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.
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.