HousingAnywhere

I have never heard of this website.

The usual (and probably better) sites are kleinanzeigen.de and wg-gesucht.de (both on German language only, of course).

Also, you don't mention where (which city) you are searching - thus your request above is quite useless. But furnished places and rentals for such short periods are anyway rare, so you should consider a hostel or serviced apartment instead (of course at higher cost)!

Like Beppi menitoned, one has to say which city they are looking in. It is true that a short rental is hard to find but not impossible. Most rooms in shared apartments are students or young people and often they go off for some months or a semester and want to have their room back so are happy to find someone to take it for a limited time... The best place to find such offers is actually at the pinboards at universities and other schools.

Around ten days ago, I booked a room through HousingAnywhere for December 1st. However, a few days later, I encountered some issues and requested to cancel the reservation. Unfortunately, HousingAnywhere has refused to refund my payment of approximately 1000 euros. Despite notifying them of the cancellation more than 50 days in advance, they have shown no willingness to return my money. I am deeply disappointed with their lack of regard for customers and tenants, as they seem to be more focused on profiting at the expense of others. I strongly believe they are obligated to refund my payment.

@masoudsaeedi2568 Did you read their fineprint - and does it say that they are obliged to return your payment in your circumstances? If not, you unfortunately have no chance. If yes and they still refuse, you can engage a lawyer to recover the money.

And yes, a company (any company) exists first and foremost to make profits. To expect anything else is naive.

@masoudsaeedi2568 I had a quick look at the site's terms & conditions:

It says that they are acting solely as an intermediary and the rental contracts are between landlord and tenant. Thus you ust check the termination rules in your rental contract and terminate it (if contractually possible) with your landlord, not Housinganywhere.

Fo the future, I recommend using reliable booking websites instead of this one. And read the fineprint before booking!

@beppi -Engaging a lawyer might be costly .Maybe to try to find someone else to take up the lease ?

@masoudsaeedi2568

Lawyers are costly in Germany and the court system unreliable and very very slow. There is no such thing as a small claims court like in the USA. Such a thing could takes years and include not just lawyers‘ fees but court costs. Totally ineffective to go this route for such a situation.

I never heard of this site; can’t say anything to its reliability. Looked at it and have no overview of what they offer without setting up an account first. The site opened in the German version and menu shows different languages but I clicked on English and it said it was not available – not sure if this was just a temporary problem; but not good for non-German speakers.