Here is another scam that someone tried to pull on me.
I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from the host asking me to increase the price of stay by $20. That was small and I did not want the hassle of arguing but just decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I looked at it again on computer (as opposed to the phone) and saw something odd: the dates of stay we crossed and replaced by the exact same dates. Then I saw that weekdays were off. Then it dawned on me that the scammer changed the dates of stay to the next year and added $20 just to distract me.
The scam is simple. The scammer lists the same property twice with ~30% difference in price using slightly different photos and descriptions. The cheaper one goes first. If he books it at the higher price he kicks out the first renters with the "next year booking" scam. Reading reviews made it quite clear.
I reported the scammer to AirBnB, got a refund + $100 but they did not do anything other than $100 fine to the scammer. The crook makes more than that from a single scam. AirBnB just does not care.
I booked a hotel room in Paris earlier this year over AirBnB out of curiosity, as the room was cheaper than advertised on other platforms. The day before, I thought to call and verify it wasn't a scam and the hotel manager had no record of my stay. A scammer had just uploaded pictures of the hotel room to AirBnB. I got a full refund (and the hotel, in thanks for me letting them know they were scam targets gave me a discount) but the scammer account is still online. No clue why AirBnB didn't scrub this. And I don't get why the scammer thought it would work, as they don't get paid until at least one night stay with no complaints.
In a similar vein, a good friend of mine (+ all his family, about 10 in all) was kicked out of an AirBnB at the last minute because it had been double-booked on Booking.com at a higher price, and had just been rented via that site.
A family member of mine had something similar happen when using booking.com. She showed up at the hotel and they had sold her booked room to someone else. It was late and a bit of a nightmare to find another place to stay.
Overbooking airplanes means someone might be stuck sitting in the terminal for hours. Overbooking.com means someone might be made to drive around late at night, tired, with nowhere to sleep.
> Overbooking airplanes means someone might be stuck sitting in the terminal for hours.
It also might mean you miss getting somewhere in an emergency, like visiting a loved one before surgery. And it also might mean you miss things you couldn't miss, like a job interview.
One of the worst memories of my life started by missing a flight (and it wasn't my fault).
These days, it's thankfully rare that people are forced off a flight. The worst problems I've had have come from having a flight cancelled with all the next flights fully booked. As long as the airline can point to weather, they don't have to put you up in a hotel or pay your cab fare to get to a flight at another nearby airport.
That's a surprise. Hotels definitely do overbook however they'll usually not leave you stranded, they "walk" you to a competitor property that they then pay for. Here's a whole write-up on it [1] from the New York Times. It's been going on forever but you may only have noticed it more recently as occupancy rates are up. I've yet to be "walked" but it does happen. Nothing particularly sketchy going on.
I got walked from my hotel near RSA Conference one year (Westin San Francisco Market Street) to the Parc 55. As compensation I got a free day, but since my employer was paying, it wasn't much of a compensation.
It sounds petty but having paid for a room, being exhausted from a Pacific flight and being moved to a hotel twice the walk from the conference (important if you're going to be back and forth all day) was mildly annoying.
I'm not 100% sure - but the one time I was walked I had picked the cheapest available room. You know those bullshitty-looking price differences where you can book on floors 9-11 for X and floors 12-14 for X+5? I suspected I had signalled my place on the hierarchy by picking the cheapest room available. Subsequently, especially while on an expense account (sorry, Intel! :-) ) I always picked the ever-so-slightly more expensive room and have never been walked again, even in the middle of conference season. This may be bogus reasoning, of course.
When we accidentally took a double booking for the same place, booking.com demanded that we arrange and pay for equivalent accommodation for the booking.com guests. That is what we did, I do not know what would have happened had we refused to do so.
I have trip this coming month through Expedia and the last leg of our bargain basement flight got cancelled. The rep told me there were no flights for days surrounding our original flight date.
I had to sit on hold for a long time but I have to say they were great. United swept our transportation out from under our feet but the rep was able to wrangle a flight with fewer stops that arrives earlier without us having to pay the difference. We had those locked-in cheap tickets that charge you a couple hundred just to upgrade your ticket before the price difference is even considered.
It sounds like a very reasonable policy -- the person responsible for making the mistake needs to rectify it.
No one's out of pocket -- the double booking was never going to make double revenue, after all. The time / inconvenience imposition is on the responsible party, who also likely has more service industry & local knowledge than the customer.
This policy makes me feel more positively towards booking.com.
As per TFA, AirBNB does that hand-wavey thing where they assert some problems are beyond their competence to solve -- the kinds of problems other sectors and organisations have already got policies and procedures in place to deal with.
Expedia did that? That's great. I've always avoided them and their competitors and bought directly from the airlines because I was afraid if something went wrong I would get better service that way.
Yeah I thought I was in for a battle. I’m not sure if it’s their larger policy or just a good rep. Can’t claim it’s a pattern as it’s only happened to me once.
She explained to me pretty thoroughly that the ticket change required higher approval to switch ticket classes and she seemed to do a bunch of back and forth with United. In all I was probably on the phone for 2 hours but on hold for 110 minutes of that while I was working.
I had no idea what would happen. I expected Expedia to punt me off to United to sort it out. But no, almost totally painless to my and my partner’s great relief.
Mind you I wonder if the order made a difference as we booked the flight, a vacation rental, and a car all at once through them and paid up front so the onus was sort of on them to make sure we could even check into our rental on time. And we’re heading to Kona so there’s not really an alternative mode of transportation available...
I recently made a rental car reservation through Expedia and hadn't noticed it was nonrefundable. When my plans had to change, I called them up and they took care of dealing with the rental car company and getting me a refund anyway. Pleasantly surprised how easy they made it for me.
Yeah, that's what happened to me. I booked through expedia, and missed a flight (no fault of my own). The airline outright refused to deal with me, saying I needed to contact expedia to contact them. Half a day later, I still hadn't been able to hear anything useful from expedia and getting desperate ended up booking a new flight out of pocket (and never got compensation either).
I've since sworn to only ever book the flight directly from the airline.
Hotels have horrible inventory management. They don't have the revenue management tools that airlines have. I believe there are whole call centers of 1000s of people at expedia who call hotels to verify room availability and rebook customers.
Another example is Marriot will commonly let the local management control inventory. They commonly use the cheapest room to book to max capacity and upgrade people until they are fully booked. It almost never makes sense to book a more expensive room unless you are booking within 30 days.
I wouldn't attribute any of the downfall of Couchsurfing to AirBnB, rather the new owners. There are a ton of reasons which were laid out by multiple disgruntled ex-couchsurfers in a myriad of blog-posts. I went looking for some of them but the best I could find was on Quora[0]. For me it was apparent that they new owner only cared about the number of users and proceeded to advertise instead of relying primarily on word-of-mouth, ignoring critical feedback from core members/ambassadors, as well as destroy the usability of the site (e.g. search and the groups got progressively worse), among reasons. The site was rather quickly overwhelmed with people who just wanted a free hotel while they go out and party, while the core community abandoned the site, leaving a vacuum to be filled by people who didn't care about the original "spirit". I went from hosting people every week, making lots of spontaneous trips and organizing events to not being involved at all. This was also true of tens of CS friends, many of whom pleaded with the new management to stop breaking things and to listen to their feedback. I knew at least 15 ambassadors personally who deleted their profiles around the same time all these changes were happening, particularly because their feedback was being completely ignored. I kept my profile up in hopes that things would eventually return... and also out of curiosity about how bad it could really get. Only last month have I received the first "worthy" request, where somebody actually read my profile and seemed to have some of the original couchsurfing spirit. Perhaps things will change again?
The organs belong to those kids. They are in their possession, and they made them. I’d have to take those organs from them by force or threat of force.
Kind of like my money that the government calls a tax and takes by threat of force or, if it decides, by force.
Your analogy is terrible and is completely oblivious on who the bad guys actually are.
Seems like you're missing the point. They're not comparing the morality of minimizing tax liabilities to harvesting human organs, they're using an extreme example of an obviously immoral act to demonstrate that morality isn't a function of legality.
So the whims and popular beliefs of the masses decide what’s moral and immoral? If tomorrow society embraces organ harvesting from loving children, is it suddenly ok? Or is it always wrong irrespective of public opinion? If law doesn’t tell us what’s moral and immoral, what does?
What are you talking about? I did not imply in any way that popularity determines morality. I stated that organ harvesting is obviously immoral, you made the suggestion that committing an immoral act means that the perpetrator believes the act is moral, I am simply refuting that fallacious argument with the point that China concealing the act shows us that they are aware it is immoral.
Is the host able to unilaterally change the dates of your booking on AirBnb? Did your agreement to the text (asking for $20 extra) allow him to make the changes?
There's a raft of AirBnB horror stories[1] about hosts pulling a confirmed booking at the last moment and AirBnb's "awesome" customer support leaving the guest high and dry if they were approachable at all.
AirBnb may have been a great idea in 2010. Nowadays what you get is very oten a cheaply outfitted cooky cutter appartment managed by some faceless management company.
You may also be asked to sneak to your appartment through the back door because the lease is actually illegal at your destination and other such fun shenanigens, while the price essesntially is no more cheaper than a comparable hotel room.
Nice I didn't know this one. I did a quick search and found a lot of stories like mine where people tried to used my now defunct account, and they got zero support from AirBS
If I understood correctly, then that sounds a bit like a UI issue.
The host should never be able to change the dates. I mean, why should they be able to? It's up to the traveller to decide when the stay should take place and the host can either accept or decline.
Agreed. I made a change to the dates of a stay earlier this year (cottage booked on Isle of Skye in the UK). I needed to shift the dates forward by a day or two. This was easily accomplished in the website UI, no direct contact with the host was required. Not sure why the host would ever be able to change booking dates, or really make any changes to the booking after it's confirmed.
You realize you just “hoped” people are ethical as a reply to a post describing a way in which at least one person was claimed to be unethical
If you can use a pattern to grift off the system someone is using it. What’s most likely you’re not aware or emotionally predisposed to avoid connecting those dots
You can't make a business of an honest marketplace based on selling services only to dishonest people. Eventually your own customers will ruin the business.
This is the fundamental reason "Organized Crime" always fails in the end.
I don't think it is true that Organized Crime fails in the end. OC organizations like Cosa Nostra , Yakuza, Triads and many others are not disappearing any time soon.
Look closer at what you are calling "organizations". I would just call that an Industry. The individuals and businesses (Families) fail at a rapid rate. Just because they are replaced by other businesses in the same industry, doesn't mean that criminal organizations are successful in terms of longevity.
There are some notable exceptions in the Yakuza, but I would argue even those fit the pattern because the most successful Yakuza are working in grey areas and aren't fully engaging in illegal actives.
Usually because someone ends up betraying them, e.g. the Chicago Outfit. In other words, dishonesty ends up ruining them. So the comment still makes sense.
What type of question is that? I mean does adding fuck add something here? And honestly isn't there entire forums on the darkweb dedicated to scams and fraud and stolen goods? Those forums are full of ideas on how to rip people off are they not? Anyways I think you could get your point across without using fuck here on HN.
There have been a few threads about AirBnb lately with a lot of people reporting negative experiences so I will add my own $0.02. I have stayed in many AirBnbs. The reason is, I find it is the only way to have a tolerable family vacation is when everyone has their own sleeping quarters. When we are all piled into one (often overpriced and not so clean) hotel room, it makes for less than ideal sleep and everyone ends up grouchy. Plus when you travel with children, it is really nice to have a kitchen and a way to do laundry. At any rate, my observation for all my AirBnb stays is most of them are quite nice. Many hosts go to great lengths to have their guests have a nice stay. There have been a few crappy experiences, but not many. The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.
>> The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.
In my view this is major. To describe it better - need to read "between the lines" of misleading representations of properties.
Lots of property owners goes to great extends to make property look way better, bigger, nicer than it really is and to conceal obvious negative points that become apparent even before you are given the keys. Then the list goes on.
AirBnb expects and encourages misrepresentation of properties and misleading descriptions to stimulate cash flow. Try to get refund from AirBnb for misprepresentation or deliberate omissions of negative points.
Yes. I'm in charge of booking a ski trip for ~15 friends each year, and the amount of reading between the lines I have to do to make sure everyone has a comfortable place to sleep is crazy.
Tons of places count sofas/pullouts/day beds in the "Sleeps # of People", and they often count the temporary beds as space for 2. So you'll see places that say, Sleeps 16, but there are only 3 or 4 real beds.
What ridiculous is when you try searching for 'whole homes' and you end up getting 'apartments' which are nothing more than someones basement. Airbnb seems to encourage this too by letting people put whatever tags they want. It's kind of a joke. In addition, hiding the address makes it hard to double check on google street view.
Edit: My workaround is selecting super hosts only, 3-4 bedrooms, 1+ bathroom. Seems to filter out most of the apartments and "Houses" aka granny flats.
I rarely book for more than two people, but when I have I found that filtering on "2+ bathrooms" very quickly gets me the flats that really have several bedrooms.
I have even seen this on Zillow recently. Searching for rentals, choose type as House, and then it's the upper floor department in a house and the listing reads "you will be sharing the top floor with me".
I get that they want to hide the address to total strangers, but I'm sure it would be easy for Airbnb themselves to pull up the google streetview and have it as a static image on the listing.
Now you'd need to add some AI in to blur house numbers and $identifying_features - Street View's own AI knows to blur signs but leave house numbers intact (I only just realized this) so you can positively ID somewhere you're looking for.
I suggest reading "whole home" to mean "whole space". In fact, that's basically what I see on Airbnb now - "Entire place". Personally, I have no issue when that turns out to be a separate apartment in a larger house, as long as I'm not sharing the entrance/exit and living space with others.
This isn't foolproof either, though. I booked a hotel for 2 people in Chicago for an anniversary trip. We arrived to find the hotel had 4 very narrow and short bunkbeds. I checked the booking and it makes no mention of this.
The only reason we think of a hotel booking as being up front is that there is a standard observed across the industry: either 1 king or 2 queens. There's no similar standard for AirBnBs.
> Try to get refund from AirBnb for misprepresentation or deliberate omissions of negative points.
-I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to country, but after using AirBnb 30+ times traveling with wife and three kids in Northern/Central Europe, I’ve only had two issues - once the place we were to stay was double-booked (and we arrived last!); the other it turned out what was described as a ‘bedroom’ in the listing was a storage room with no windows, hot water tank, a few shelves packed with all sorts of junk and barely room for a dirty mattress on the floor.
In both cases AirBnb promptly decided I was due a refund, my only minor gripe being it took a couple of weeks before the money was actually refunded.
When my fiance and I stayed at a place in Paia on Maui, the place looked immaculate from the pictures. But when we got there it was full of cockroaches. We had literally just gotten in at like 4 pm, put groceries down on the counter, and the little buggers were on them almost immediately.
We were exhausted and didn't have the energy to really do anything after our 6 hour plane flight. The hosts came in and tried to resolve things first by removing all the appliances and then by offering us a bribe. I had documented all of this on the AirBnB website via private messages, taken pictures of the cockroaches, and found a can of bug spray(the hosts knew they had an ongoing problem and still rented to us!) to spray the roaches with. They were falling out of every crevice that I sprayed in the kitchen.
We ended up spending a very restless night there, and in the morning I found a single roach in the bathroom. We were going to move out the next day, but ended up scrambling to find a hotel room in Maui that afternoon after driving the road to Hana.
When I called AirBnB to report the cockroaches the representative basically said he couldn't guarantee me any kind of refund, and moreover that I should be used to staying in "less than clean conditions" as a bachelor who has traveled for business. I was flabbergasted.
They eventually got us a refund but I have never had such a terrible customer service experience from any company, period. I will never stay in AirBnB again. Evidently they don't enforce any standards of cleanliness and they take all hosts at their words as to the fitness of the property. The CSR that initially handled my case was a huge asshole and made me feel like he didn't care about me at all. The later CSRs were better. Staying in an AirBnB was the most stressful vacation experience I have ever had and I will never trust them again.
As an aside, you should make it a point to call their support line during the hours of business in the EST or CST timezones. Their day shift CSRs actually seemed to care about the problem. But their night shift appears to be an overseas call center, and they treated me like shit.
At least cockroaches don't bite. We got an Airbnb once in Belize that was effectively open air (it was too hot otherwise and there was no A/C) and the bed had mosquito netting around it which didn't go all the way to the ceiling. The host said "Oh just use the fan. Mosquitos hate fans." Of course the fan didn't work. We vacated that place quick. I still don't know whether this was a scam or simply a case of the locals being completely used to something an out-of-town guest would find horrifying.
> Their day shift CSRs actually seemed to care about the problem. But their night shift appears to be an overseas call center, and they treated me like shit.
This was my experience as well. Called in the evening about the listing not being described. The CSR was pretty useless. Called the next morning and got someone from California who was far more helpful.
I had a similar experience in Honolulu. AirBnB with baby German cockroaches.
I was not happy but at some point reality has to set in. Cockroaches are somewhat normal in tropical zones. I Googled around and found several tourists advising others that cockroaches are a reality in these locations. Even proper hotels had quite a few reviews involving cockroaches.
I would have been fine with one or two adult cockroaches. I've killed them before in my apartment. But this was an established infestation, with adults and nymphs of various ages crawling all over. They were crawling on the bath towels, in the appliances, in the kitchen etc.. Moreover, a hotel would not knowingly list or rent a room with a massive cockroach infestation.
I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW. (good customer service says the replacement will be better, hotels try to reserve their best suites until last just to ensure that they have the better room around just in case). I'm some new city and I want to get my family to sleep...
To me it sounds as if you are saying "I want the charm\location\social experience of staying with a local resident AND I want the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of the hotel industry AND I don't want to pay for the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of a hotel."
Airbnb has functionally became where it is expected to get the latter two. When I've used Airbnb I have never expected nor cared about the "charm" or the "local resident", it's been a de-facto hotel. If there was a problem, of course I would expect Airbnb to do their job. Why wouldn't you?
I'm not defending AirBnB, because they totally enable and profit from scams as documented in the original article. But it is just the user expecting to get hotel services (rebooking and room swaps) from a non-hotel (whether genuine homestay or micro-hotel-entrepreneur).
AirBnB wont play down that expectation because again they profit more from it, but from the website and concept it is clear that you are dealing with random unprofessional strangers with a minimum of guarantees. Its kinda like the Uber contractor-vs-employee categorization for drivers.
AirBnB should definitely do a better job, but I maintain the risks are inherent in the business model, and you and the other users want the benefits of the risk (lower prices), without accepting the consequences of the risk.
To be fair, I expect the major corporation to have the "resources of a hotel" and handle the rebooking/room swap. They get a big fee on every booking, right? Am I just paying tens-to-hundreds per booking for the privilege of using their search engine and (apparently worthless) rating system?
I completely disagree. I never start an Airbnb search assuming that the hosts are hospitality professionals. I don't expect hotel-level standards. In fact, my spidey-sense goes into yellow-alert when I come across a listing that appears to be for a hotel.
I don't want to stay with a local resident - in fact the only times I've stayed at an AirBnB (twice so not a significant sample) I never saw the owner, we just got the code to the lock box and used the house for a few days. This is a hotel.
I'd stay with a hotel (and sometimes do) if they would offer me as many bedrooms and a kitchen to work with.
>I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW.
-Don’t get me wrong; I’d much rather have no fuss at all - but when a bad experience occurred, AirBnb were better than I had feared with regards to setting things right.
The double booking was after a ten-hour drive with kids aged 10, 5 and 3 in the back seat. I didn’t need that.
