva of Innisfil, Ont., put a down payment on the five-bedroom villa in the Turks and Caicos Islands last February. They planned to take their children and grandchildren for a special two-week holiday trip, and booked it through Airbnb.
The remainder of the $20,000 balance was paid last October. After that, the DaSilvas say, the owner abruptly stopped communicating with them.
“As soon as a final payment was done … he wouldn’t respond to anything that I sent to him,” Wendy DaSilva told CTV Toronto.
With their trip drawing closer and closer, the DaSilvas started to become more and more worried.
They looked into the owner’s background and learned that he was David McGee, a real estate agent based in Toronto.
The DaSilvas were not able to get a hold of McGee directly, but learned that the home had been severely damaged by a hurricane – Hurricane Irma had swept through the islands more than a year earlier.
And days before their flight they received an email from the owner that the home had been looted and was unsafe and uninhabitable.
CTV News attempted to contact McGee at his home and his office before this story was published, without success. Phone and email messages were not returned.
The DaSilvas were able to book another property in Turks and Caicos on short notice, at significant expense.
While there for their vacation, they paid a visit to the villa – and found that its roof had been torn off, a window was broken, the hot tub was not working, the pool was half-filled with green water, and plants were growing all over the property.
“It’s completely overgrown and nothing like it’s shown on the pictures,” Wendy DaSilva said.
McGee ultimately sent an email to the family agreeing he owed them a full refund but the DaSilvas have since been fighting to get their money back, with no luck. An Airbnb representative said there was nothing the company could do to help because the DaSilvas had paid the owner through a direct e-transfer rather than through its payment system.
Wendy DaSilva says McGee encouraged her to pay through the e-transfer by claiming there was an issue with the fees listed on the Airbnb site. She says she regrets doing that and wants to make sure other people don’t make the same mistake.
The listing for the villa has been pulled off Airbnb, although it remains active on at least one other vacation rental site.
“He’s still got it online. It’s still looking beautiful. We want him stopped,” Wendy DaSilva said.
