A man has left people scratching their heads after he found a mysterious wire in his Airbnb rental that didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
“Can anyone explain this?” he asked in a Reddit post while sharing an image of a socket that had a wire plugged into it. The wire led back behind the socket and into the wall.
Ben Huntley, who is from Danbury, Connecticut, was staying at an Airbnb in nearby New Haven, he told Newsweek. “My first thought was disbelief,” he said, adding that he had worked in construction his whole life.
u/vipercspeed/Reddit
He said that he thought the wiring looked “sketchy,” noting, “I never did find out what that cord was for.”
He added: “Reddit had a lot of ideas but who knows. We were just happy to get out of there.”
Huntley tried to contact Airbnb for support, which he found frustrating. “I must have opened four separate tickets attempting to talk to someone,” he said. “It was all automated. There is no option for something like this, and the few times they said someone would reach out to me.”
Airbnb told Newsweek: “We require all hosts on Airbnb to meet our ground rules for hosts, and we are actively investigating this issue. When repeated or severe violations of these ground rules are reported, Hosts or their listings may be suspended or removed from the platform.
“AirCover provides protection in the rare event of an issue with a listing,” Airbnb continued. “Should a guest ever feel unsafe during a stay, our 24-hour safety line is available and connects them directly to our Safety team for support, including with refunds and rebooking.”
Huntley said it was suggested to him that he speak with the host, but he was not comfortable doing that.
“Nothing else is really around this area. Just the outlet and cord,” he said in the Reddit post.
Airbnb is a popular choice for those traveling within the U.S. as well as around the world. Last year, over 448 million Airbnb nights and experiences were booked, Statista reports.
That was almost double the number of bookings made on the site five years earlier, marking a significant growth in popularity for the accommodations renting platform.
Reddit users had a number of theories as to what the wire could be, while others simply shared their thoughts and observations on the photo.
“Could that baseboard heater be electric and this was a quick workaround to having it properly installed?” u/ThrowRAsadheart wrote.
“What’s on the other side of the wall? Could be a light for a closet. Or I have seen this running to a mounted tv above the outlet,” said u/Crowetic33.
“It’s either a light or a television somewhere close, probably on the other side of the wall,” suggested u/TimtheElt.
“I’m guessing it goes to the baseboard heater. They probably didn’t want to hard wire it because they wanted an easy way to turn it off,” u/SpiderPiggies wrote.
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