Luckily, the host had friends nearby who shacked us up for the night, so disaster was averted - but this was way out in the Swedish boonies and I envisaged having to drive another couple of hours before finding a hotel.
The problem is that a property is listed on multiple sites and the different sites have incentive to not play nicely with each other. It's up to the owner to manually black on dates as they are booked on the other services. Most of hte time it works fine but since it's humans involved things can slip through the cracks.
Oh, the problem was the host, not AirBnb. She’d registered with more than one service and had forgot to update her AirBnb calendar with the booking from $SITE, whichever it was.
> -I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to country
Would not be surprised if it did. I remember one rental in the Netherlands where the english text said free parking, but the dutch text said parking available. The problem was AirBnBs translation and they refunded my parking expenses.
How is this different from a hotel? From rentals in general?
I guess you know what you're going to get if you're staying at a national chain that you've stayed at before, but there's not always one available or in your budget.
One important difference is that hotels get much larger review volumes than a single AirBnB, meaning sites like TripAdvisor can give you a good picture of what the place is really like.
Another is that it's much harder to run a scam at scale. "Becky and Andrew" can get away with this for an extended period because tomorrow they can be "Melody and Joe" and "Jane and Todd" the day after. Marriott has been Marriott since 1957, and can't change quickly. They know that if they start running scams, they will hear about it. Initially from reporters, eventually from state attorneys general.
A third is that AirBnB, especially in their IPO runup, has a strong interest in a) maximizing revenue and profit nubmers, and b) covering up problems. Many billions of dollars are on the line here. As we've seen with Groupon and Uber and WeWork, individuals can get very rich if they can create the appearance of runaway success at IPO time, regardless of long-term prospects.
Not sure I feel the same way in my experience. I find airbnb photos to be accurate for the actual place I’ll be in, even if they might be leaving some details out.
I often find hotel reviews are a mix of pre and post-renovation photos and it’s a roll of the dice for what room I’ll get when I show up.
Maybe it’s just because there aren’t too many Airbnbs that have 15 year old listings.
HotelTonight (sadly recently purchased by AirBnB) has a very robust review system and a very responsive customer support system. If you ever have a bad experience in a hotel room while booking through their app you can always contact them and they will contact hotel management and the problem will almost always very quickly be resolved.
Booking.com has way more properties but does not always properly vet them. Its easy to find that you've booked a property but the property owner is miles away and does not speak your language (i.e. English). That said, their customer service often resolves things.
In my limited impression Airbnb has gotten better at customer service but has basically pivoted out of their core business model (i.e. providing short term stays) and at the same time provided huge incentives for people to mislead people with respect to the listing. They are consistently the hardest to verify (i.e. that what you are reading or seeing is real) and I would really only use them for very boutique properties that can't be found on other platforms.
In some ways it just depends on how much up front time you have to do your own vetting and how much risk you are willing to tolerate for a potentially experience. AirBnb is high in both categories with results that very rarely are worth it to me.
HotelTonight always had awful customer support. They sold me a hotel room during February fashion week in NYC. Some sort of mistake happened with either HT or the hotel, and the room was not available upon my 11pm arrival.
Rather than fix the mistake, HotelTonight gave me back my $400/night or whatever it was, and left me in a city, in the winter cold, where hotel rooms were almost entirely sold out. Essentially no inventory available on-line, and nearly all of that was not actually bookable.
After a few hours searching (I had to actually call hotels to verify that the listed rooms still existed), I ended up spending ~ $1400/night for one of the only rooms left in the entire city.
The good news is that now there's a simple solution: if this happens in the future, you book a $200 Uber helicopter, $100-200 room at the airport, then another helicopter back in the morning, and you save ~$700. Easy! :D
Had a similar situation and ended up having to book someone a $2000 a night hotel room. It’s no joke being out of a room in a place where hotels are 100% sold out, or non existent. This is one of the reasons I refuse to use Airbnb in most normal situations. It’s a wild card.
I had an issue with HotelTonight last year after the hotel I was staying at ended up charging my "incidentals" credit card for the entire room+tax for the night (vs what I paid HotelTonight for).
Between HotelTonight and the actual property (a Kimpton Hotel), it was resolved in under 90 minutes.
Look -- I've had issues with Hilton, Marriott, and HotelTonight -- that just comes with the territory when you spend 200+ nights a year in hotel rooms. How they deal with the issue is what brings you back (and honestly, it's why I'm lifetime diamond at Hilton, even though I did a LOT of work for marriot.com a few years ago).
With a hotel, if you complain and write a harsh review, you don't get penalized yourself. In OP, people complained and got B.S. made up about them, which impacts their future ability to travel. The author didn't even write a review. The incentives are all there to only write the happy stuff for future travelers. You, as that future travel really can't trust the reviews. At least at a hotel, with its more numerous but possibly fake happy reviews, you can look at what the bad ones say, because they won't be incentivized out of existence.
Hotel chains are also experts in misrepresentations and omissions often fueled by fake positive reviews.
During my recent stay in Manhattan at $350+/night hotel - the whole building was wrapped in construction fabrics and workers were walking right in front of my window all week.
This of course haven't been mentioned during reservation.
But at least you deal with host management in person, and not with some shady pimp hiding in a background.
And then of course - you can file chargeback with credit card if everything else fails.
It's a lot easier to get an idea of what to expect from a given hotel (especially chains) because they have more volume than any single AirBnB, and you get more value out of that knowledge about one hotel (or especially chain) because it applies to more than one unit (and for chains, in more than one location) so it's not only applicable to travel in one place when one unit is available.
I have seen the automated messages along the lines of "host canceled booking 24h before check-in" on many or even most Airbnb listings. Is this not still a thing?
You can't leave a written review, but maybe that's appropriate if you haven't actually stayed at the place.
Yes, that's indeed nowadays happening. In practice if they cancel two days before you arrive and you have fly to another continent to stay somewhere, it still sucks. Add to that for example a fair like CES and no normally priced hotel alternatives, and it's a big issue.
You can usually leave a negative review for a hotel even if you didn't stay at it. AirBnB doesn't allow it.
Also, every time a hotel has not had a room when I showed up, they put me in a nearby hotel of similar or better quality. I'm sure that doesn't always happen, but it is the standard for quality hotel chains.
> Lots of property owners goes to great extends to make property look way better, bigger, nicer than it really is and to conceal obvious negative points that become apparent even before you are given the keys
Sadly that sounds like mort advertising of everything, so I can't say I'm surprised.
> need to read "between the lines" of misleading representations of properties.
I've never had a problem with this, but I also don't bother staying anywhere that doesn't have a 4-star or better average. If you just set your filter at >= 4 stars, then these problems go away, and we also comb through the reviews of our top picks to make sure there's nothing unexpected. Consequently, we've had nothing but good experiences.
TFA addresses why reviews are inflated and misleading:
>Airbnb uses a rating system in which both the host and tenant can publicly provide feedback to one another, which both parties then use to prove their credibility in the future. Because of that, there is a built-in incentive to avoid confrontation, which helps explain why Airbnb hosts consistently receive higher ratings than hotels reviewed on TripAdvisor, according to research out of Boston University and the University of Southern California. If a customer has a negative experience on Airbnb, they might be better off just moving on instead of leaving a negative review. Choose the latter option, and you could come across as too demanding by other prospective hosts, or, in extreme cases, even receive a retaliatory review.
What's going on here is that Airbnb has essentially made a pass/fail review system, where 5 stars is pass and anything less is fail. Thus, short of a visit being completely terrible and the host awful, I would feel bad giving anything less than a 5 star review, since it would adversely affect the listing and the host.
On one hand, this does encourage hosts (and guests I suppose) to do their best. On the other hand, this eliminates honest reviewing, making reviews either "Best stay ever!!!!!1 (5/5)" or "This place sucks! The host is terrible!(1/5)"
A review system should just be a series of factual questions that are aimed at determining whether a potential customer is likely to have problems, be satisfied, or enjoy their stay. And the scores should be subjective; e.g. if you're single then the questions that impact a family should be eliminated from calculating the score.
For example, down the hall, there's a dog with a persistent high-pitched bark. If I'm reviewing them, ideally, I just answer a simple question, "are there persistent noise disturbances from neighbors?" Yes.
I think the reason it's not done this way is because you'd have to put a lot of thought into maintaining the questions.
I meant that the review score should tell you whether or not you need to read between the lines. If you don't want to read between the lines, stick to results with 4+ star reviews (maybe 4.5+ star reviews). I _also_ read other reviews out of an abundance of caution and to give some insight into how the top results differ. We should be able to agree that this is not meaningfully "reading between the lines" even if we don't agree about the reliability of average review score as an indicator.
I've stayed at 22 airbnb's 11 were fine. 11 had issues most with false advertising in some form or another. One listed the wrong location and if they had listed the correct location I would not have rented even though the room's interior matched. A few claimed to include onsite parking but didn't which of course is very inconvenient. The last one that did that claimed "Easy Street Parking" as AirBnb's blatant lie. I usually had to park a mile way or pay for a $25 a night garage a few blocks away. One claimed wifi but was actually just stealing it from the neighbors and it only worked in a corner of the apartment if lucky. Another who I asked if their heaters worked, because a previous one was cold, said yes but when I got their the heater was as loud as a vacuum cleaner and their wifi had a notices "don't use much as it will run out". This for a place I expected to get work done. AirBnb in Japan is full of listing claiming 2 or 3 bedrooms but that actually only have 1 and this isn't a cultural issue. Look at any J-apartment rental site and there is zero ambiguity about what 1, 2, and 3 bedrooms are.
It bugs me that YC appears to have absolutely no policy of conduct for the companies they fund. It's totally within their power to say in so many words "be evil and we'll pull your funding and report you to the authorities". IMO AirBnB is complicit in these issues. There is no punishment for bad listings and often AirBnB doesn't even have the options in their system to list them correctly. They even removed my review that included pictures of proof.
Compare that to 100% of My priceline bids being accepted by hotels that were much better than expected and at rates about half what you'd book directly.
I'm so glad now after years of never booking an airbnb I can say that with pride. I never gave this scummy company a single dollar. I knew who they were from the first experience.
I've gone 100% Booking.com/Agoda and been really happy with all my bookings, and I've traveled at least 4-6 weeks every year for the last 3 years. I like being able to read 100s of reviews and not just relying on owner provided information.
I have a similar rate with AirBnb -- 50% were great, the rest had "issues," which ranged from exaggerated claims ("minutes from downtown") to serious safety problems. Agree that Airbnb's policies (or lack of them) are contributing to the situation -- for instance, no serious punishment for false advertising.
But I have a hard time dumping bad policies on YC's plate, or demanding that YC "report you to the authorities" unless criminal activity/negligence is involved.
They likely do have the power to disassociate themselves from Airbnb though.
(Like, I don't think that Y Combinator owes me anything or gives a shit about what I think or whatever, I just think "they are a minority owner" is weak sauce)
The value of YC as an investor is not the cash they offer but the advice and guidance. As such their influence is disproportionate to their investment.
I would say that YC has a relatively large cultural impact, given its investment size. People outside of SV barely even know who Sequoia is, let alone care about who they fund. But a lot of people know about YC and what they are doing. While financially, YC pulling funding wouldn't have a big impact, culturally it'd be a huge bomb.
Has this ever affected anything before? Just about every organization has "we are ethical" in some document somewhere. "We always comply with local regulations" is often spouted by companies immediately after being busted for breaking regulations.
PG wrote an essay about how he and and Sam Altman prefer to invest in companies that run scams, as long as they aren't too evil.
Remember that AirBnB's first marketing campaign was hiring women (or men using female names online) to violate Craiglist ToS to spam people posting housing listings.
>...Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. ...They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.
>...we asked [Sam] what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers.
That's what you meant?! I can't see which other part you might mean - it's only 750 words. Describing it as "an essay about how he and Sam Altman prefer to invest in companies that run scams" seems as misleading as the worst of the deceptive AirBnB descriptions written about on this page. Maybe you meant to link to a different essay.
I think the parents is somewhat justified, there is a very fine line between "hacking" as described here and scammy. It is almost inevitable it gets to AirBnB level if that is your thought process. Would be interesting to hear their take on issues like airbnb are facing, and if they thinking this "room owners" in these cases are also "hacking".
I would second this experience. We travel with our five kids and its sometimes impossible to find a hotel that can accommodate us. That said, I did experience a switcheroo in Chicago similar to the article. However that’s where the similarities end. The place was in the same neighborhood, it was comparable to the listing but the only catch was we were told not say Airbnb to anyone in the building but to say guests of xyz. I felt like a criminal but otherwise the place was very nice and the host was super-responsive even though it was clear he was running multiple properties. Another time in Chicago, the bath tub hardware was broken off when we arrived. My side hustle is house flipping so I fixed it for the owner and they were thankful. I would say the part I find most disturbing about what I see on Airbnb is the rise of “420 friendly” and the presence of cameras in every room. One place we stayed at had obvious cameras on the outside but then just as I’m about to go to sleep I look up at the ceiling and there’s another one in the chandelier above the bed. That’s just beyond ok. As for 420, I just have an issue that if I’m going to take my kids someplace that I’d want reasonable assurances that it’s clean but with cities like LA where there’s a huge number of 420 listings, I’d rather just pay for adjoining rooms in a hotel than take the chance. As far as being an investor in Airbnb, I think a lot of ink has been dedicated to how Airbnb is going to upend the hospitality industry. It’s clear at the beginning the hotels had no response, but I do see hotels adjusting their brands and as someone who uses both hotels and Airbnb’s I’m increasingly more likely to just stay in a hotel. The exceptions are when we vacation in groups... we visited Toronto this summer with family and it was absolutely awesome to have a giant house on the beach for about half of what we would have spent on hotel rooms if there even had been a hotel in the beaches neighborhood. I see a place for both styles of accommodation but given that Airbnb is likely more of a class of property among many rather than an upending of the entire industry, I think valuation is going to be a real challenge.
I'm surprised you still seem to recommend AirBnb despite these experiences. As a family of 5 (3 kids) I know it can be frustrating and expensive to find hotel accommodations that work. But the strange (switcheroo, don't mention AirBnb to anyone!) to downright disturbing (cameras above the bed?!) experiences would never have me using AirBnb again. Maybe I just have issues trusting people... I'm sure there are great hosts but I don't like to gamble.
Curious were the cameras in the bedroom pointing at the bed and attempting to be concealed? Huge fear of mine having some psychopath watching videos of my wife and I getting (un)dressed or intimate.
I don’t think I endorsed Airbnb as much as just tried to relate my experiences. In both cases I was traveling alone or sans kids and didn’t give either situation much thought. That said we’ve had many delightful experiences and have come to get to know real people who are sharing their homes. At the same time I don’t buy the story that Airbnb is going to upend the industry. Hotel chains have gotten pretty good about adding properties with suites / extra room at reasonable prices. So I tend to see Airbnb as filling a property category rather than a industry disruptor. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them start to book traditional hotel properties as more and more communities and hoa’s regulate the home sharing business. I can also see where they might branch into fractional ownership for customers that need to live in multiple cities and don’t want to have to lease/own a property they aren’t going to use full time. Right now both cases can be achieved with some workarounds but I can see maybe a class/designation within the system emerging over time. But as I read through the comments the real issue is trust and I would agree that there’s probably more work to be done there - I’ve seen recently a new category for homes that have been verified... so all in all I’m not ready to dismiss the platform but I would agree there are some issues.
I've definitely had that "If anybody asks you are guests of Tiffany" from the bearded guy doing the checkin. Apparently the building management was hostile to AirBNB, but the funny thing is that we saw the occupants of two other apartments on the same floor that were clearly people on vacation just like us. I had a strong suspicion that most of the building was bought up by foreign investors and turned into AirBNB rentals.
But the location was in walking distance of the major attractions in downtown and cost a half of what the local hotels were charging for "three" bedrooms (really two bedrooms and a closet with a bed crammed into it) vs. a single room with a pair of doubles at a hotel. It even had free parking, unlike the hotels that were charging $40-$50 per spot per day.
I mean yeah, it feels sketchy as hell, but the place is nicer and literally hundreds of dollars cheaper than a hotel.
> I had a strong suspicion that most of the building was bought up by foreign investors and turned into AirBNB rentals.
I push back against this in my own building. I obviously refuse to let random people into the building, and I've left through the back exit to avoid obvious AirBnB "friends"¹. (Although having read the article, I now see people are much more reluctant to leave a bad review than I thought.)
Short-term sublets are against the contract in my building. Apartments in nice European city centres are for people to live in, not visitors on a weekend break.
I've just reported the current listings to the owner of the building. Last year their leases were terminated pretty quickly :-)
¹ Or whatever bullshit term AirBnB's marketing uses.
The place is cheaper precisely because it is sketchy as hell and doesn't have to spend to meet any of the requirements and regulations hotels are subject to.
Its only a matter of time before authorities catch on and it isn't so cheap anymore
He said he was told at checkin, your options are pretty limited at that point. Especially when you have only soft/anecdotal evidence it is actually in some vague way not legit. “If anyone asks, you’re guests of Tiffany” is not a definitively incriminating statement, and the fact that building management is hostile to Airbnb doesn’t mean any lease or city code is being violated.
Ideally there would be an anonymous review system to let people disclose this sort of fuzzy evidence though because who wants to be party to a sketchy situation? Not only are there legit Airbnb’s, there are long-standing legit vacation rental markets (think summer cabins) where Airbnb is taking over from the old alternative sites. So it’s not like every Airbnb listing is circumventing the law.
I would say the part I find most disturbing about what I see on Airbnb is ... the presence of cameras in every room. One place we stayed at had obvious cameras on the outside but then just as I’m about to go to sleep I look up at the ceiling and there’s another one in the chandelier above the bed.
Yeah, it's policy that you have to disclose any cameras inside the room in the listing. It's not clear what happens when you do find one though. You spend all day traveling and are in a strange city. On the one hand, you're entitled to get out of there with no penalty, but on the other, it might be hard to find alternate accommodations.
Cameras are problematic for AirBnB due to the tremendous scam potential. Consider these scenarios:
1) I'm a scammer. I stay in an AirBnB. Before I leave, I conceal a small camera somewhere in the room, and proceed to make a big deal out of "discovering" it. The room is refunded and the host is penalized or worse.
2) I'm a pervert. I spend the night in an AirBnB. Before I leave, I conceal a small camera somewhere in the room. I get off by watching the resulting footage, get paid by selling it, or both.
3) I'm a renter. I spend the night in an AirBnB. In the morning, I find the camera left by Pervert #2, possibly months earlier. I scream bloody murder. I get refunded, and the host is penalized or worse. Pervert #2 simply goes back to Ali Express and buys another camera.
There are probably numerous other variations I'm not devious enough to think of, all of which leave the host holding the proverbial bag.
I was on board with this, but doesn't more or less all of this apply to traditional hotels just as much as AirBnB? I don't make a habit of checking my hotel room for hidden perv-o-cams but how often are the housekeeping staff checking inside light fixtures, above wardrobes, etc? Guess I've got one more thing to worry about, so uh, thanks?
Yep. But ultimately what's at stake isn't just a few extra bucks for the host with a spare room or ADU in their back yard, it's the whole AirBnB business model.
If I was not traveling internationally, I would absolutely file a police report. Pretty sure it’s a felony to record guests even in your house unannounced, and probably compounded if the area being filmed is one where you could reasonably be naked.
I haven't stayed at Airbnbs in the US but it has been a common experience in Europe to be instructed to say we're guests of the owner if asked. I assume this is about either HOA rules on subletting, or tax/insurance/regulatory issues.
