An Airbnb guest said their host threw out all their stuff, even their passport, after mixing up the checkout date

• An Airbnb host threw out a guest's things after mixing up their leaving date.
• The guest returned late to find all their belongings in bags on the street, they told The Guardian.
• Airbnb only offered compensation after being contacted by a reporter, the newspaper said. 

An Airbnb customer was told that there was nothing the company could do after a host mixed up their leaving dates and dumped all of their belongings out on the street, The Guardian reported.

The company also only offered compensation, the paper reported, after the case was raised by its reporter.

The customer, identified only as "PM," told the British newspaper that they were on the last night of their stay in Washington, DC, when they returned to the property late in the evening.

The apartment had been cleaned and the customer found their belongings, including their passport, dumped in the street in grocery bags, per the paper.

After reaching out to the host, they were told that they had overstayed and that there was a new guest coming in the morning.

"I showed my booking confirmation stating checkout was 11 a.m. the following morning, and she looked sheepish," the customer told The Guardian of their interaction with the host.

They were ultimately allowed to return to the apartment for the night, but the host refused to offer any compensation, the paper reported.

It took Airbnb until 3 a.m. to respond to the customer, they said. After acknowledging that their checkout date was correct, it "repeatedly" told them it couldn't help, the customer told the paper.

Company spokesperson Jake Shuter-Ross told Insider in a statement that issues are "rare."

"Our original handling of this case did not meet our high standards, and we have issued a refund and additional compensation to the guest to help make amends," he said.

According to The Guardian, the compensation eventually offered to the customer consisted of half the money returned and half of it in credit toward a future stay.

Shuter-Ross also said: "While we believe this was a genuine misunderstanding, we have warned the Host about their management of the situation."

He added that the host is a "Superhost" who has never had complaints "of this nature" before.

He said that the company had reached out to the guest "to help make things right," without offering specifics.

This is not the first time Airbnb has been accused of being slow to respond to public concerns.

Jeff Palkevich, whose Los Angeles home was falsely listed as an Airbnb for months starting in April 2022, tried for over a year to alert the company, which only took action after Insider's Monica Humphries contacted it.

It emerged that Palkevich's property was likely being used in a "bait-and-switch" scam. The company has since removed the fake listing.

And in 2018, Airbnb took several months to compensate a couple whose host smashed through their window in a frenzy.

Though the company promised the couple a refund of $708, the money only came through after The Boston Globe made inquiries.

Airbnb declined to pay the couple the $5,000 compensation they requested, offering $2,700 and therapy sessions instead, the paper reported.