Believe me, I read your account with nothing but sympathy. We had a similar experience to yours one year, not through Airbnb, but through another well known site. But we had a rude owner and instead of a week staying at the property, we left after one night as it was so dirty and so lost all our money. The company did not care and neither did the owner. The rule with the company was that you could not post a review without the owner approving it, so we could not even warn others. I know it happens. However, where I have encountered problems with Airbnb, the owner has been quick to correct the issues. For example, we arrived at one and the previous occupants had left it like a tip and no one had been in to service it. The owner was apologetic and said it would be sorted in two hours. It was. We rented a place for a month and came home at the end of the first week to find no cleaning or change of sheets. The owner told us they thought we would do it all during our stay. When we explained we had no expectation of spending our holidays in the launderette, we compromised. I did clean but they brought fresh laundry each week for us to make up the beds. In another, the pans were so old and dirty looking, I could not face using them and a polite request from the owner brought a brand new set of pans and an apology. I know we have been lucky and do recognise that there are issues with Airbnb. My point was, that we have managed to resolve our difficulties because we stay calm and reasonable and because Airbnb do allow you to review. Now that we have a huge set of references from owners for our previous stays, we would be unlikely to be barred from renting by a decent owner if we gave a poor review to one previous place, because it would be seen that it must be justified when compared to the rest.