I think it makes more sense. If you just say "I am at the airbnb", it's confusing. Maybe they don't know what unit you're talking about. If you say "guest of blah blah" there is some clarity. Eg. even if they don't know their neighbors, it's likely that the host's name is at least on the buzzer or mailbox. And if you remember your host's name, you may know which buzzer to hit at check-in, for example.
I doubt that would hold up for insurance purposes. Also, I think it's relatively unlikely that tax inspectors come around and talk to suspected guests, at least compared to the common situation of HOA/lease policies restricting subletting.
If I had to fix a bathroom fixture on my own on a vacation, it would definitely piss me off enough to never use the service again. I'm surprised that you're so nonchalant about it
Well I just stayed in a hotel in Vegas and the air conditioner didn’t work. It was 2 am when I arrived due to late plane. The last thing I wanted to do was wait around for a repair guy or pack it all up and change rooms. At least with the faucet it was a pretty easy fix I could do in about two minutes and it helped the homeowner out. After reading through most of the thread below I would agree I’m generally more nonchalant that many others. I guess I never appreciated the range of awful experiences people have had and how they feel about it. Travel can be rough... I just had a flat tire in the Mojave desert and had to pay $55 to fix it at midnight. The rental car company initially wanted to accuse me of doing donuts or riding off road but once I got someone sane on the phone they gave the straight up policy on these situations. Upon return I showed the repair receipt and they deducted $100 off for the inconvenience. That was cool. I guess you just have to take each experience differently and assess the situation you’re in.
Sounds like they did the switch to avoid getting caught running an illegal or otherwise somehow contract-breaching Airbnb. If they used their correct address, their building would figure it out and shut them down.
Because I have kids (they're smaller, under 7) I can't really risk getting shafted at an AirBnB. Our experiences were so up and down that I rarely look to the site anymore for options. Suite hotels are prevalent, and work great for families, and you can be relatively certain it'll be a fine place to hang your hat for the night.
For longer-term rentals, I find it's best to work through local property managers or maybe VRBO, where you're dealing with the person more directly. That said, the destination probably makes a HUGE difference in terms of how you are treated.
The fact that AirBnB's rating system is so gamed that you can't trust any reviews, and the fact that their policies for refunds skew towards the property owners and not guests means that my trust in the site is low. I'd probably only risk it again if there are hotels around as backups. That said, I'm also typically looking for cheaper places, so the scam-level density is probably higher.
I also have had great experiences on Airbnb, with only a few less than desirable ones, but the fact that Airbnb isn't refunding these people, and not paying the extra cost for the last-minute accommodations they had to take in is extremely disturbing and makes me completely lose faith in the platform.
If Airbnb would take fraud seriously and refund people who have been defrauded on their platform, it would be fine. The fact that they push the risks of fraud to the customer and refuse to pay for reparations is not acceptable.
Funny, having young kids is what has sent me back to hotels (at least for the time being), simply because they are mostly designed with accessibility and some level of child-proofing. Also, the long corridors, lobbies and elevators in hotels are great outlets for toddlers to burn energy and curiosity. Cooping the kids up in a grown-up oriented space with fragile table decorations they can't touch can be exhausting.
Depends on how many kids, and their ages. Between the ages of ~2-8, they're going to bed much earlier than you, and they won't fall asleep if you're still in the room. Add multiple kids—especially different ages with different bedtime routines—and a single room (or even a suite) can be challenging.
We have a favorite AirBnB listing in one town we visit frequently (to see family that doesn't have space to host us) that has some fragile decorations. When we arrive, we do a quick sweep and put them all up high. We're also up-front with the host that we have small children, so they're free to reject our stay if they'd prefer. So far, it's never been an issue.
> The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.
How do you corroborate the information on those properties? The clean, affordable, well-placed hotels I've stayed in had reams of reviews and news articles from various sources to confirm they were indeed clean, affordable, and well-placed. The cost of faking all those sources must be orders of magnitude greater than faking property images/reviews on AirBnB.
I only stay at Airbnb's that have at least some reviews. It doesn't take too long to determine if reviews are sock-puppet-generated or genuine. You have to actually stay at the property to write a review, which means paying for the stay since Airbnb process the payment. Obviously you can create wash transactions but the transaction fees would still be significant.
Another approach is to sent a question to the property manager. Invent some pretext to ask a question. I find that people trying to scam customers on the product also have poor customer service skills. So if I don't get a prompt, cogent and polite response, I move on..
> How do you corroborate the information on those properties?
There is no way to corroborate. For most listings, Airbnb is the only source. However, I've never found this to be an issue. I don't believe I've ever been "scammed" by an Airbnb host in 40+ bookings.
You use common sense - I have been a host of properties and I would say Airbnb does not go to any lengths to encourage you to misrepresent. In fact they do the opposite - with your listing you are building a contract so they encourage you to be as specific as possible and accurately describe the guest experience and your expectations as much as possible. They also strictly govern guest interactions so you can’t provide a phone number or email address during negotiations to side step the system. Overall I think the people who are saying it’s a scam are amplifying a bad experience to suggest that it represents the whole system. It clearly doesn’t and I say that as having seen how it works both as a host and a user.
While AirBnB nominally "encourage[s] you to be as specific as possible and accurately describe the guest experience and your expectations as much as possible", in reality, the way it handles feedback and complaint resolution discourages the candid reporting of problems, as was evident in several places in the article. The root cause of this problem is that AirBnB makes no attempt to determine the truth of any complaint. Nor, apparently, is it doing much to identify patterns of abuse.
I use a Chrome extension to show the true cost per night on Airbnb. I find the fees variable enough that I want to see the real price as part of my analysis of listings.
This used to be an issue with Airbnb, but I believe they fixed/changed that a year or two ago. The one line item they leave out of the total price on the search results is "Occupancy taxes and fees", which I can understand.
If you haven't tried recently, a lot of traditional booking sites (like Booking.com) now have a pretty extensive apartment rental catalogue. When I'm going somewhere for more than a couple of days, I'd much rather have an entire apartment. I used to use AirBNB to book a full-fledged apartment. But now I just use Booking.com for everything.
It also used to be the case that AirBNB had some really nice places for pretty cheap. I think now that the business is more mature, it's not as easy to find really great discounts. Any more, it seems like the better value is on Booking.com, too!
I also have repeatedly used AirBnB in the past to try to make life easier with children. After getting burned repeatedly, I gave up. You can book a place like Embassy Suites for a similar amount of money and have a bit more space than a standard hotel room. It just isn't worth the hassle of researching AirBnB listings and dealing with the fallout from the bad ones to me anymore.
Yeah I've stayed at lot of airbnbs (20-30 a year) and only had good to great experiences. I've met a lot of hosts that I specifically look up when I visit their city again. I've had plenty where they weren't exactly what I expected, like thinking a cabin I was renting was in the woods from the pictures but it was on a gravel driveway with trees in the background, but my trip wasn't ruined or anything. I've unfortunately had reservations cancelled in the 24hr window and had to rush to find something else, or accepted an insta-reservation but never heard back from the host. I've not looked over the fine print, seen airbnbs with pictures of ovens and shown up to microwaves (this is my fault but the pictures don't help). Those are my biggest host issues.
I will say though that I dread what you said - analyzing listings. The airbnb.com UX is atrocious. I thought it was pretty sub-par when I'd look at listings just planning trips for myself. But now I try to plan trips with my partner through it and she has her own account, so I share lists and listings within lists. It's awful. I recently went on a 2 week road trip and stayed at different places every day. I'd have to have google maps open to plot distance between airbnbs and parks, I couldn't go back into a listings actual ad to see its details once I confirmed a reservation (I had to search for the listing again and go to it, the reservation details don't show the actual posting), I'd have to keep a separate app open just to keep notes of each listing, I use my todo list, which I then also had to share with my partner separately because there's not really a way to thumbs up/down/leave comments on listings. I'd send her listings and she'd get errors or they'd just never end up on her account. If I add her to a listing I don't think it shows up in her reservations so I still had to send all the info to her, she'd just get an email about it.
Does anyone do this sort of stuff on any of the other sites? Vrbo, etc? Is there a really good roadtrip planning app? Are they easier to use in these situations? I honestly don't want to deal with it again it was that frustrating.
Also, while I'm here ranting, and as an ex-airbnb host and very avid airbnb user. Please, chill out on your cleaning fees. I cannot believe some of the cleaning fees I find. Quit using it as a way to lower the daily cost so that you show up on more searches. Nothing turns me off from a place more than putting a reservation together and noticing that my 2-3 day stay will incur $150+ in cleaning fees. I would rather pay a slightly higher daily fee than $45-80/day in "cleaning" when I'm a single person renting your studio just so I can spend 80% of my day hiking outside of your place. I can't remember if I could control this based on the number of guests staying but if you can, please do it.
A "great" hotel experience I had recently was when I happened to casually mention to someone in the hotel restaurant that it was my wedding anniversary tomorrow. When I came back from touring through the city the next day, the reception staff gave my wife flowers and wished us a happy anniversary. Then when we entered our room, we found a small cake with anniversary wishes.
That kind of attention to detail is what I would classify as a truly "great" experience.
I used to be an active Airbnb host for a vacation house I own. For reference it was a 4 bedroom Victorian.
I had to pay $150 to clean the house each time I had a booking, that's what it cost me. I passed it along to guests at exactly that cost.
Not sure if it was "worth it" for some guests, or people staying only one night. But that's what I had to pay, it wasn't part of any nefarious strategy. In developed countries it's going to cost to clean that place, that's just the way it is. You don't have the economies of scale that a hotel has with a team of maids.
I'm clearly not a single guy renting 4 bedroom victorian homes. I'm more talking about the people who charge you $80-150/night to clean a 1 bedroom studio, especially if it's a guesthouse in their back yard and I'm asked to do half of the work (put dishes in dishwasher, take out trash, take sheets off bed, etc) and still charged more than I know it costs to clean. Also the fact that it doesn't show up on the map when plotting trips, I have to go into the listing and wind up rejecting half of the options after.
At that point unless I'm looking for a specific experience (cabin in the woods, victorian 4 bedroom home) I'll probably just get a hotel to not have to deal with it.
I think my biggest issue is the DAILY clean fee. I'm fine with a one time clean fee if I'm there for 3-5 days. Hosts aren't coming in and rolling my sheets every night.
Fair enough; not everyone is abusing that feature, and I can understand how a large home like that would legitimately cost $150.
But many are, and Airbnb isn't doing anything for the UI that lets you adapt for that and sort by total cost. There's almost an arms race for how much of the cost you can obfuscate that way.
Having a fixed cleaning fee and a per-night charge actually reflects the property owner's costs. They have to pay someone to clean, do laundry, re-stock the
crackers and cheap wine. Of course this can be taken too far, but I actually prefer this cost structure because I get a price break if I have a long stay vs an average flat fee per night.
Source: I know several Airbnb owners, and the people who clean their properties.
I think the point is less about the existence of the cleaning fee and the fact that the site doesn't include the fee in the mapping UI. It makes it very difficult to compare properties when there are large fee differences that you cannot see until clicking through.
I usually search with specific dates for a stay, so it's weird that they don't summarize the listings by total cost instead of the nightly rate leaving out the fixed costs. That'd fix the problem, right? (Of course they could divide that total cost by the night count if they can't let go of normalizing to nightly rate. The point is to not incentivize accounting shenanigans.)
Overall I've been happy with airbnb as a traveler, but if they don't step up their game it's going to be like having been happy with the early web, or Amazon reviews in the early days when it was easy to ignore a few fakes. That general problem of evolving predators is hard, but this particular change seems easy.
> Quit using it as a way to lower the daily cost so that you show up on more searches.
When looking through search results, my eyes always go straight to the total cost, which factors in the cleaning and service fees (but not the occupancy taxes and fees).
> The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.
Completely agree. If you don't want to put in the time or effort required to analyze for “assumed”, “missing” , and “bonus” amenities, scrutinize each listing’s description, photos, and guest reviews, and sniff out the nature of each Airbnb and the host’s motivations, I say stay away from Airbnb. More thoughts here - https://blog.michaelscepaniak.com/how-to-find-choose-and-boo...
The more negative comments I read here, the more I think that most people shouldn't use Airbnb. With that being said, I've been happy with Airbnb, warts and all.
As a family we do the same, but never in the US, we've been caught in a couple of scams the same as this article, fortunately when we were traveling for business not as a family, but still.
AirBnB in Australia, Japan & the UK has never been a problem for me. The USA has a 50% scam rate so far.
Exactly this. For one or two people, Airbnb isn't lot cheaper than hotels. The big win is when the traveling group is more than two people. That gets very expensive at hotels because you usually have to book more than one room.
I really used to like Airbnb, but for the same usage - family vacations. But after couple of bad experiences, where host canceled while we were on the way, I prefer holiday homes which are professionally managed and have better contracts.
With the amount of research you may be nearly just as well off searching craigslist. I'm bitter about my experiences and won't subject myself to abnb any further.
There are hotels with laundry rooms; and many chains have suites that give you an extra room, including doors, or connecting rooms. Very often the price difference isn't that significant. (Given how expensive some Airbnb's are, booking with points or through various deal sites is often much cheaper for a proper hotel rooms, too.)
The only bad experience I had was a decent looking apartment type room in a house (from the pictures), but it ended up being the moldy basement of the house, and the bedroom didn't have an egress window. It wasn't unbearable, but it wasn't good either.
However, you can't go wrong with superhosts. I've never had a bad experience with them.
>The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.
I just spent 7 days (20h total) trying to make one booking. Tons of reading between the lines and analyzing involved, as well as bad or non-responsive potential hosts. To top it off, AirBnb Support the whole time was very poor.
I'm sure most people have fine experiences, but this is more than just "reporting negative experiences". This is a probably super profitable scam, and I'm sure it's not the only one, since there really aren't performing any sort of checks on hosts or properties.
Yeah, if it is me and my wife we go hotel 90% of the time at least now. If it is more family members coming, like my parents or her parents, we will book an airbnb so everyone can get their own room and we can eat together etc.
What does this have to do with the artice? You've had luck with Airbnb. You're just saying oh it's a company fraught with fraud and deception since its inception, but that's fine. My kids get their own room.
This company has no moral compass. Why are you advertising for it? Distracting from the reality of the company described in the article?
You know it has illegally ruined communities in the name of profit, right?
The late cancellation by host without no specific penalties seems to be one of the most prevalent yet disturbing elements in this.
The one who's travelling has the weakest odds of all. The traveler will be in a foreign place with no place to stay. In contrast, the host has no losing cards except some income. The rules should, thus, have been written to protect the traveler at the expense of the host because the host can take more hits from bad luck than the traveler.
If the host really needs to cancel they should have to put the traveler in a real hotel as an upgrade to remove all doubt of the traveler getting into a place that could be worse. They have already received the money from the traveler so they only need to pay for the difference. Just cancelling late without any particular reason could be done but at a very high cost. And if the host's place did burn down for real then a few hundred extra to pay for the guest's hotel for a few nights will surely be a negligent cost.
I wouldn’t want anyone picking a hotel for me. I might appreciate if the host calls a few hotels to see which ones have space but I want the final say. My perspective has been that “when I use Airbnb I always have a plan b”. I do. I don’t negotiate, if the listing has issues or was miss-sold I walk out and activate my plan b. Airbnb will always refund if you do it like that.
Seems like there might be ways to combat this with proper incentives though.
Say: refund + 50%, or a hotel you both agree on at cost + 25%. It's in the host's best interest to find a replacement, and they're locals so they're likely to be more capable than the visitor. Either way the host is penalized for late changes, and the visitor gets to choose which deal they think is better.
I think thats a good idea but i’d settle for my money back in full so i can maximise options. Right now people are being scammed all over the world because hosts abuse their visitors insecure position. Airbnb needs a buyers guarantee like ebay offers.
I got burned on miss-sold/labeled AirBnBs a few years ago and they did nothing to make it up to me so I RARELY book with them anymore. Honestly with rewards points and such with hotel booking sites, and airbnb prices not being that much cheaper than a hotel, it often is just less hassle to go traditional hotel.
Agree but as some folks have pointed out Airbnb has more locations and can take you off the beaten track. Which is nice if you have children a dog and want some place quiet. There are always alternatives. Your point resonates with me because in London i have never found a Airbnb that comes close to hotel convenience. I enjoy the proximity of hotels in central London. So yes with Expedia I’m getting 10% off on a short stay and all things considered it’s pretty much less hassle and cheaper plus the standard of many hotels in London is good.
This is good advice. Once you stay in the host's place (anywhere) you're probably not getting all of your money back. I'm a bit sympathetic to this. Scams go both ways. If you walk away at trouble, you will usually get your money back.
To me a planb is to have a few hotels, bnbs in ideal locations i can book at reasonable short notice. I know they have space and they are in my budget. I have extra cash so I don’t have to wait for a airbnb refund if they take time. I don’t use other airbnbs as a planb in case something happens with airbnb. A couple of years back we booked a lovely place in normandy, france with indoor pool for feb half term. The owner cancelled while we were on the ferry. Luckily i had a plan b we drove to a lovely chateau near mon st michel and enjoyed our stay. Airbnb did refunded me quickly but not in time to depend on it for checkin at the chateau. I booked a flat in the uk for a colleague to stay while in uk for a few weeks. The host tried to bait and switch i refused and found an alternative airbnb which as it was went ok. I had to wait for a refund because i paid for 3 weeks.
Fewer and fewer hotel reservations let you cancel until 6pm day of though like they used to. More and more cancelable reservations want 24, 48, or even 72 hours these days.
There's a number of reasons why we choose to stay at Airbnbs instead of hotels. We save money. We break out of the cookie-cutter hotel bubble. We direct our dollars toward individuals and small businesses rather than faceless corporations. We gain access to amenities such as bicycles, beach chairs, etc.
Maybe when AirBnB was a site to share you spare room/couch this would apply. With the rise of people buying entire buildings to rent on the site, professional hosting companies that sub contract another company that eventually pays some college kid under the table to deliver the keys and yell at the cleaning crew, it's about as faceless as it gets. Just with a lot more faceless faces now...
Still better than Uber where if the driver cancels more than 5 minutes after accepting the ride, the rider gets charged (as if the rider had cancelled).
They're very fast to issue refunds, but only if requested... I wonder how many people just never notice the fraudulent charge! One reason I minimally trust Uber and keep checking all their charges...
A person close to me had a driver fail to end the ride, and drove around several miles racking up charges. When she noticed this and complained to Uber, they rejected her claim. When she disputed Uber's fraudulent charge on her credit card, they blacklisted her account.
That only happens if the driver arrives at your location and waits. You can't just expect to call an Uber and have them wait forever. Regardless of what you think of uber, it's just common courtesy to be ready when it arrives.
The one who's travelling has the weakest odds of all. The traveler will be in a foreign place with no place to stay. In contrast, the host has no losing cards except some income.
No, the one being scammed has the weakest odds. The "traveler" could in fact be a local scammer who sabotages a property and then has various ways (which I won't detail) for turning a profit on it if the rules favor the "poor traveler".
I'm not saying the rules shouldn't favor the traveler, I'm cautioning against assuming that the traveler would always be the victim in case of a scam. This assumption is often the result of projection by an honest observer who can easily picture himself as the traveler but not as the property owner.
