A: Airbnb shouldn't have rented a home in an unsafe neighborhood. Period. Of course, there's no way of guaranteeing that your rental will be crime-free, so you need to vet your rental before you push the “buy” button.

How do you do that? User reviews and online crime maps can help you figure out whether a rental is potentially unsafe. For example, the city of New York publishes a crime map (maps.nyc.gov/crime). It suggests that my old neighborhood in Staten Island is a safe place to live. Good to know.

Even if you'd do your homework, you can't know everything. For example, my old neighborhood in Annapolis, Md., is in a relatively safe area. But every now and then, people who lived in the housing projects a few blocks away would break into our cars and steal electronics. That taught me to keep my electronics in the safety of my rental home.

Airbnb also offers some safety tips for would-be guests on its site. They're worth checking out before your next rental: www.airbnb.com/help/article/241/i-m-a-guest--what-are-some-safety-tips-i-can-follow.

As far as I can tell, Airbnb doesn't explicitly guarantee the safety of its rentals. I don't think it could. But there's an implicit warranty that the rentals will be habitable — safely habitable. In light of that, I think your request for the second month's refund was not unreasonable.

You could have escalated this to someone higher up at Airbnb. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of Airbnb's executives on my consumer-advocacy website: elliott.org/company-contacts/airbnb.

I contacted Airbnb on your behalf. A representative said the company had made a “mistake” and refunded the entire second month's rental, the $2,719 you'd originally asked for.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the author of “How to Be the World's Smartest Traveler.”

You can read more travel tips on his blog, www.elliott.org, or email him at chris@elliott.org.