Better than biasing the outcome, in my opinion, would be for AirBnB to require all communication about "changes" to go through the corporate system. If both parties agree "it's fine", the event is noted but not investigated until it happens repeatedly. Top N% of repeats plus others at random get investigated. But if either party says it's "not fine", there will be no reviews allowed (so no threat of bad review), and AirBnB will investigate and do the "reviewing" themselves, with the investigation escalating in vigor with repeats. They will also make it clear that any evidence of intentional fraud they uncover will be promptly taken to law enforcement.
Of course this would raise costs for AirBnB, which would be passed on as fees, reducing the cost advantage of AirBnB vs traditional hotels. But if raising the trust level to hotel level eliminated the cost advantage over hotels, the cost advantage would be an illusion.
Do changes to reservations not have to go through AirBnB already? I feel like they should already be able to audit accounts that change reservation details often.
Disclaimer: I have never used AirBnb so I have no clue how it all works.
Changes can be made through the Airbnb website. But, apparently that's not required.
FWIW, the only contact I've ever had from hosts outside the system is emails (which I believe were actually relayed from Airbnb, not sure) and actual in-person contact upon arrival (75% of the time, the host has met me for check-in to hand-off keys, answer questions, and show me any oddities in the home).
>No, the one being scammed has the weakest odds. The "traveler" could in fact be a local scammer who sabotages a property and then has various ways (which I won't detail) for turning a profit
Respectfully, I don't see these ways. Could you please at least a bit elaborate? Changes request always go through the host approval process. Are you talking about intentionally damaging the property?
Airbnb already asks you to keep the conversation inside its own messaging system. A phone call is a smart way for the scammer to make the victim provide instant confirmation and not have the communication recorded at Airbnb.
The traveller is penalised the full price of the stay if they cancel late. Why is the host not penalised the same amount (which would then be credited to the traveller as compensation)?
Without the hosts, there's no product, less product, less fees, or pretty listings to flout in marketing.
The availability of affordable and decent listings in Paris is testament how badly they need the existing hosts. Who, by the way, are limited by regulations that limit the number of days a host can list per year, as well as tax registration requirements. None of which I'm complaining about; it's just another factor that makes me predict the situation with quality and honest listings will go down.
> And if the host's place did burn down for real then a few hundred extra to pay for the guest's hotel for a few nights will surely be a negligent cost.
is a very narrow view of someone who just lost their house to a fire. Even assuming nothing irreplaceable was lost, I feel my upcoming AirBnB guest might not be my top priority.
Any idea what hotels typically do in this situation? It's not exactly apples to apples but if you're going to make money by the same methods it seems within reason to play by similar rules.
Yeah, the first thing they'd do is upgrade guests. So now the hotel is giving you the $250 room for your $150 per night. Then they look at nearby hotels they have an arrangement with, and send you to one of those. If there are no nearby hotels with inventory they'll refund you. In many hundreds of hotel stays I've never seen this happen even to another guest.
Also most hotels do a lot of corporate business. This mutual five star crap from the "sharing economy" doesn't fly in that world. Somebody's PA has a bad experience at your hotel? No more bookings from that whole company. So shady nonsense just becomes bad business anyway.
My suggestion is in these rare cases, it should be on AirBnB to relocate you. You already paid them plenty in the booking fee, some basic assurance that you will have a room to sleep in when you arrive should be part of that. Scammers will scam, but they will at least scam a victim (AirBnB) with the resources and incentives to root out the scam. In the current system, renters are stuck with such information asymmetry that they don't even know if they're being scammed or a pipe really did burst.
One of the reasons Airbnb is cheaper than hotels is that fraud and safety costs are passed on to guests and hosts. This is part of the business model. Once you build all the protections people want, you may find yourself at the same prices hotels were charging, and that's not very unicorn.
They're also cheaper than hotels because they allow people to exploit inventory that was otherwise sitting vacant. I agree that it's basically a form of regulatory arbitrage, but I'd argue that adding protections (as they already do for the property owners) is part of their competitive moat.
Also, like all new unicorn companies, they are doing business in an unregulated market. The wild west won’t last thats why they’re in the make as much money as fast as you can mode.
I've used them maybe 3 times since they launched, but I always assumed that I did have this protection with AirBnB. I have had hosts ask me to avoid booking through the site and arrange payment outside the system, but I hesitated to do that because I figured the AirBnB fee paid for some "peace of mind" that I wasn't going to get shafted. If I wasn't buying that... what was the fee supposed to pay for?
Rare, yes. I’ve had it happen and had it happen to colleagues but it’s been a while. And that’s on a pretty large sample size. Anecdotally better than it used to be.
> If the host really needs to cancel they should have to put the traveler in a real hotel as an upgrade to remove all doubt of the traveler getting into a place that could be worse. They have already received the money from the traveler so they only need to pay for the difference.
New scam: post a listing for a very high-end place you don't own, cancel the booking once you've been paid and book the client a cheap hotel, and pocket the difference
Doesn't sound like an "upgrade" to me, and indeed I wasn't thinking of a downgrade to a cheap motel. There are obviously several schemes/incentives that can be set up to make sure the traveler will get "similar or better". For example, if the traveler doesn't agree with the suggested alternative accommodation the host will pay back the original sum + X which will amount to a stay in a decent business-grade hotel in the area, or something similar. Some schemes will probably leak one way or another but they should all favour the traveler and make the host responsible since the cancellation did originate at host end after all.
There is a larger problem here: there seems to be no way to hold these big internet companies to account for misrepresenting their product offerings. For example, some time ago, someone on HN reported on a plagiarized Python book for sale on Amazon. (https://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Beginner-Intermedi...). I emailed the author of the original book,(October 4) because Amazon have a form that allows authors to report plagiarism. This is what he replied to me:
"Thank you for your note. Someone else discovered this and notified me three weeks ago. I went to the Amazon copyright infringement webpage and filled out the form. The automated email told me to expect a formal response in 1-2 business days. That was three weeks ago, and I’m still waiting."
So Amazon have, for more than a month, been told that they are selling a stolen book. And yet the listing is still there.
Now if I reported that my local bricks-and-mortar second-hand store was selling my stolen TV set, I'll bet that the police would be there pretty quickly. But Amazon and BnB can sell stolen goods or misrepresent offerings with impunity. This is not right.
At this point, ordering certain products from Amazon is basically playing Counterfeit Roulette. You never know if that bag is a real Michael Kors or a Chinese knock off
"Now if I reported that my local bricks-and-mortar second-hand store was selling my stolen TV set"
Yes, but an analogous situation here would be if your local bricks-and-mortar store were selling a TV that looked and worked just like yours, but was made by a different company.
What (if anything) do you expect your local police would do if you reported that?
I wonder what the response times across, say, US cities, looks like for police response to a stolen TV set. Copyright infringement is different than physical theft, so I would expect a much faster response to the latter. A better comparison would be if you reported a shop was selling pirated DVDs. That would compare Amazon's response time to that of the police, instead of comparing across different kinds of crimes.
There are also some smaller-time scams hosts run. I was forced to pay a three-figure cleaning fee by an AirBnB in DC earlier this year because they claimed I left a stain on their couch -- which I never even sat on (also, I was by myself, so it's not as though another one of my guests did something to it). I appealed and asked for photos of the supposed stain, but they ghosted me and in the end AirBnB ruled in their favor and automatically charged my credit card for the amount.
That's essentially what I was thinking even when reading the article. Get a good credit card company that's on your side (Amex has been best for me, Discover too), and let them deal with it. They absolutely will not screw around with stuff like this.
Yup, fraud like this is exactly what chargebacks are for. Companies don't listen to anything but money. AirBNB counts on you being a pushover and not disputing the charge. I don't understand this "Well they charged my credit card so there's nothing I can do!" attitude.
Just be aware that a chargeback is an instant bridge-igniter with the company or platform you’re filing it against, most considering it a breach of the TOS and banning your account.
You might find it hard to reverse charges. Credit card companies will absolutely reverse fraudulent charges. However, they don't like to get in the middle of price disputes in my experience. If you say you agreed to pay $10, but that you were charged $20, the credit card company may tell you to work it out with the merchant.
It really depends on the card. As mentioned, Amex and Discover really seem to be the best. I've only disputed a handful of times, and each time they refund the money immediately while they figure out who was right.
This can work, but beware that the company may send the charge to collections. It's a slimy thing to do, but we are talking about a company that's built its success on evading all manner of legal responsibility. (And outright law-breaking by many of its hosts.)
I charged back a fraudulent charge to a local company, and they sent it to collections. Immediately sent the collection agency a registered letter demanding they validate (prove) the debt as required by the FCRA and California law, then another one a month later after they ignored me, and that was the end of it.
There's often no reason to fear these shenanigans. Companies get away with it when people don't understand their rights regarding credit and debt and cave in to the shenanigans.
Where are you getting $1000 from? He says 3 figure so it's in the hundreds, I'm assuming lower. Everyone has there point where they'd be fine burning the bridge. To me the ability to get a place quickly with an app from anywhere has a good amount of value, but I'd have trouble putting an exact price on it.
I disagree. I've been both a host and customer for many years, and in general I've found the customer service to be good or even very good for resolving issues either as a host or as a customer.
In fact, many 'scare' articles about airbnb puzzle me, because it seem seems that the problems could have been avoided if the guest had read the reviews and/or booked with a superhost (or other host with a history of good reviews).
Having said that, I do think it's insane that the reviews are no longer listed in chronological order (or at least with the option to view them in chronological order).
But how can I trust that the reviews are good if, as this article talks about, people are hesitant to post anything but good reviews for fear of receiving a retaliatory review?
Uhm, that sounds even worse: so your bad review won't show up until a host responds, so they can simply decide not to, and your bad review never shows up.
No, because there's a fixed time limit to submit a review, afterwhich the review is posted irregardless. Hey, I guess airbnb put more than 10 seconds of thought into the design of the process, what do you know.
You act like people’s real names and contact information are not exchanged. AirBnb has no quality enforcement mechanism to protect your privacy, the quality of your stay, or the resulting fallout from a conflict.
The mechanism for preventing most bad stays is called the reputation system, which is based on reviews. As for exchanging real names, do you think the system would be improved if all participants were completely anonymous? There's a reason a hotel knows your real name and contact information as well. You sound like a troll.
One screw up isn't going to keep me away, as I've had mostly good experiences with Airbnb.
Is it worth a one time screw up of $200 for my years of positive experiences? For me, yes.
If the ratio of positive to negative experiences starts going down, I'll be finding other ways to vacation.
Likewise, if a grocer messes up once, but I've been going to them for years without issue, I'm going to let it go. If it starts happening more often? I'll look for other ways to get my groceries.
(Side note: I've been booking more hotels recently. But that has to do with cost and convenience mostly, not false listings or false cleaning fees or anything else like that).
From a consumer that's fine - you've got your scammed money back (and they do not have the evidence that the payment was valid), and creating a new account is easy enough.
Because they control a huge part of the market, and the cost of accepting the fraud is often lower than the cost of losing access to that part of the market.
My kid had exactly the same thing happen. The host was local and attentive, but after the visit, they attempted to stick the guests for huge bill for a water ring in the finish on a wooden kitchen table that was already there when they checked in. This was not fine furniture, just generic 90's poly'd oak or veneer. The host was claiming the table needed to be replaced so the charge was high three figures. I'm not sure what the resolution was but the guests fought it.
Also avoid tiny rental car companies for this same reason. You'll find them listed on the major travel booking websites and they'll have names that you've never heard of. They often appear to be cheaper than the large rental companies, but they frequently have a chipped windshield or a tiny dent in a body panel.
Even if you point it out during the pre-rental walkaround, they won't mark it on the contract. That's the scam. Then when you return they charge you for a new windshield or a body panel/paint job, which of course they never actual have done because they want to scam the next person too.
Yes, you rented your car with your VISA and VISA will cover these charges eventually (takes about 3 months and you're on the hook for the charge for that time, and you'll never get the hours back that you spend sorting it all out).
You could say that you could just make sure all damage is marked before you sign the contract, and that's good advice at any rental agency, but it's still better to pay a little more up front to one of the major car rental companies who make their money on actually renting you a car instead of the company trying to find a way to scam you out of an additional $1000+.
Take a slow motion video inspecting the car at the start of the rental. I've supplied screenshots from the video, along with the full video itself, to my credit card company when disputing charges from the rental company. Took about an hour of my time, and a few weeks later the charge was reversed.
> you're on the hook for the charge for that time
I'm not really sure I consider having some of my credit blocked out while the charge is disputed, as being the same as being on the hook for the charge. The credit is essentially in escrow until a decision gets made, but it definitely hasn't impacted my bank balance in any way.
So is that what it's come down to for ABnB users? Record everything and CYA for an adversarial relationship?
Corporate really needs to step up here and enforce its rules and empower its rating system to drive this out. Otherwise it's not worth my energy to use the platform.
> The credit is essentially in escrow until a decision gets made, but it definitely hasn't impacted my bank balance in any way.
That's perfect, but I guess our mileage may vary. I was charged the amount and VISA later credited it when everything was resolved (about 3 months start to finish). I didn't miss the $1300, but I'm sure it would be a concern to some.
I carry a small bright flashlight in my work bag now, just for dark airport garages where rental cars are often parked. I've never had a problem with a major agency but I don't need a first.
I try not to be too paranoid a person, but whenever I get into and leave an AirBnB (or rental car for that matter) I walk through and take a video of everything using my phone. Takes a minute, I've never needed it, but it may save my ass some day.
Had the same happen to us, host inventing damage and trying to force a fee through AirBnB. However we disagreed with the fee and AirBnB never charged it.
I have to think that the hosts have their own trustworthiness rating in AirBNB's system. One guest disputes a charge after you've rented dozens of times? Probably the guest's fault. Every other guest disputes the charge? Almost certainly the host is doing something scammy.
This makes me feel so much better about just paying to make it go away (I was charged for "17 carpet spots"), thinking it wasn't worth the time or aggravation.
These places (airbnb, vrbo, its all the same stupid schtick) are emphasizing the rights of idiots to rent over the rights of renters to have a safe, enjoyable time while paying lots of money. They got the product they built.
That's really unfair, and I definitely think you should've got your money back. However, looking at it from a business standpoint, it's more expensive for them to lose a host than to lose a customer. So that's why I'm guessing you got the short end of the stick.
Looking at it from a "business perspective", if this becomes prevalent behavior, visitors stay away from the business and your "hosts" become worthless.
This scam actually works only in so far it is not prevalent and relatively small scale (100 listed properties is arguably not small scale anymore, but compared to the total number of listed properties...). However, now is the time for the platform to ensure this does not become a common experience, or they risk losing it all.
I stopped using AirBnb. Their customer service on a number of occasions made it apparent they are not going to deal with hosts who have fake and outdated pictures and ruin other guest's stays. It seems hosts are the only side of the equation AirBnb folks care about.
Airbnb let the host write a review on us for the stay which we didn't even take, as when we arrived in the apartment it was in a such appalling state, dirty, broken - we had to spend 4 hours inside while looking for the replacement and trying to convince Airbnb this apartment is inhabitable based on their T&Cs. Yes, we managed that but couldn't find an adequate replacement for the same money and had to move into the hotel. At the same time, Airbnb let the host write a super-negative review about us for not taking this apartment and never sent an invitation to myself to write my own review. I could not even image it is possible to write reviews for cancelled stays! I was left with negative review and ruined stay just because the host could care less and because Airbnb protects hosts first and foremost.
Guess what? Most of non-scam non-inhabitable properties listed on Airbnb are almost always available on other sites, including a well-known booking site. Where you pay and receive service and have means to complain or at least write a review without the fear of being reviewed back for something you are not even at fault.
I had 23 positive reviews and that one last negative. When I later tried to book an apartment and started asking a few questions to host (have to be fastidious with the choice as I often stay for 2-3 weeks, so need to ensure there is no construction works around..etc) - the host has referred to my last negative review and told me I won't be welcome. And that was that proverbial straw.
I still browse AirBnb's listings on occasion, but the last few trips have ended up booking directly with hotels, Lodges/Inns/BnBs, or vacation rental companies. When taking a look at the true prices, inclusive of fees, and what level of property I get for them today, Airbnb often comes out much more expensive for comparative properties. I might still have better experiences in less touristy locations than the ones I travel to. Not to mention the ridiculously strict long-term cancellation policies Airbnb allows hosts to apply that wouldn't fly in any other style of vacation housing.
I loved the service back in the early twenty-teens, but I had a strikingly bad experience with a home I tried to book in Boston.
The owner found out her home listing had rats a few days prior to check-in, and admitted to not being able to get rid of them fully before the date, leaving the possibility of rats getting poisoned/killed by the traps she set up. All of the communication was via @airbnb.com emails I had responded to, but Airbnb's support couldn't find any records of these messages. It took multiple calls and entirely too much effort to get an eventual refund plus a tiny credit on their site -- not nearly enough to book a replacement property that close to the date anywhere within city limits.
Meanwhile, like I mentioned, the prices of properly licensed and managed vacation options have become competitive with Airbnb while offering more reliable and flexible wrt date changes and cancellations.
This is also my experience, I find Airbnb to be more expensive and not cheaper than booking through their competition and often times the same property will be listed on Airbnb but 15% cheaper on HomeAway.
This summer I made a trip to Spain where we ended up staying on a 4 star hotel with breakfast on the beach we wanted for what would have costed to rent a house of similar feel.
I've run into a scam recently on AirBNB and several situations that ended up screwing me over. The scam was after booking a nice place in Orlando, Florida for a week through my wife's AirBNB account. The day after booking, the "owner" sent an email saying that they required a photograph of the front and back of her credit card, drivers license picture and full name. Not even a subtle scam, but that would probably fool most people. After contacting AirBNB support(which is a difficult task itself, good luck finding a form), they took 3 days to respond and responded with a "yeah, don't send them that. Sorry". Of course, the listing is still there now when I look.
I've also booked trips to Tokyo and LA recently, and in each place the reservation was accepted, payment was made, and 2 weeks before I was set to stay there, the owner canceled the stay. Why? Doesn't matter, the owner can cancel without penalty for "unforeseen circumstances". Of course the renter gets charged a massive fee for canceling including, naturally, AirBNB's fees.
My fraud alert is always on high now when using AirBNB and I think no one should put all their vacation eggs in the 1 basket with them. Too unreliable, too flaky on reservations, and too we-don't-care-about-you attitude towards the renters.
The asymmetry of the platform is really my biggest gripe. Hosts & AirBnB themselves have basically no way to lose money on the platform and are laughing all the way to the bank, while users can be left with nowhere to stay 5 minutes before check in, and be forced to pay 2-20x what they paid for the AirBnB to get a comparable place last minute. It's absolutely fucked, and it's the same deal for most major corporations.
Give me a break, Hosts have plenty of ways to lose money and take a huge risk renting their place out in the first place. People cancel last minute (if you have the nicer cancellation policies in place), leave beer bottles everywhere, and are sometimes just really unreasonable. Some guests are great though which makes it worth it!
We also have to deal with Airbnb issues, like when a guest leaves a review that isn't true and they leave it up anyway, even if the guest had no evidence, as one example.
Don't think that hosts always have it so easy or are all scammers like in this post.
Even when people cancel last minute, they still have to pay the Service Fee (money to AirBNB). As the OP pointed out, there's asymmetry...AirBNB always wins.
What bugs me in this thread is that the whole idea of airbnb is cheaply stay in someone's property with "air bed and breakfast" (of course some properties are pricey but in genereal it just another category of bookings than general airbnb hosts).
Air bad and breakfast type of hosts could not be reliable by definition. If you want a predictable experience you will get a better luck working with professionals (either hotel chains or high end local hotels). It is a solved problem.
> the whole idea of airbnb is cheaply stay in someone's property with "air bed and breakfast"
No, that was the whole idea in the beginning, now "AirBNB" is a high-value brand, built on the idea that you can stay anywhere at any price level like it's your own home.
Hi! Could you send over that listing? We believe it's connected to the scam mentioned in the article. I would appreciate any information you have on hand.
In my experience no. But it puts the renter at a disadvantage. I have had them cancel 5 days before my flight to a small island. Least to say it was extremely expensive to rebook a new room that matched the "quality" of the airbnb I was expecting. Of course if I had cancelled 5 days before I would have been on the hook for half the amount of the stay and the service fees, due to the cancellation policy the host choose (Do the host choose these?).
No, it's a huge inconvenience. I suspect that once their place gets booked via AirBNB, they jack up the price on HomeAway/VRBO and see if they can get a better price, then cancel the AirBNB if they do. It's risk free for them to cancel, so why not.
He meant that the owner can cancel for free, while if the renter wants to cancel they will most often end up paying a fee. The wording confused me too for a minute.
I hit a variation of this scam. I wasn't baited on a different space, but the listing was heavily misleading. I even had roommates even though the listing didn't state it!
The listing had 5 stars because of a network of shill accounts leaving fake reviews. Additionally, there is no penalty for deleting a listing and recreating it when the fake 5-star status runs out.
I contacted Airbnb about the shill account network, and the scam, and they didn't do anything about it. Although I got a refund, I wasted 3 hours of my life trying to get into a locked apartment that had my things in it before a plane took off. The shill accounts still exist.
Haven't used Airbnb since. I might gamble for a chic destination listing for fun, but never again for casual/business use.
I got surprise roommates once too. An entire family living in one of the bedrooms in what I booked as a 2 bedroom unit. Turned out the place had 3 total bedrooms, and while I would have understood if the host lived in the third, this was a totally unrelated tenant with multiple children. I contacted Airbnb and they said sure I can cancel, I just need to get the host to agree. Which he obviously did not want to do. This took hours to resolve.
This scam is common in Europe as well. Something very similar happened to me in London where I was seemingly renting from a nice regular person who had a single well reviewed listing. Once I arrived I was met by some guy from a property company who said he "worked with" the lister and he was going to move us to some place better. He showed us a total dump with dilapidated Ikea junk. He basically threatened us with poor reviews/no refund when we didn't take it. Airbnb did literally nothing. I had to reach out to friend that works there to get traction.
Same thing happened in Florence to friends the following year. Luckily that time I had already bailed on Airbnb and got a hotel. But after I helped them look into it I found several instances of the photos/description from their well reviewed host used on other accounts.
1. If the property does not match the description, take pictures (they won't just take your word for it).
2. If you are told that the original property is not available, contact Airbnb right away, and they will give you a full refund and help you find a place to stay (Airbnb or otherwise).
Fortunately, I've never had to put any of this to the test...
I've used Airbnb exactly once, probably 8 years ago once. Me, wife, her parents and my parents all met up in Paris. I rented a 'luxury' apartment that was enough to sleep 8 people and looked great in pictures.
When we got there half the furniture was gone because the guy apparently got divorced between when the pictures got taken and his life "now", half the beds were kid's mattresses on pull out beds, there was no longer a shower but literally a full fledged hot-tub that had a flex shower over it.
the coffee machine and half the utensils in the kitchen had mold on it. we never got enough towels for all the people.
we stayed there for one day and couldn't do it anymore, i sent an email to Airbnb and the owner asking that we part ways amicably and they let us out of the contract, both replied that it was past 12 hours that we stayed there and i was liable for full cost.
i went outside to a payphone, called collect to a number listed on my platinum amex and explained the situation, the first thing the amex rep said: "i'm sorry to hear about your situation, we're immediately refunding you the full amount, go find a hotel room, enjoy the rest of your vacation and we'll call you when you get back to the states".
when i got to the states i had my money back from amex and Airbnb for weeks would write to me that "they're investigating my situation", at which point i didn't even bother reading their emails anymore. it was a crap company then and it seems like it's a crap company now. there really isn't any reason to do business with companies that don't value the customer, no matter how appealing the "price" may be.
I'm going on a 10-day vacation overseas at the end of this month. Given how infrequently I do big vacations (a personal issue I'm working to overcome), I have zero tolerance for surprises when it comes to my accommodations. I simply look for large and established four- or five-star hotels that have been around for a while and have numerous positive reviews across several web sites. Another hack I do is to use the "!mill" directive in DDG to filter out corpspeak and SEO-type stuff. I try to book directly with the hotels whenever possible -- although sometimes language and cultural barriers make that prohibitively tricky. I once spent half an hour trying to book something on a Japanese-language hotel web site (making generous use of page source and Google translate) before giving up and going through Booking.com, since there are apparently things about Japanese hospitality culture that I'm not clued in to.
In the end, I probably pay something like 50% more for my accommodations than I could if I were to take chances with AirBNB. But for me, the insecurity and potential for high-stress situations once I arrive in a foreign country just aren't worth it.
See, what you're experiencing is the transition to what we call traditionally, middle-age, I'm certain. And this isn't necessarily based on age, as much as mindset.
There was a time, in my 20's, that I would drive out somewhere and 'just figure it out' once I got there. Even for work functions or conferences.
Then AirBnB became a thing, and I was even more caution to the wind, because I can book ahead of time, but it's still a surprise, sort of! Best of both worlds!
Now, though, not that far out of my 20's, I'm with you. I'll pay a premium to know that I'm getting something that is agreed to by both parties, with no surprises.
yeah...I'm 36, married, 2 young kids..taking the family for a vacation over Christmas. This article basically convinced me to book a hotel instead of an AirBNB.
I have not had a bad experience w/ AirBnB when it was just my wife and I travelling, but I can't subject my kids to sleeping overnight in a dump - or supporting a company that does not actively address these issues.
One thing with Japanese hotels is they have a thing about the ratio of people:beds. We traveled to Tokyo a few years ago with our two pre-teen sons and it was very difficult to find a hotel that would fit us into one room.
Why don't companies like AirBNB who have a lot to lose (reputation wise) from a (small?) number of scammers sue those scammers into oblivion? Not only are they violating the TOS but they are committing fraud, and likely breaking a few other laws.
AirBNB must know who they are as those scammers are getting paid, right? It would be expensive for AirBNB (they would certainly lose money) but it can't cost more than the revenue they lose when people read articles like this?
The vast majority of Airbnbs I’ve stayed in were illegal hotels/rentals... only a handful were legit renting out a spare room / couch surfing type deals and the first time I did that I had to pretend I was the host’s college friend.
Airbnb is basically built on shifting liability to shifty people running hotels out of rentals.
Also, pro tip, I’d guess at least 50% of the airbnbs I’ve stayed in do not wash the sheets in a washer (I’ve literally physically observed at least one host lint-roll follow by a spray of fabric freshener).
That being said I still use them to lower my own standards and prices below hotels, but I know what I’m getting into at least.
> Also, pro tip, I’d guess at least 50% of the airbnbs I’ve stayed in do not wash the sheets in a washer
It happens at hotels, too, and it's why I always take the sheets off of the bed when I check out. Putting the sheets on is the worst part of making the bed but taking them off takes two seconds. My hypothesis: if lazy hosts/housekeeping are forced to go through the trouble of putting sheets on then they might as well use a clean set. And if the host/housekeeper was going to change the sheets anyway then maybe I've made their job just a little bit easier.
I stay in AirBNBs a couple times a year (used to do more) and I would agree it's mostly "illegal" rentals but interestingly, in the US I found more "company owns a bunch of flats" things and in the EU more "some dude owns this one flat or maybe two." (And in parts of the EU it's totally legal as long as your neighbors in the building have not managed to forbid it, which isn't always possible.)
I even have a friend who owns one flat, AirBNB's it, and rents another flat of about equal quality. In his case it's legal and a kind of interesting way to work the market; however it is ruinous to the rental market for locals.
I'm about to stay in one in Asia that very much seems to be a place someone lives about 1/3 of the time, and the rest of the time they rent it out. Apparently this is allowed there, but I'm curious what the vibe will be in a big luxury apartment building with many AirBNB listings.
I also agree that the AirBNB business model is impossible without shifting liability, but it seems like in many cases you're not so much shifting as removing it. Hotels are subject to all sorts of laws to ensure the safety of guests; these laws have developed over time and usually as the result of bad things happening; outside of maybe the US, nobody is kidding themselves that there is any meaningful liability on the part of a flat owner.
Even in localities where it is legal, the ratio of "hosts" running their operation in accordance with the law is comically low. There is a serious enforcement problem and it's largely because AirBnB does everything it can to not cooperate with local government.
Why would they care? They're applying the Fight Club formula.
Take the number of listings, A, multiply by the small proportion of scam listings, B, multiply by the average refund we post, C. A times B times C equals X. If X ... well, who cares about X, it doesn't matter - people will still book with us anyway.
Plus they also get to kick the problem down the road. If they have to face it, they might as well do it later.
Airbnb should be held responsible via law, not via the expectation that they care about their image. As long as it’s the Airbnb website or app and they are getting a commission, shrugging off issues like this should not be legal.
AirBNB was built on spamming Craigslist and willful ignorance of local zoning and tenant laws. It is in their DNA to allow operations like this...like WeWork, just trying to make it to the IPO cash-out.
Most people will never read this sort of article. And frankly it seems like Airbnb is perfectly happy to not rock the boat and continue to slurp up their fat percentage share of the fraud that they abet...
> Airbnb advises the guest to request a cancellation if they’re “not okay with the switch.”
This is beyond vile. The booking had already been cancelled by definition by the host, the refund should be automatic. They act like it's Hotel where you haven't booked a specific room. I'll never touch this POS company.
Yeah when i'm travelling the last thing I want is surprises with the place i'm staying, but people are so price sensitive they will put up with a lot.
One common thing I see in this thread is people act like theres only two choices: Hotels or Airbnb. I've never had a booking on HomeAway that wasn't on par or exceeding expectations.
This is actually the first time I've heard of HomeAway, thanks. The only short term rental company I've ever used or heard of was Airbnb. I'll probably be shopping around the next time I travel.
FYI, their consumer name is VRBO. The HomeAway office is here in Austin, but the actual app you use is called VRBO (and I think all the offices are getting new signs soon?).
How ironic to be reading this on HN of all places, it’s almost impossible to say this without sounding patronising but the thought of inserting ‘house for rental in destination’ or ‘destination holiday rental’ on any search engine never crossed your mind?
Well, this certainly makes me want to never book an AirBnB again. You'd think AirBnB would be more alarmed about the reputational and consequent business hit of this sort of thing. Maybe they will be after this article?
> You'd think AirBnB would be more alarmed about the reputational and consequent business hit of this sort of thing. Maybe they will be after this article?
AirBnB is/used to be cheap. People want cheap. They don't want to pay $200 a night for a hotel room when they travel to Paris, AirBnB knows that so I think they are much more concerned about the size of their inventory than the satisfaction of the guest or their reputation.
What fascinates me is the ability of most of theses "start-up" to successfully straight out ignore local laws, with very little consequences, and manage to put all the burden of legality onto their users.
They must have very good legal teams that exploit the flaws of legal systems. Talking about Paris, the great majority of listing are outright illegal, or at least used to be. If I were to set up a similar operation on my own, in France, I'd be shut down in a heart beat for providing illegal hotels and rentals and go straight to prison.
Without knowing details about AirBnB's corporate structure, I assume they don't have any subsidiaries or offices or employees in France. That makes it hard (but not impossible) to compel them to follow French law, or local laws in France.
The easier option is to write a law that compels payment processors to disallow payments to or from a company that does XYZ, then declare AirBNB has done XYZ and cut off their payments. It's certainly possible to rent an apartment in Paris and have all the payments done outside of France, but it removes a lot of people from both sides of the market.
The other option is to work through courts internationally, but that's very slow and costly for things that aren't capital crimes. You basically have to get your government's diplomats to make the US State department care to do the interfacing.
The thing is that American and European law enforcement generally play "fair". They generally won't arrest employees travelling into their jurisdictions for things that are more "civil"-like offences - notable exception being the arrest of Huawei's CFO by Canada. Since there's basically no personal risk or deterrent, there is little or no incentive to fix bad behaviors.
Still not sure how localities in the US haven't bothered to shut down AirBnB.
Which is funny; not sure how it would work in France, but many US jurisdictions have profoundly vicious civil forfeiture laws, where a local (not even talking about state or federal, just a town/county/city) police force can seize property thought to be used in or related to criminal activity, and keep it for themselves. Or auction it off and keep the proceeds.
Running an unlicensed hotel is a crime in many jurisdictions. As is operating a hotel with fire-code or safety violations.
If you start seizing buildings from people, word will get around quickly. Especially in the nicer neighborhoods.
> If a guest stays even one night in a rental, for example, it is difficult to obtain a full refund, according to Airbnb’s rules.
You don't even have to stay one night... I ran into this exact scenario where upon arrival, the place had no electricity, wifi, and construction for a few blocks outside. I was unable to contact them until the next day since my first instinct was to look for another place ASAP and rest from the long flight. Sure enough, they threw their ToS at me and stated that I wasn't eligible for a refund. I contacted AMEX, but they partner with AirBnB so I was denied a credit there as well. I ended up paying an entire week for a place I didn't stay at.
> I contacted AMEX, but they partner with AirBnB so I was denied a credit there as well.
Thanks for that, didn't realize they deny chargebacks in cases of fraud and misrepresentation. Partnering with a company that engages in widespread global fraud and illegal activity is an interesting choice for Amex.
AIRBNB doesn't care a bit, since there are many more people out there who don't hear anything negative. I prefer to stay at real BnBs or hotels less likely to be scams. I moved into an apartment complex a few years ago and wondered why the apartment down the hall had cleaners almost every day. It was an illegal rental. In fact I found a couple more on the AIRBNB site with my identical kitchen countertops. The apartment complex shut them all down. One had reservations for 3 years already.
No, because fixing these scams would increase their expenses and/or decrease income, which would lead to the company being valued lower at their IPO.
The purpose of AirBNB right now is to give the current owners a nice exit. After that occurs, then they can worry about customer service and the related expenses.
Wow, I think I got hit by this same scam in Auckland, NZ. Saw pictures of a perfectly fine little apartment. Showed up and it was actually a furniture storage unit- the living room had two couches, three desks, and two commercial scanner/copiers.
The bed had 12 full-sized pillows and one sheet, and the sheet was so starched that I pinched the middle and lifted it to head height, and it just stayed there. You could sculpt it.
The silverware drawer had 5 knives and one chopstick. The kitchen trash was full. The shower had a drain full of hair. I had to go buy soap and paper towels at a convenience store.
I called the host (a "retired local woman") and got a man with an indian accent who offered me a "much larger and nicer property a few kilometers away", which I couldn't take because I was traveling with my family and we were just exhausted.
Mentioned this in another comment, but it blows my mind that the author ends with:
> "Even after a month of digging through public records, scouring the internet for clues, repeatedly calling Airbnb and confronting the man who called himself Patrick, I can’t say I’ll be leaving the platform, either. Dealing with Airbnb’s easily exploitable and occasionally crazy-making system is still just a bit cheaper than renting a hotel."
After an experience like that, I'd spend so much effort warning everyone I know to avoid Airbnb, even with the off chance something like this could happen to them. THIS is exactly why Airbnb doesn't care, the user is so brainwashed into still using the platform even after all that to potentially save a few bucks (which honestly, from what I have seen these days, Airbnb is basically the same cost of a hotel if you buy from any hotel deal site). I just don't understand that logic at all. Fool me once...
Even after a >>>month<<< of digging through public records...Dealing with Airbnb’s easily exploitable and occasionally crazy-making system is still just a bit cheaper than renting a hotel."
It's constantly amazing to see how little people value their time when it comes to stuff like this. Maybe when we're getting yearly salaries we don't compute out the hourly cost but, man, do the math once in a while.
That time got converted into this article for which the author was presumably paid. And I would guess that the author didn’t spend the entire month on only this one thing. But maybe that’s wrong
It wouldn't be outrageous to suggest that someone who took the time to intentionally study and go into journalism, would have more than a monetary interest in "investigating things." Or that someone who had been personally scammed would have more than a monetary interest in investigating that particular scam. In other words, investigating is probably fun for her, and the added element of revenge/justice only adds more fuel to the fire.
Heh, you know, the funny part is that I'll spend just a little extra on my hotel stays (Meaning, I'm not staying at the Howard Johnson's behind Walmart, even if it is $40 a night). I've never had very few bad experiences as a result.
It costs money to run a hotel well. From the front desk to the cleaning staff. If a stay costs you $40 a night, you have to ask yourself "What are they skimping on? Are they not washing the sheets? Vacuuming? Cleaning the showers/toilets?"
Sure, there are some economies of scale at play. But by and large, it takes quite a bit of money to make sure things are well maintained. That is what often gets reflected in your hotel bill.
This person is a journalist and wrote a successful trending news article about it (seriously -- #1 on Twitter right now). You should consider this part of their job, not free time wasted.
If everyone knows you can rob or scam me for $50 and I'll hand it over and not go to the cops (because doing so isn't worth my time) there's really no downside to robbing or scamming me.
On the other hand, if everyone knows when robbed or scammed I will doggedly pursue every avenue until a much higher price has been extracted from the robbers or scammers, the downside is nonzero.
But you shouldn't consider your free time to be worthless.
I'm not saying go out and drive an Uber every free minute you have, but value the time you aren't working and don't spend it chasing down stupid shit and taking a mental toll on yourself to get back $100.
I'd rather track down and expose a scam for free than to get paid $5 from TaskRabbit to put someone's IKEA furniture together. Sometimes it's about more than money...
I've been the victim of a similar scam then the one mentioned in the article.
Having said that, I still use the platform.
Why? I've traveled a lot and generally on the cheap, and I have run into scammy/terrible hotels. I mean, at one place the hotel owner tried to scam me by claiming I broke something that was clearly broken when we arrived. One time, I had a hotel room with hookers outside, a broken beer bottle under the bed with beer still in it, and a slice of pizza literally still on the floor face down. This last one had good reviews on one platform, terrible reviews on another.
My bad airbnb experience made me much more careful about who I stay with and how on the platform. But I haven't given up on it. I've had some amazing airbnb experiences, both renting full houses with friends as well as staying in a room in a house with locals and getting the 'real local experience', I won't leave it. Maybe for people going to high end hotels it won't make sense to airbnb? At least for me, going to cheap hotels and cheap airbnbs, the overall reliability has been not too dissimilar.
I agree - I found the final "We'll all just keep using AirBnB forever" paragraph (after doing all that work in the opposite direction) kind of infuriating. Are we in the throes of heroin addiction here? Are we married to AirBnB, trapped there come-what-may, for the children's sake? It's like how people are with Facebook, Uber... et al. There are other ways of doing things, people! I dunno, apparently I've built up some cumulative frustration with people.
For many people, AirBnB and hotels don't necessarily provide the same thing, so switching from one to the other is not as easy as you'd think.
When I travel, I often approach it like imagining I lived in that city. So often I'll get food and cook it and have some days where I just lounge around. This doesn't really work with most hotels which are absolutely tiny in major cities and don't have working kitchens or living rooms. Even if they do the furniture is so generic, cheap and awful that it kind of breaks me out of the experience.
There's no real alternative for the apartment-like living experience AirBnB provides, unfortunately.
I wonder whether there is some sort of penny-wise pound-foolish mentality at work with most AirBnB users that causes them to continue choosing AirBnB to save money over hotels even after being majorly scammed like the people in this article were?
Its a reasonable risk/reward calculation. If this is your only 2 week vacation for the year, having a bad experience is a huge cost in time and probably money. If you're traveling regularly and save $X 95% of the time by using airbnb. That occasional bad experience is pretty bad, but more tolerable.
I find it pretty crazy that AirBnB's tech never really evolved on the host or guest side at all. The experience is still basically like a pretty Craigslist with payment processing. I sometimes wonder what an engineer there even does other than maintain a CRUD app.
For example, why isn't there an Alexa-like concierge device in every AirBnB that answers guest questions by now? Why aren't there smart locks on every home that unlocks with the app? Etc etc.
I think it is because evolving further in those areas inevitably could expose AirBnB to information they are happy to be ignorant of / responsible for.
A lot of tech companies, including AirBnB operate by passing risk / responsibility off onto everyone else (the host, the customer) and thus saving AirBnB a great deal of time / money.
>A lot of tech companies, including AirBnB operate by passing risk / responsibility off onto everyone else (the host, the customer) and thus saving AirBnB a great deal of time / money.
That's what I've never understood. When uber got big, their argument was "we're not a cab company, so we don't have to work under the same regulations". Yes you are. You use an app instead of a radio dispatch. That's the difference between you and a 1980's cab company.
The entire middle of the country is getting wise to "we're not x" just means "we certainly are x but we're avoiding the liability because technology" and they're getting sick of it.
I'm imagining a future where a "we're not a garbage company" starts dumping garbage randomly... and they say we're supposed to blame their contractors.
> Why aren't there smart locks on every home that unlocks with the app?
AirBnB is reportedly pressuring hosts to install smart locks, but they are getting pushback from hosts who like socializing with the people who come to stay at their property. Yes, a huge amount of AirBnB listings are faceless property developers now, but there is still a good slice of individual families renting out a spare flat. Sometimes the host is an elderly person who craves that kind of interaction with other human beings (which can be awkward as a guest when you just want to quickly lock yourself in the rental and have some time alone).
My wife and I recently stayed near the beach in an apartment under an elderly couple's home. All the reviews mentioned how friendly Bill and Betty (I can't actually remember their names) were and how much they enjoyed visiting. That was the last thing we were interested in. So in our comments to the hosts we said we were coming to get away from the kids and were just looking for time to ourselves with no interaction from other people. Fortunately that worked! Other than briefly talking to them when we checked in, we didn't interact with them at all the remainder of the time we were there. It was great!
> just want to quickly lock yourself in the rental and have some time alone
There needs to be some way to indicate that the guest wants minimal interaction, or that the host wants minimal interaction.
It is awkward when the host is nice, or trying hard to be nice, but actually you don't get on with them (I often get this with twee people).
I've stayed at places where the host almost seemed to be treating AirBnB as a dating agency. It's never been creepy, but it has been a tiny bit awkward! I remember one place where a young student host had hooked up with a guest, which seemed dodgy (although not my place to judge really!)
I think what Airbnb, and uber, lyft, Amazon etc. All fail to understand is the longevity ans stickiness of brand. Once you become an untrustworthy or low quality brand, it's very hard to change that. You can still do fine (see: wal mart) but you'll always be looking over your shoulder for higher quality brands that poach the most lucrative customers, and eventually, thats what will lead to your downfall (see: wal mart)
And there are plenty of low end hotel chains, e.g. Motel 6, that I assume are doing OK. But I also assume they offer some base level of crappy quality (in addition to things like a 24 hour desk and no question that they're actually allowed to rent the room.)
Stickiness of brand also depends on the target audience. For brands who seek premium audiences, this is true, but for mass appeal lowest-cost persons, such as those who use all of the aforementioned listed, because of the lack of competition, brand is hardly a factor.
Given the complexity of building these services, and the lack of comparable competing options, you are left to begrudgingly accept what you're left with.
Their live chat is fairly responsive. With regard to low quality or knockoff goods it's pretty trivial to get return shipping waived or $5-20 store credit, as long as you don't abuse the system.
It's not that they fail to understand it, they just don't care. The C-suite in all these VC-funded companies just want to get to the exit so they get paid.
I am not sure why, but reading this article just made me feel pretty ill. How does someone (multiple someones?) have the moral ability to do these kinds of things? I seriously can't believe the whole stack, from AirBNB to the scammer, just let these kinds of things go. At the end, where the author states she will continue to use AirBNB because it is cheaper kind of rubs me the wrong way. For a company to allow such slimy things to happen with minimal recourse would just turn me off from them forever. And the scammer? To just rip people off, knowingly ruin peoples vacations (and other things, but I imagine mostly vacations) because "money" is just ridiculous. These kinds of stories just hurt me. I wish people were better, but I know these types of people won't stop scamming.
There's a weird fundamental flaw in social groups which is this:
1. Trusting trustworthy people increases efficiency. The less checking and verification you have to do, the less redundant work there is and the more easily things go.
2. As the number of trustworthy people in a group increases, the value of choosing to trust a random person increases. The odds get greater that they will be trustworthy, letting you reap the greater efficiency of trusting them.
3. As the number of trusting people in a group increases, the relative value of malice increases. The more likely a con artist is to be trusted, the more likely they are to be successful at their goal.
So there's this weird trust graph where as you approach 100% trustworthiness, you also approach 100% exploitability. The group gradually turns itself into a honeypot. So the stable equilibrium point is somewhere less of 100%.
That makes sense but I guess the question is why? If things work and people are happy with a system, why do the opposite and ruin it? I know it isn't an easy question to answer and could really be anything, but sometimes I really just want to sit down with them and find out why. It is fascinating stuff, but it hurts to think about sometimes. Just because the value of becoming a scammer goes up, doesn't mean we should embrace it.
I am not shocked. Ate you shocked that fb profits from mayhem? No because we know the character of the founder. Airbnb also has no moral character thus it's users also know they can profit from morally corrupt practices.
Just as you said, the whole stack is corrupt. There will be more of this to come.
They profit by knowingly breaking the law. They are criminals.
It is appalling that this can happen in a country built on a system of laws.
I guess I can still be shocked because I still want and believe people can do the "good thing", whatever that good thing is. I can be pessimistic about a lot of things, but sometimes I just want things to be better. I don't know, I want to help fix things but I feel pretty helpless sometimes.
I feel you. Deeply. Some people can do the good thing: good people. And they do all the time. Surround yourself by them. The bad things they do are mistakes. They fix those or try. They apologize.
Bad people only do good things as a means to an end. Usually that end, they believe, will benefit them, and sometimes it does in the short term, but long term, no. The bad things they do are intentional. You can only predict their behavior with statistics. It's not worth it. They never apologize. They say, "You are too sensitive. It's just a joke." But it's not.
Stay good, my friend. Good people will find you. You will find them. They are out there, but they, like me, hide.
Shame is a very good immoral deterrent for the eager to deceive. Imagine knowing your future progeny are ashamed they come from grifters? (Quite astonishing people don’t make the connection that we are alive now on a world stage.)
I was in Chinatown (NYC) about a month ago helping at a event when this German woman walks over asking for help (very poor Spoken English). Three German tourist with their luggage dead tired and long story short their host canceled on them one hour before their flight was scheduled to land. They phones did not work in the US so they could not jump on expedia to look for a hotel. The best we could do was hail a cab for them to take them to a hotel where they would be charged $400 a night. Now they did not book through AirBnB but it was through some other similar service. I think they had paid about $1500 for a week. Really makes me not want to use services like this and just go to a hotel. Yes it is more money but I rather not deal with the hassle.
This plumbing switch-er-roo scam is not new. A hotel tried the same thing on me in Paris in 2000. I booked a hotel in district 1 and they tried to move me to one on the edge due to flooding. Luckily I had been warned by a friend and refused. After I made a fuss the manager magically found an open room for me.
The amazing thing to me is how rarely this really happens. Some people love to say that human nature is fundamentally greedy and deceitful but here you have an enormous system based entirely on trust and reputation (since apparently AirBnB doesn't have checks beyond that) and although there are examples of abuse, overwhelmingly people have a good experience.
However I think most likely it isn't that AirBnB has no checks on hosts, they are just a big stupid company dealing with a messy problem. I've heard similar complaints from hosts with their own set of anecdotes where they felt unfairly abused by renters who unfairly complain and AirBnB applying decisions without any transparency or recourse.
Does this article really contain a referral link for "overstock.com barstools"? I'm not sure if I should be appalled that they inserted an ad into a journalistic piece, or respect them for doing it despite how negative the reference is.
You are likely correct, it's probably Vice doing that not the author. Reddit tried it for a bit. They had software that would automatically transform relevant retail links into referral links. They stopped the practice as it wasn't making as much money as they thought it would.
Whenever you're asking for a full refund in cases of fraud, regardless of the business, be sure to use the word "chargeback" with the customer service rep.
Fraudulent sales can be easily reversed by your credit card provider. In my experience, saying "If I don't get a refund, I'll issue a chargeback through my credit card provider" gets them to process the full refund immediately.
Yep. Just be clear that you'd really prefer to resolve it with the company, but that if they refuse, you view it as fraud and will pursue appropriate remedies.
Which is why I always stay at hotels, proper and good hotels that have reputation at stake, where upon checking in I do a cursory check and promptly but politely report if I see any issues. Upon checking out I request a person to actually sign-off on the room.
As someone who has lived out of AirBnB for almost 3 years traveling all around the world and never once being scammed, I find the title of this article to be a bit alarmist.
AirBnB has host and guest verification options. If Becky and Andrew don't have their identities verified via drivers license but manage over 90 properties that is your first red flag right there.
Second, if the host can't accommodate you you reach out to AirBnb and put the onus on them to find you an acceptable property that meets your standards. You don't let the host offer up some random place that happens to be available, that's suspicious.
I've had a number of hosts cancel on me at the last minute recently, I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that it must be a scam. I simply assumed that their property is also listed on VRBO and other sites and someone either beat me to the punch or they got more money, or they didn't realize that they can't list the unit and forgot to take down the listing.
Mistakes happen. Sure, there are scammers out there on every platform, but in my 3 years and over 100 successful stays, I really find this article's title tough to swallow.
Few days ago I stumbled upon an article from Paul Graham from 2008 that fits well in the current topic imo - Be good (http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html)
He describes how startup sometime follows the pattern "You grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean."
And it's the feeling I have today about Airbnb.. I use to love them, not only because of the concept, but also as a startup pushing innovation, sharing tech and design learnings, etc. It had a sens of contributing to community, and caring its users
Today I despite them for the uncontrolled impact they have in cities, and the we-don't-care philosophy they seems to have adopted (not to mention the feeling of being betrayed by a company I use to look up to).
And I can't really blame ourselves for keeping on using it. They created "something that people wants" and now are taking advantage of it.
It's probably our responsibility now to remind those companies that "something we want" is a product along with a care for its users.
this should be higher up and is exactly how I feel. I will go out of my way to never book an Airbnb again and I'm pushing all my friends to do so as well.
It's becoming very clear why the company has resisted going public for years. Increased scrutiny and visibility is going to show everyone exactly how shady their business is. You can almost guarantee a FTC investigation within a year of going public.
Also, why don't people issue charge backs with their credit card companies? Airbnb customer service might suck, but credit card companies almost always side with their customers if there's a modicum of proof showing something henky.
Self reply since I can't edit, but the FBI has recently contacted the article's author. First, FBI investigation for criminal activity. Then FTC case for ongoing consumer deception and fraud due by failing to police their platform and turning a blind eye to obvious criminal activity.
I fell for probably the early version of this back in 2015. Google fi number with a non-existent property in LA. Host confirms, emails photos, minimal back and forth about check in.
We show up at the property and it clearly doesn't exist, lucky for us the number is disconnected now and he won't answer us. This is clearly a scam. Though it's Airbnb's policy to give the hosts an hour to respond to a complaint even though it's obviously a scam. We then have to wait in the ghetto of LA for an hour so the host can respond, he never does. Finally Airbnb agrees that it's a scam and that the property doesn't exist, the address is dead center in a industrial park. I then have to go book a hotel on my card that Airbnb will refund at a later date that is equivalent to what we booked, nearly impossible for booking on day of. So going forward we spent 1.5hrs driving to the fake property, 1hr waiting for the fake host to respond, 1hr to confirm over phone how to proceed with Airbnb, then another 2hrs going to a hotel and checking in. All in all it wasted over half a day of our vacation, gas money, and frustration, over an obviously fake posting.
I'm not sure how to fix all the issues outlined in this article, but I think that a 14-day, double-blind review period started at checkout would alleviate some of the trust issue presented here. That is to say:
Once checkout has completed, both Guest and Host have 14 days (21? 30?) to write their reviews (neither party can see the others' review). At the end of that period, both reviews are visible on the site and cannot be edited.
The website only mentioned it briefly but Airbnb has no incentive to do anything that will shrink their number of hosts right now, even if those lost hosts aren't reputable. They have their eyes on an IPO and they are focused on making the platform as large as possible, even it if damages their reputation in the long run
This is the currently the case. The situation described in the article is the host replying to the guest's review of the host, which they can see after both parties have posted a review or the blind period ends. The response to the review of the host is separate from the host's review of the guest. The host isn't able to inform their guest review based on the guest's review of the host, or vice-versa.
I've only used Airbnb once, so I'm unsure. But given the "retaliatory reviews" mentioned in the article, it seems not; How could I retaliate if I don't know what your review will be?
Well, I've written a few months ago that I don't want to give such a scummy platform them their 30%, regretfully I still did use them last month, so to put my money where my mouth is, I just deleted my airbnb account citing the article. https://www.airbnb.com/account-delete/reasons
I have had this happen to me twice. The inconvenience of putting up with this bullshit outweighs the $50/night I save. It happens frequently enough you do have to consider it in the equation.
It's always interesting to see scammers at work. The nature of scammers, atleast the ones that get caught, put in 95% effort, and it's that last 5% that gets them caught.
In this case, imagine if instead of trash furniture and minimal decor in the "switch" property of "bait and switch" they put in half decent stuff. Renters would probably all accept the story of a plumber and move on. Instead, they fill the property with crappy furniture and leave unhappy customers. They could have gotten away with it.
They did get away with it, over and over again. And when the scam was discovered, they went dark. They could have even switched to alternate accounts, alternate platforms, or even a different scam that utilizes those empty properties.
Not getting away with something in perpetuity is not the same as not getting away with it. Had they been more timid with their margins, maybe they would have been busted before making the money they did make.
I wonder why nobody has ever attempted to dispute the transactions with their card issuer.
These scenarios seem like pretty solid grounds for chargebacks.
If they attract enough chargebacks Airbnb will not only take a hit to their wallet (and maybe reconsider their policies if it happens frequently enough) but also might get them in trouble with their acquirer bank (too many chargebacks and your merchant account gets terminated).
I had just deleted my AirBnB account a while ago and swore not to ever use it again. Didn't get scammed, just had a bad experience, but it's just not worth the stress. You're stressed about getting scammed, stressed about the place not being good, stressed about cancellation, stressed about getting a bad review, stressed about breaking someone's shit by accident, etc etc.
It's Oct 31st so this thread seems like a good place to post Airbnb horror stories.
The first Airbnb I rented was part of an interview at Airbnb. I was given a credit for a free Airbnb for the purpose of experiencing the product. The Airbnb I rented was in San Francisco and clearly used only as an Airbnb rental.
The second Airbnb I rented was with my family while on vacation in Italy. One afternoon we returned to find out the locks were changed. This was scheduled building maintenance and I was not notified. I chose a place with a special ~'locals badge' only to find out the owner was an American living in the US.
Given this is a tiny sample, Airbnb generally seems to have a problem with borderline fraud.
Airbnb terms of service says you authorize them to collect the money from you, even if there are chargebacks, and they'll turn it over to third party collections.
For me this page redirects me to airbnb.co.uk and the relevant portion of the agreement (Payment Authorizations) says:
> In addition to any amount due as outlined above, if there are delinquent amounts or chargebacks associated with your Payment Method, you may be charged fees that are incidental to our collection of these delinquent amounts and chargebacks. Such fees or charges may include collection fees, convenience fees or other third-party charges.
I'd be interested to see how the wording varies between jurisdictions.
When you file a dispute, they send it off to a third party to investigate. They dig into the contracts and when you make the purchase, you state you are agreeing to all their terms of no refund, etc. So you will almost always lose the dispute.
They also have special partnerships with credit card companies so the companies are more likely to side with Airbnb as well.
> the user still wants to be able to use the service in the future.
And this is why Airbnb doesn't care. This is insane to me that they end with "Dealing with Airbnb’s easily exploitable and occasionally crazy-making system is still just a bit cheaper than renting a hotel." after ALL that. It's like the author has stockholm syndrome. I can't wrap my head around why you'd ever use Airbnb again after an experience like that, esp. when hotels are about the same cost.
Are hotels really about the same cost? My last several vacations have used Airbnb for housing, mostly because I prefer to cook my own meals and like having some space to spread out. Booking a suite w/ kitchenette at hotels in the same areas would have been quite expensive, if even possible.
But, I've never been scammed on Airbnb. My experiences have all been excellent. That's one rental in the US and 5 across western Europe in the last 7 years. Not sure if it matters, but none of these were "cheap" rentals - they were all mid-priced. And almost all with "Super Host" rating (no clue if that gives any extra protection).
That's a fair question. I may have generalized a bit with that statement, however, from what I have seen lately if you use a hotel deal site, it has been about the same cost. On my recent vacations, after looking at options like Airbnb vs hotels in popular US cities, it has been an easy decision to get hotels over an Airbnb with the price difference averaging around $25-50 (esp. after you factor in all the crazy fees Airbnb does now, that you don't see until checkout). However, you do make a good point for your specific needs of the kitchen, that will obviously change a lot in terms of a hotel pricing with that amenity.
For what it's worth, I've also only ever had good experiences with Airbnb in the past when I have used them, but still my main point was if I was the author, I don't know how I could ever go back to using Airbnb after that.
I consistently stay in hotels for a good portion of the year and I rarely find AirBnbs cheaper nowadays. Really the only time I stay in one is when I want to rent a big house with a large group of friends or am in a remote area that doesn't really have hotels.
Probably because there are still legitimate offers on the platform, and they're still cheaper than hotels. So the author's brain thinks "I've figured out the scam, I'll be more careful next time and I'll be able to stay at (vacation spot) for 10 dollars cheaper". In the end, cheap still wins.
But did AirBnB help the scammer keep her $800? Still giving AirBnB business after that is indeed ridiculous.
I issued a chargeback to Qatar Airways/Expedia for $1700 and they tried to fight it. Bank of America told them to go to hell, and that I was getting a full refund.
I can still use Qatar and Expedia.
Airbnb should not be allowed to ban me for this reason.
The "ban-on-dispute" technique is popular with tech companies. Uber, AirBnB, and Steam (among others) all enforce this strategy.
With Steam, you lose your entire library when banned.
With Uber, you lose the ability to create an account tied to your phone number (i.e. you need to get a new phone number to ever have a new account).
I don't use AirBnB because it is a scam haven, so I can't comment on how their dispute process works.
FWIW, "back in the day" chargebacks used to be done in a manual way which made it harder to automate the banning process that tech companies utilize. But the likes of Stripe and other processors have made it part of their API so you can easily trace the chargeback to the transaction and determine what recourse you have.
The plane was delayed 3 hours, which meant I would miss the connection in Qatar (en route to Singapore)
The result would mean that 75% of my trip would be spent not in Singapore. So I requested to leave the plane because the plane had to go back to the gate to refuel, because of how long it waited on the runway.
Qatar tried to argue that this wasn't their problem, but BoA told them to eat the cost. Two sides of the same coin. I would have accepted a partial refund but BoA gave full refund.
I'm somewhat surprised that this would be permitted by the card issuer.
Aside from that... why aren't Airbnb detecting when multiple properties have very similar photos and investigating this themselves? (Of course they may be, and these examples are cases where they didn't pull the fraudulent listing).
It's largely the card issues fault. They charge a fee for each chargeback and punish or increase the fees for merchants who receive many chargebacks, so merchants try to avoid chargebacks, which includes banning everybody who uses them.
If a business bans customers who charge back after being defrauded then the fault is with the business, not the card issuer.
What surprises me is that the card issuers don't come down harder on businesses with this practice. I suppose Airbnb is a pretty large customer (of the card issuers) and so aren't so easy to influence, however...
You assume it's the business that committed fraud. In many cases talking to the merchant's support would resolve the issue (e.g. via a full refund) without having to escalate to an expensive chargeback.
There is also the fun technique of attacking a merchant (or charity) by sending them money from stolen credit cards, which will stick them with chargeback fees and an eventual ban by the card processor.
Please note that I said that the customer had been defrauded. I didn't say that Airbnb was the one committing the fraud--although they are certainly profiting from it!
I agree that customers should make reasonable attempts to resolve issues with merchants, and not go straight for the nuclear option of a chargeback.
However, if I deal with a company and they don't resolve issues to my satisfaction within what I consider a reasonable period, I do not hesitate to make it clear that I will be contacting my bank to dispute the charges.
Funnily enough, I have never actually had to do so: the mere threat seems to be sufficient to convey to the company that yes I do actually expect them to solve my problem.
The system works, at least for those privileged enough to be aware of their rights, and to have the ability to issue effective threats to merchants who don't respond to complaints within good time.
The card issuer could easily institute a "no retaliation" clause in their contracts that forbids deactivating a user's account for a sustained chargeback.
> The card issuer could easily institute a "no retaliation" clause in their contracts that forbids deactivating a user's account for a sustained chargeback.
On the contrary, AFAIK some banks or at least payment processors now clearly state than some "sharing economy" services cannot be subject to charge backs, or payment reversals, like if you use Paypal for a Kickstater. So it's basically the opposite of what you wish.
I guess some is the key word.
It makes sense to disallow charge backs for Kickstarters and such, because that whole premise is: You pay me a certain amount of money, and I'll try my best to get you something in return.
> I guess some is the key word. It makes sense to disallow charge backs for Kickstarters and such, because that whole premise is: You pay me a certain amount of money, and I'll try my best to get you something in return.
Sure but at the same time, fraud is fraud. If a project is fraudulent, then who should bear the consequences? That's not that simple. Ultimately, backers do pay Kickstarter, never the project creator directly.
Right if you’ve been defrauded, there is the justice system for that. Skipping it and relying on the banks,is only an option if the banks have already predetermined the winner.
The bigger concern from the merchant's side is that they are almost always swallowing the refund. The refund is not being provided by the card issuer or payment network, they just remove it from the merchant's (in this case AirBnB's) account.
Declining a charge in this way is thus less insurance, and more telling the merchant "I am not paying you." While it may be justified (like in this story), the merchant is never going to be happy about losing those funds and losing the control over the funds.
I had a similar situation with the App Store where I purchased a subscription under a mistaken assumption and when I could not find any recourse through Apple or the publisher (I simply could not find any way to get in touch with anyone), I declined the charge on my credit card. This led Apple to block all activity with that card - so much so that I was unable to download any free apps until I added another payment method to my profile.
When I attempted to contact Apple to resolve this issue I was told that it was "for my security", to prevent further fraudulent transactions on my card. Explaining the situation, and that there was no fraudulent use of my card or account, just a misleading subscription did nothing to help. They insisted that the only way to resolve the situation would be if I reversed the dispute from the credit card (thus releasing the funds back to Apple), and only after that was completed would I be able to try to get a refund from Apple. Left with no other choice that is what I did.
The issue at hand here was obviously that Apple was refusing to give up control to the credit card companies. By effectively banning any user that disputes a charge they are able to force their users to keep all complaints within Apple's purview (and they do not provide a way to submit complaints digitally).
Who cares if they get banned from a fraudulent business? Why would anyone want to continue doing business with a company if they treat you this way? When I'm at the point of doing a chargeback, it's a "burn bridges" move and I'm not going to be doing business with the company anymore, regardless of whether they ban me.
In the modern internet world, there's very often little/no choice of services. Initially there is competition; one gets an edge; everybody flocks to that service; the other services wither and die.
So the idea that "I can just take my business elsewhere" is maybe a dying notion, in this modern economy. They're not brick-and-mortar stores where you can just walk down the street to another one.
Hotels are brick-and-mortar, and there are a lot of them. If one treats you badly you can (sometimes literally) walk down the street and do business at another one. The travel industry is a particularly bad example of little/no choice since there is so much competition, including online.
- Destroy the flophouse
- Leave a 5 star review on your original booking saying how nice the place was
- If the scammers attempt to complain to AirBnB or charge fees, kindly tell them that's not the place you stayed and you have never seen that location. Refer them to the original listing for the beautiful home where your reservation was.
Scammers would be claiming you destroyed a place that AirBnB has no record of you ever staying in.
First time I stayed at an abnb with friends it was set up as home that hosted 8 people with 4 rooms... I was situated in what I would consider to be a mud room with a space heater next to the garage on thin, uncomfortable mattresses. I moved into a hotel room a couple miles away and just came over for dinner and activities.
I'd much rather plan ahead and stay in a hotel. At least then there's a corporate culture who actually cares about their brand name instead of an IPO. There's no accountability and massive amounts of low key fraud.
Random business idea: AirBnB but with verified properties. Actually AirBnB can do that themselves easily enough, just hire people to check properties. Or hire secret guests, if the renter redirects the user to another property, withold payments / ban them from the site.
But quality is not in AirBnB's interest, apparently - being cheaper is. They get a cut from all financial transactions anyway. Once they're listed on the stock market the people currently running it can retire and it's no longer their problem.
Several months ago my AirBnB (2FA enabled) account was compromised. The scammer booked me for a property - the listing populated with blatant stock photos, no ratings - that was stated to be somewhere in England, but the pin on the map was somewhere in the ocean off the west coast of South America.
Once I raised the issue with them, I didn't hear from them for over a week. While I was concerned about the ~$1000 they owed me, I was equally concerned that someone had accessed my account. After about a week had passed I got them on the phone again and applied a little pressure, and a couple days later I had my refund. I did this by explaining that I work in the industry and I'm aware of what a big deal the ability to bypass a large company's 2FA is, that there's no excuse to drag their feet over such an obvious scam, and I vaguely alluded to media being interested in a story like this. I don't know how Average Joe would have fared in my case.
By reading the article and this thread there appears to be a variety of ways to conduct a scam on AirBnb.
With nearly one hundred rentals this scammer must have been making some serious money. That's fraud on a grand scale in multiple states. Isn't that what the FBI is for? The journalist should make a report.
You have destroyed the rental apartment market in my city. You profit from taking advantage of loopholes in legislation, legislation which protects consumers from unscrupulous, dangerous, and untrustworthy properties.
The sooner every city enacts laws limiting "airbnb" apartment rentals to 30 days per year per apartment, the better. Otherwise it is abused at scale.
Wow. I had my own bad AirBnB experience, and privately decided never to never use them again. I wrongly assumed it was just me.
This is sad, I thought AirBnB were one of the good guys, and had a good experience 4 years ago.
Is there something about doing things at scale that makes things go bad? It seems like so many companies are great at start, but go downhill when their assumption that "fraud is a rare exception" does not hold.
Airbnb 4-8 years ago was a quirky thing that biased towards tech early adopters. Because it wasn't wildly profitable, it didn't become a magnet for scams yet.
As the community grew, the population includes more diverse people (including the bad actors). Once bad actors find it's easy to get around the loopholes, they tell others and the scams become prevalent.
> But my power was nothing compared to that of a company valued this year at $35 billion...
It may not recover their loss, but the author wields significant power with this article. For example, I’ll never again consider staying at an AirBnB property. I would caveat that to add “until they fix the problems with their platform”, but I don’t think it’s necessary because (a) I’m not sure they _can_ at their scale, and (b) it certainly doesn’t seem like they _care_.
Sure, I’m only one guy, but this is not the kind of press a company wants before they go public.
“If I had another choice, I would not use Airbnb again,” he told me. “I was very put off by getting scammed. But at this point, I feel like if I want to travel, there’s not really much else I can do.”...how about HomeAway, vebo ? There are other options.
Also of course airbnb is to blame for handling the support issue poorly, however my experience with airbnb has been nothing but amazing.
Same nonsense can happen at any 2-3 star hotels.
Never book airbnb without some research. If any issues come then file a complaint before your trip ends and ideally within first 24 hr.
> In 2015, Airbnb spent at least $8 million on lobbying efforts to fight back an ordinance in San Francisco that required all Airbnb hosts to register their units with the city in a lengthy process. The ordinance passed anyway, severely reducing the number of properties available. But not all cities have San Francisco’s budgetary resources. When New Orleans overhauled their short-term rental laws in August, for example, the budget-strapped city mostly left oversight of the new rules in the hands of Airbnb.
> “If I had another choice, I would not use Airbnb again,” he told me. “I was very put off by getting scammed. But at this point, I feel like if I want to travel, there’s not really much else I can do.”
> I can’t say I’ll be leaving the platform, either...is still just a bit cheaper than renting a hotel.
This blows my mind. I had a terrible experience when Airbnb took over the top floor flat when I used to live on the ground floor, so I decided to never use them, I travel regularly and always use a mix of hotels and vacation homes depending of the destination and I never needed Airbnb.
But even after being scammed and spending their holiday time moving around and being shafted then spending time after the holiday fighting for a refund and losing money these people still find value in the service, mind blowing.
Yeah, I stopped using Airbnb a loooooong time ago, and only use it when the price diff is something like 4 fold. Too many bad experiences.
Yay booking.com and normal hotels
I've only used it once, about a year ago. I wanted to visit Nuremberg, Germany, but I picked a terrible time of the year when the hotel rates were atrocious. So I looked on AirBnB and found an older couple renting a bedroom in their private home about 30 minutes away from the city for only about $45/night. It turned out to be a really nice experience, and I think this is what at least some people are looking for. Staying at a private (and very nice) home with some hosts (who actually live there) in a spare room is an international experience you won't get with a hotel or even a hostel. For me, it was mildly inconvenient that I had to take a train 30 minutes to get to the city those two days, but it was well worth seeing a small town I wouldn't have seen otherwise, and getting to meet actual German people and see how they live and attempt to talk to them in my broken German.
I guess you just really have to be careful when you use a service like this. It's like eBay in a way: you can get ripped off on there, but if you're careful and only buy from reputable sellers, you can get some great deals.
One time a hotel - which I had fully paid for a week earlier - kept badgering us for money throughout our stay. They said that we had been given too low of a rate due to some error. The rate wasn't even low, they were just trying to scam us. Furthermore, they had our booking for 1 week and they chose not to contact us about the issue until we arrived (making it really infeasible to change hotels on such a short notice).
Another time our hotel room was smelling like a sewer and the hotel refused to fix the issue or move us to another room.
Just two examples there. Hotels are generally awful.
This isn't about airBnB, this is about all the big web tech companies, which found the algorithm and got the monopoly. They created new markets and can't be bothered to shake out the many scammers who find the myriad loopholes in their big, dumb systems. This goes for Amazon products as much as Google SEO. B/c of their monopolistic power, they just move on, and leave a wreck in their wake, which becomes our web and environments.
Nice piece, albeit a little bit clickbaity (par for the course with vice). It's a single small-time operator, maybe 2 guys, with a few properties across a few cities. Yes, technically it's nationwide, but the scope is that of a small time con, not some extensive and deep operation.
To summarize, the photos and listings are fake, with fake host names and the requisite fake reviews. When you arrive, you get a call 10-30 minutes before check-in and told the plumbing is broken, I need to move you. Then you get put in a "flophouse". I suppose the move is so that the actual address where you will stay isn't listed on AirBNB and you won't be able to street view it, etc. Because otherwise I don't see the point of not putting you into the crap house at the listed address.
Through a process of sloppy ops work on the scammer, and tenacity of the author, she uncovered the name and other personal details of the perp and confronted him. He then removed any digital trails of himself which he had so stupidly had publicly available before, thinking they couldn't be traced back easily.
It's a great revenge story, the kind that gives you vicarious satisfaction.
My only question is, why didn't the author call the FBI afterwards?
Airbnb reviews are practically useless. Numerous of times I've been to 10-20 good-reviewed apartments that ended up too dirty or noisy so I had to go to a hotel.
Also, for no reason Airbnb prohibits from sorting by reviews or price, so I've developed this script - it's super userful: http://sakurity.com/airbnb.js
I wasn't scammed with AirBNB but I've had bad experiences, and the bad experiences happened more recently, while stellar experiences happened in the past.
My most recent experience was an apartment in Paris that was smaller than it appeared, hadn't been cleaned so it had crumbs on the floor, had a bed with what looked like sheets out of the package (never cleaned), and the owner's dirty clothes sitting there. But the worst was the toilet was electric, requiring being pushed down with a brush when flushing. No, that's simply not the norm in Paris. There was also construction on the building, despite my emailing the host (a company with a person's name), asking about noise.
Like the Vice author, I never left a review because I didn't want to appear difficult or even get a retaliatory one in case I want to use AirBNB in the future. BTW, in Paris it's regulated, complete with an issued ID for the property, but cities care only for tax collection, not consumers.
I travel nearly every week for business. For almost two years I stayed exclusively in Airbnbs. I was giving Airbnb as much business as one person can.
I had several truly terrible (even scammy) experiences in those two years and not only did Airbnb not refund me a dime but each time I contacted support I was not recognized as a frequent traveler who is used to the system and has great feedback from hosts, each time I was treated like I was some asshole trying to scam them.
Airbnb has a major major quality problem (not to mention the customer service). The platform has turned into a joke. Try this on for size, say "this Airbnb looks great in the pictures" to anyone with experience using the platform and watch their non-verbal response. We know. I wonder how long Airbnb can keep this up.
Lastly, the Airbnb Plus program is no better. I stayed in a Plus a few weeks ago in Milan and it was a dump that looked nothing like the pictures, even with different furniture. That was my second Plus disaster in a year.
I've had good experience both as a host and as a guest on airbnb, but these incidents are definitely serious enough to reconsider using Airbnb.
If Airbnb would implement a home-owner verification (which is possible in US since they're public record), most of these scams would be preventable. I mean, Airbnb is a billion dollar company, so couldn't they do this?
wow, I have seen the same when I have been looking for a house at Airbnb on Corfu. Because I have been checking many places on this island, in different areas, I found some houses with the same bathrooms (just photographed from different angles). I found it must be scam and I have chosen different place. That one if I remember clear I have reported to AirBNB
Did it have any reviews? I haven’t been scammed at all (yet) but I was always cautious knowing it’s not as consistent an experience as in hotels and relied heavily on good reviews. So far so good. I wonder if and how those could be scammed similar to whats been plaguing amazon..
I was similarly baited on the Chase credit card travel site. Bought a few nights at what was advertised as a Hilton in Miami but on the day of got instructions that made it clear we weren't staying at a Hilton. Turned out to be a vacation rental in a condo in the same building as the Hilton. The listing on the chase travel site used a similar name as the Hilton (neither the real or fake actually use the word "Hilton" in their names), same address, same photos (pool, restaurant, front desk, rooms, etc), and even figured out a way to list the reviews for the Hilton in it's listing.
Ultimately we stayed elsewhere because the condos were flop houses. Chase didn't have any interest in helping us or making it right after dozens of calls and hours of conversations. As far as I can tell the "properties" have all been removed. (There were similar listings for other name chain hotels like the W chain)
"In the United States, mail and wire fraud is any fraudulent scheme to intentionally deprive another of property or honest services via mail or wire communication. It has been a federal crime in the United States since 1872."
In addition, is there any prospect of a civil class-action suit against AirBnB?
I wonder why AirBnB doesn't pay people Uber-style to inspect properties. $5-10 to go to an address and check that it can be accessed and matches the photos as an unannounced spot check? Send someone out on first listing, periodically, and every time a host cancels for a "maintenance issue" to verify the claim.
Verifying listings is not a hard problem, Airbnb literally just doesn't want to, it takes a "we are just a middle man, hosts are responsible for their listings" approach. This is what makes them money, I don't think an Airbnb with only verified legal listings would be very profitable.
>I don't think an Airbnb with only verified legal listings would be very profitable.
I think it absolutely could be. As I said in a post above, I've used it once, to stay at a private home (with the family living there) when I traveled to Europe last year and the hotel rates in one particular city were absurd. It was a great experience for me, though of course staying at a private home is very different from staying in a hotel, and very limiting in some ways. For people wanting to do this, "legal" hotels just don't offer that same experience, and I think such a service can certainly be profitable.
However, it's not going to be mega-profitable like Uber or any other well-known tech companies with giant IPOs and huge valuations. And this I think is the problem: greed. Why can't the owners just be happy with something that makes a tidy profit and provides a nice service to people who want a different travel experience than what you get staying in a bland hotel room?
They don't need to - the customers that paid market rate for the room are already doing it. They just need decent customer support and consistent policies to prevent scams from both sides.
Yes, this isn't only happening to guests, check the AirBnb hosts reddit - the horror stories there about guests and Airbnb support not helping out are constant
At this point, I've probably booked four dozen Airbnb stays over the past 7 years or so. Given that, I'd say two of the simplest steps you can take to limit your chances of booking really bad Airbnbs are to 1.) limit your bookings to those places where the host only has one listing and 2.) limit your bookings to owner-occupied places. It seems like the worst elements of Airbnb are largely eliminated when staying with the host, rather than insisting on having the entire place to yourself.
I used to be a big AirBnB fan but they've really gone downhill. I've been denied refunds. So many places have false advertising.
I'll go back on AirBnb or whatever new platform that gives a 3d reconstruction of the actual place, and the actual sleeping quarters.
The wide angle heavily photoshopped pictures that Airbnb encourage make it extremely hard to know if the place is worth it or not.
And then there's the hidden cleaning fees which could be 100s of dollars. They don't show up on the initial search. The numbers are all towards making it seem cheap but being quite expensive at the end.
AirBnb uses a number of dark patterns on their site and I hate it. I just don't think they are an ethical company who have the customer's focus in mind.
I understand though, they gotta recoup their billions of dollars of VC funding.
I'd rather go for a hotel that I know provides consistent experience every single time.
I've only used Airbnb once, but it was a smooth experience.
But after reading this and all the comments here, I'm unlikely to use them again. As far as I'm concerned, Airbnb is complicit in all these scams. They literally give zero shits about these scam artists, because they're getting paid either way.
It sounds like you are overly risk-averse (I'm guessing you are not a founder?).
AirBnB is rewards versus risks, as the article author implies right at the end.
I have used a wide variety of accommodation: AirBnB, hotels, staying with friends, short term rentals, campervans, cars, outdoors, staying with randoms I have met.
They all have benefits, and they all have risks.
AirBnB has given me a huge range of different benefits, and I super appreciate that it exists.
A solution to this problem, which seems common to many large platform companies, could be third-party verification.
A trusted third-party could subject hosts and guests according to a more stringent vetting process. It could even scan listings for guests eager to book in the same way Fakespot, et al., do for Amazon product listings. [0]
For those interested in online trust in marketplaces, I recommend Planet Money's episode on the subject. [1]
Sadly, that adds friction to the sign-up process. Companies that operate like this, "charge instantly, investigate eventually," are like the plague. Amazon is getting up there, too, with its co-mingled inventories full of counterfeit products. But at least Amazon has good customer service.
I'm very scared of using airbnb because of stories like this. I've only used it once. All other times, I've stayed exclusively in hotels, because at least then I have a proper way of getting my money back. I have a way to know that if I book my room, I'll have somewhere to stay, guaranteed. I have a way to get a new room instantly if my current room is unacceptable. And with a hotel, I know who I can complain to! That's the worst part about this dumb scam for me. Airbnb refunds you a small percentage of the full price, and the host ghosts you. Now you're SOL unless your credit card company has mercy on you and decides to rule in your favor. What a shitty, stressful situation.
People who have been scammed like this on Airbnb: did you a book a well-reviewed place? As a precaution, I only stay in places with at least ~50 happy, realistic reviews. I've stayed in maybe a dozen such places and never run into anything worse than slightly unclear arrival instructions.
I'm not saying Airbnb is great, but I'm curious as to what these eventual scams looked like at the outset.
I suppose it's possible for someone to maintain a legitimate place to accumulate good reviews and then scam some fraction of people, but the existence of the legitimate place is still a nontrivial hurdle for a scammer.
Maybe I overestimate how hard it is to get 50 good reviews.
I'd be interested in someone with a good profile selling it to a bad actor for a lump sum. I'm not saying this happens, but it seems like it would be easy to do/very hard to prevent. Especially if you're moving out of the original listing.
Generally number of reviews is a good measure of quality IMO.
I don't understand the whole value proposition of Airbnb; and would never use it willingly myself. The prices are often more than what you'd pay for a hotel, the security and reliability is often less, and then if these sorts of things happen, you then have to haggle with case managers for a he-said-she-said type of situation.
Same thing with Uber — at least there, you get the convenience compared to having to call a taxi. What exactly do you get from Airbnb?
I travel for business lots, and the last thing I need to worry about is having to deal with these sorts of issues. Having a hotel and a car rental is so much easier and reliable.
I think for business your stance makes perfect sense. For me, I regularly use airbnb for personal travel to stay in a neighborhood and really explore a city. Often hotels aren't an option. You also often get a fullish kitchen to cook in which is nice for anything more than a few days.
As mentioned elsewhere, being vigilant when booking can often avoid these. I've booked around a dozen places with no issues. Very much disappointed that Airbnb doesn't do better though, as generally the time searching of course is valuable. For me it's just not as valuable as the way I explore a city coming from an Airbnb instead of a hotel, so it's still a worthwhile service.
Airbnb does not care about what hosts do. They just want to be the source of short term rentals no matter what it takes. I’ve been hosed the last three stays and Airbnb does not care.
I stay at hotels now because if I’m not happy with service, I can get a different room, I can get a refund, I can talk to a human face to face.
Airbnb is a platform that just cares about hosting as many hosts as possible and they’re unregulated. I’m not asking they be regulated, but why doesn’t Airbnb check in on Super Hosts? It seems Super Hosts (from the three times I got screwed) run their places by outsourcing cleaning and maintenance, without ever spot checking.
My account on Airbnb has also most likely been hacked. Twice over the summer someone tried to book using my Airbnb account and my expired CC. I hadn't used Airbnb in 3 years.
Airbnb support was completely useless both times. So I cancelled my account everything, and the CC support will deny any Airbnb transaction.
Anyway, it is so annoying to search anything on Airbnb that I am not compelled to use it. The "host" will advertise a one night price that can easily double with all the other fees, and double again for each additional nights.
I'll revisit when accountability standards are raised from the maker to the user.
At first, I thought maybe this was just a shady property management company hocking two otherwise-legit, similarly-furnished condos with the same floor plan in the same building through two different accounts - but they are in different buildings separated by about half a kilometer according to the map.
I've never used AirBnb. However, when making online purchases (even for physical items) I don't have a lot of trust. Many systems (reviews, ratings, etc) are all too easily exploited. While the thought of staying at a stylish house is more appealing than a room at a hotel chain, I at least know what I am getting myself into. I've had my share of... not great rooms at hotels, but they typically make it right with a room switch or reimbursement. It doesn't sound like AirBnb is good at that.
What a wild story. I search Austin property records for "shray goel" and the guy owns a house literally around the corner from where I live. I wonder if I've seen him around.
This has happened to me, earlier this year. Luckily it was just for one night and the room was low cost anyway (£35 for central London!) so should have seen this coming.
Oddly enough, there was someone living in the switcheroo apartment I ended up in and they were paying £800 a month!
I reported it to airbnb today after reading this story and checking that listing's reviews, almost all of whom had reported the same problem and airbnb have come back to say they've cancelled the host's account and listing.
Airbnb has had issue for a while. This[1] is a post I wrote about them in 2014. Basically, it is not in Airbnb's interests to provide quality control, or stop these scams, as either action will negatively impact their revenue.
I used to love AirBnB at the beginning because it was a great way to meet locals and live a bit like locals.
Unfortunately it became too big and now it is very hard to distinguish genuine residents interested in meeting tourists from professionals that I will not meet at all and whose process is almost completely automated. That completely ruins what was once an awesome human experience.
Funny to see how internet giants treat their suppliers vs their customers.
eBay's sellers are up in arms because it's trivial for any customer to steal from them and force a chargeback on an honest seller. Sellers cannot even leave negative feedback for dishonest buyers anymore. The customer is king.
AirBnb is exactly the opposite, apparently. Screwing their customers for scamming suppliers that should be trivial to uncover.
Like I said in another comment I would immediately call Amex and then file a police report. There’s no way I would have stayed in that kind of place.
There are plenty of hotels in Chicago from Boutique to chains to roach motels. Why subject yourself to so much crap by AirBnB? Especially if you’re alone.
The solution is the same as it is for so many other issues: strict liability for Airbnb. If the company is responsible for finding you a hotel room of equivalent capacity and paying for any difference in price, the company will quickly devote resources to minimizing this kind of fraud.
As long as it's not Airbnb's problem, Airbnb isn't going to solve it.
$35B valuation being run like a $300K company, if that. There is no way AirBnB is a legitimate company. They take in money that may or may not be the result of actual crimes, particularly bait and switch and fraud, and the company has ensured there is no way to know whether any reservation is legit.
Airbnb won't provide a full refund in many of the cases from the article but shouldn't you still be able to file a charge back on your credit card and get your money back without dealing with Airbnb?
Does it work like that or do I have a misunderstanding of how charge backs work?
How does this experience look when outside the USA? The article is only about travelers inside the country and most comments seem to be so, too. When my family travels, we usually leave the country.
Doesn't surprise me that they are filled with scams, yet they ban anyone who has ever been in trouble for possessing any drug other than cannabis from using their service.
I don't understand why AirBnB doesn't take this kind of fraud more seriously. All they have is their brand reputation. This kind of fraud will destroy that.
Why? As the last paragraph says, and many comments here echo, people will still use the service. There is literally no reason why they should take it more seriously unless they were a) socially minded or b) under legal investigation.
Scaling the community is an existential growth problem for ABNB ... unfortunately their policies haven't kept up with the problems that have been introduced
This is a not very difficult problem to solve. Whenever there is a dispute, send somebody to verify the property. For sure AirBnb already has an anti-abuse team, so it is an extra step there. Also, disputes anyway cost them money for the person that answers emails, sometimes do refunds, legal risk, etc. So it will also not be more expensive.
It is one of these "growth" problems that a company is good to have and normally solves in an easy way. Furthermore, the author is still an active user of AirBnb.
I've been living in Airbnbs while backpacking through Australia for the last year. Here are some things I've learned for anyone needing some tips (Also because I like to share stories)
Pictures on the rental are meaningless. Only the price and amenities matter. Whatever the lowest 10% of price per night for a type of home (private vs shared room etc) is probably a scam. Don't rent in this price range. Money may be different for each person, but the upside of saving $100-$200 is way less than the downside of a last minute booking in a place you're unfamiliar with. I suspect most of the scams happening are people who book something that seems too good to be true.
If you're able to, message the host prior to booking with a generic intro and some generic questions. Many many times when the host got back to me for a great looking listing, alarm bells went off and I moved on. I personally ask what their internet speed is. If they don't know this its not a deal breaker, but their response can be pretty telling.
A lot of professional renters list on Airbnb. Especially multi-bedroom houses where you rent one bedroom. These can go either way, but are often a good deal. I personally like these because its a business transaction for both sides. Usually these types of listings are more open to negotiating on price, but its not staying in someone's home like an Airbnb might be pictured.
Reviews don't mean too much, but number of reviews and/or super host are pretty good barometers for quality. It is much harder to fake a lot of reviews. A less obvious red flag is the age of the listing vs number of reviews. If there are only 3-4 high reviews on something around for a long time, look closely at it. Even if the reviews aren't fake. There is a lot of incentive to not review a bad experience. Unfortunately price usually correlates with number of reviews.
I've personally never booked a new listing (no reviews). I'd be interested to know if I'm passing on some amazing deals, but my risk/reward tolerance doesn't allow it.
TLDR; Ignore the pictures look at price range compared to the marker and message hosts before booking at all.
Adjacent tip:
Bring the bare basics with you (maybe this is backpacker logic talking). I usually have a knife/fork/spoon as well as some toilet paper and enough close to be warm without blanks. Don't rely on them to have things you absolutely can't survive without. Its stupid you have to do this, but you can rest a little easier having it with you if something goes wrong.
You book a nice house and they'll tell you a problem came up, but they offer to switch to a different one. The alternative house is cheap and run down, it's their real property though. When you switch and stay one night at the alternative, you can't get a full refund. Because so many bail out and leave, expecting to be refunded, they can make it available to rent again immediately. You're also pressured into not leaving negative reviews, so the cycle continues.
Bear with me there is a point to my preamble... So in the UK if you buy a train ticket and the train is late and as a result you miss a connection to, say, a ferry then the train company is obliged to put you right. For example, by putting you up in a hotel until you can take the next ferry or finding another way for you to continue your journey so you don't miss the ferry. I once had a free 100 mile taxi journey because the train was late and I was going to miss my connection which would have required an overnight stay.
I am not a lawyer (also this is UK law) but I would be really interested for a lawyer to comment on this, because my understanding is that the reason they do this is because the train timetable is an 'invitation to treat' on which you based your decision to enter into a contract with them by purchasing a ticket to transport you from A to B. If they fail to do this in a timely fashion as advertised on the timetable, such that your journey with them is wasted, this is a breach of contract and contract law says that because they failed to honour the contract, they have to, as close as possible, put you back in the position you were in if you had not entered into the contract with them. They can not get out of this with T&Cs because its a basic principal that if you offer one thing obviously and then say the opposite hidden in the small print, the more prominent offer is what you are held to.
In this case (again, remember I am not a lawyer but on the assumption that the same basic principals were to apply) my theory is that the problem is AirBNB's to resolve because the contract would be between me and AirBNB because the money changed hands between me and AirBNB. So if AirBNB advertised 3 nights in a city for £1500, I paid this and then I arrive and the host cancels my reservation at the last minute, after I have expended considerable time and expense already with the expectation that I have accommodation, I would ignore the host and contact AirBNB directly because I paid them the full cost of the booking and the fact that they subcontracted the actual service to someone else is none of my business, it is ultimately their problem to make sure the contract is honoured by putting me up in another equivalent place or by providing a full refund and paying any additional costs involved in me staying in the closest equivalent place available.
So I wonder, if they don't do this within a reasonable time, could I stay somewhere else and then file small claims court case against them for the cost? If the 1/3rd refund thing from another comment had happened to me I would certainly be tempted to try it to get £1000 + hotel bills back + cost of my time to prepare evidence for the claim at my standard hourly rate.
I have experienced one or two situations where companies have tried to rip me off and taking 30mins to tell them in writing that I will claim, how I will do it, what my grounds for the claim are and how much it will cost them has got them to back down and agree a refund and compensation before I got anywhere near having to fill out the online form for the small claims court, which is apparently not a big deal anyway. No idea if I would have won or how much time and cost is involved though... In general, if people would stick up for their rights more, then the costs of shady business practices like this would make them unprofitable.
Could be a great business idea for an online lawyering startup, like those that exist for flight compensation claims.
A few years back my wife and I went to Dubrovnik, this is before it went nuts due to GoT, I should add.
We went there with a couple of friends planning to have their wedding there, traveling from our homes in London.
We booked two air BnB rooms, both were very nice looking double rooms in central locations next to the old town.
We arrived at the address we'd been given and a local guy "owner", greeted us and took us for a short walk to where we'd be staying.
We arrived at an older looking home, high walls and a large metal gate. He opened it and welcomed us to his home. His grandma's home he told us.
He walked us inside and showed us to a box room with two wooden bunk-beds, the type you put children in. The floor was flooded and the small ensuite was too, flooded.
The look on our faces might have said enough if we hadn't, but we certainly were not staying there.
He suggested he'd try find some "alternative" accomodation. We waited nearby, and a short time later he arrived to show us each to locations he'd found.
First our friends, a nice newish apartment, they were quite happy with, although it was smaller than what they had booked, but still pleasant enough.
He took my wife and I around the corner and into a small home that had painted cement walls, flaking like you see in war films, after the war has been through.
An old man showed us to a small double room where he'd laid a bowl of fruit on the bed for us, he didn't speak English, but although we didn't speak his language either, we felt welcome, albeit slightly uncomfortable.
The place wasn't particularly clean or nice looking, and certainly not what we paid for, but after a bit of a dead end with the original guy we booked with, we figured he's guy is farming off rooms that don't exist and then subletting rooms in others' homes when guests arrived.
We decided we'd take it, but we needed to see the bathroom first.
Again, not clean, not pleasant, but worst of all, a small window, just above the shower opened into the old man's room, and it was open, is wasn't frosted and there was no way to cover it.
That was it for my wife, that was one bridge too far. She can't comfortably bath in there with a window opening into this stranger's room in a strange place.
We told the owner guy it wasn't going to work for us, and this is where the rest of this story breaks my heart.
The owner guy let the old man know we wouldn't stay, and the old guy broke down, he was begging us to stay, he was gesturing at the fruit he'd laid out, questioning what was wrong, but we just couldn't stay there.
The rest of what happened to us is irrelevant here, but the guy we'd booked with was clearly taking bookings he was farming out to elderly locals with any space to spare hoping renters works take whatever he offered.
Both sides of this deal were being scammed, and it broke my heart to know that although we might end up forking out to stay elsewhere was the worst we might suffer through this, this old man clearly needed whatever small part of the rent we paid was going to be given to him.
The rooms we saw online clearly didn't exist, this guy was just conning people because AirBnb allowed it to happen.
Why didn't the journalist contact Airbnb in the first place? Or after he arrived at the 2nd place and it wasn't the location listed/promised. (yes I can understand being tired, frustrated, etc)
Last minute host cancellation is the one thing they can actually something they help with since it ruins the marketplace for them.
As a host I've had my set of horror storied interacting with Airbnb. Most hosts do try really hard, but every marketplace has scams at some level, and I'm not sure how you could find them all once it's under some value/size.
Of course the scammers are good at "frog in the boiling water" level of scam, so it always seems like it will be easier and "I guess good enough" to just keep going.
But I don't think I would ever try to contact AirBnB "in the moment" (when I'm in a city not my own and need a place to sleep and trying to do whatever I'm in the city to do), since I've been trained to expect that any support from such companies is going to be very inconvenient, take lots of my energy, and take at a minimum hours (if not days) to resolve. Hours I don't have, when i'm trying to enjoy my vacation or whatever.
If AirBnB wants customers to contact the company immediately whenever anything looks fishy, they probably need to educate customers on that (with examples of what sorts of fishy things they'd like you to contact them asap about), as well as providing enough resources to customer support such that doing so actually helps instead of just adding more headache to an already painful situation. But I doubt AirBnB really wants customers to do that.
From the OP for instance:
> If a host asks a guest to stay at a property that’s different from the one they rented, Airbnb advises the guest to request a cancellation if they’re “not okay with the switch.” In both cases, the rules favor a would-be scammer and place the onus on guests who have just parachuted into an unfamiliar locale with their luggage and have nowhere else to stay that night.
I've been lucky (?) as a guest and never had a serious issue.
But friends have, and a phone call fixed the problem in the instance actually fixed the problem.
As a host I've had guests call airbnb and ask for exceptions for my cancelation policy (which is moderate) and have airbnb grant them and cancel booking at the last minute, or after check-in time and do 100% refunds. (or at least I get $0)
So while you might be trained that way, and it's understandable, they publish their number and make it pretty available to guests. Maybe the problem is labeling it an emergency number? (I take emergencies as huge deals so naturally avoid calling emergency numbers)
It's a shitty situation and I don't really want to blame the victim. I just really wanted to point out there's an number you can call for help and if you call it earlier they can help you. In case it helps someone nn the US its: +1-855-424-7262
>Why didn't the journalist contact Airbnb in the first place? Or after he arrived at the 2nd place and it wasn't the location listed/promised. (yes I can understand being tired, frustrated, etc)
She did:
>When I asked about the status of my refund, they ghosted, which led me to contact Airbnb. Though I had been moved to a flophouse and then told to leave early, Airbnb only refunded me $399 of my $1,221.20, and only did so after I badgered a number of case managers over the course of several days. The $399 didn’t even include the service fees Airbnb charged me for the pleasure of being thrown out on the street. But my power was nothing compared to that of a company valued this year at $35 billion, and I figured it was probably the best I could do.
The article details how much of a pain in the ass it is to get a refund from AirBnB:
>But Patterson didn’t care about that. She knew she had been scammed and wasn’t going to stand down until she received every penny back.
>“I’m an attorney, so I love to argue,” she said. “I just didn’t stop calling.”
>She eventually got her full refund, but it indeed came with a harsh review from Becky and Andrew for doing so. “We would NOT host or recommend her to the airbnb community!!” they wrote. Patterson couldn’t help but wonder how people with fewer resources and no place to crash would have fared in the same situation.
Sorry maybe I wasn't clear. Why didn't she contact airbnb immediately when the host suggested an alternate place that cost more. This is a big red flag, and a simple phone call probably would probably short circuited the article.
And yes this has happened to friends, showed up a place that wasn't as described/ready/etc. Called and complained and ended up having airbnb book them a hotel.
I've never read "I contacted AirBnb and they solved my problems!". It's always they dick you around and offer you very little of your money back to make you go away, happy that you got anything.
I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from the host asking me to increase the price of stay by $20. That was small and I did not want the hassle of arguing but just decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I looked at it again on computer (as opposed to the phone) and saw something odd: the dates of stay we crossed and replaced by the exact same dates. Then I saw that weekdays were off. Then it dawned on me that the scammer changed the dates of stay to the next year and added $20 just to distract me.
The scam is simple. The scammer lists the same property twice with ~30% difference in price using slightly different photos and descriptions. The cheaper one goes first. If he books it at the higher price he kicks out the first renters with the "next year booking" scam. Reading reviews made it quite clear.
I reported the scammer to AirBnB, got a refund + $100 but they did not do anything other than $100 fine to the scammer. The crook makes more than that from a single scam. AirBnB just does not care.
Pecunia non olet.