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Airbnb and security camera disclosure

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Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#111

Post by conanbatt »

jartelt wrote: post #61
eric_b wrote: post #9

I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…

I made the switch as well and now only get an AirBnB when traveling with a large group of friends to remote destinations. For my own travel, I got so sick of the problems with key access. It's just too hard to coordinate with most hosts when you are in a foreign country and don't have cell service or wi-fi. It's also super annoying when any number of other issues show up: spotty wi-fi, no cable TV, no soap or shampoo…

Honestly dont get why Airbnb doesnt make /buy a lock mechanism and gives it to hosts. A simple key padlock suffices for 90% of the cases.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#112

Post by llampx »

Karunamon wrote: post #77
eric_b wrote: post #9

I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…

> It's funny to me, because AirBnB runs in to all the same problems we had with hotels a hundred years ago. To a point. I find it a bit silly to regulate a single person renting out their house occasionally for short stretches (read: most users of AirBnB) to a corporation with multiple purpose built, million dollar facilities on expensive commercial property with their own staff and so forth.

I've been looking at AirBNBs recently for a vacation. The small guy is an outlier anymore. Most of the listings are obviously professional, ie they do it for a living and have multiple properties and property managers. The network is hard to unravel since the companies behind the "hosts" create many profiles, but it is easy to see that its not just Carla or Emily or Cody offering up their apartment while they go on holiday. I've been on AirBNB for more than 6 years and have hosted as well, but the rules as well as the standards have tilted heavily to favor the big players.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#114

Post by tokyodude »

eric_b wrote: post #9

I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…

They did this in Japan. You're require to have an emergency sprinkler system for fires as just one example. If you don't have one, getting one installed is apparently around $20k so that prohibits lots of people from getting started renting out. Then as well they have to registered. If it's an apartment/condo building you have to get permission from the building management/home owners association. And I think it's max 90 days a year.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#115

Post by elif »

patagonia wrote: post #103
_Donny wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have switched back to hotels too, due to my recent experience. My friends and I were staying over at a 4-subroom Airbnb during the summer. The apartment looked great, and we really could not complain about the price either. However, we started noticing that none of the furniture match; there we no more than two of the same chairs, the beds were all different, the cutlery was bent and visibly used, etc. When two of…

Luckily, we could prove to Airbnb that the furniture was not original, and that it was modified multiple times, badly. After the whole vacation spent worrying about the communication between the host and the Airbnb, we managed to avoid having to pay. A similar experience is what put me off to AirBnb. What was supposed to be a carefree weekend at the beach turned into managing the property manager. One thing after ano…

I was in Spain and got an airbnb which did not have sheets for the beds or towels. The host, who was in another country on holiday, had me walk down the street and meet her mother, who didn't speak english. Her mother gave me a musty top-sheet that seemed to have been in a closet for over a decade, and asked me to pay her 5 euros in cash for it. This whole process took about 2 hours.

Still didn't get a towel.. should have listened to douglas adams.

I also stayed at the cheapest airbnb in miami beach, which was an unwalkable room full of children's-sized bunkbeds, and populated by fully grown humans with the consideration of children. There was so much chaos i couldn't sleep, and since i was there to compete in a tournament the next day, I literally walked around the streets of miami at 3am until i found a patch of grass where I could sleep. I couldn't bring myself to pay $200 for 3 hours of a hotel.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#116

Post by thisismyusernam »

eric_b wrote: post #9

I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…

Same is true for me.

In my mid-to-late-twenties, I remember thinking "Damn, why are hotels so expensive? I'll just stay in this Airbnb, which is so much bigger anyway. This is the new way and it's disrupting hotels."

Now at the outset of my thirties and a more settled phase of life, I will gladly pay a premium to stay in a hotel.

In the same way, it's becoming more likely for me to flag a London black cab than book an Uber via the app.

There's a reason why some business models and establishment types 'just work' throughout history and it's not entirely because of well-funded lobbying and conservative lawmaking, as we were maybe led to believe in the early Airbnb/Uber days when anything disruptive was shiny.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#117

Post by rhinoceraptor »

wil421 wrote: post #34
telecuda wrote: post #5

After a host made a suspicious/creepy comment about our stay, I started logging into host routers (creds usually printed on the device) and look at what other devices are connected. The camera may not be on that network, or not networked at all, but it’s a little peace of mind.

There is an app called Fing on iPhones and maybe Android. It will scan the WiFi you are on and give you a bunch of information. There’s also a few more network functions you can do. It recognizes phones, my plex server, and a brother printer at my house to name a few. No router login required just the WiFi password.

arp-scan(1) can also do this without harvesting your data.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#118

Post by rchaud »

eric_b wrote: post #9

I used to use AirBnB all the time. Lately I've switched back to using hotels almost exclusively. The camera/privacy thing is a big part of it. I empathize with the hosts to a degree - you don't want people doing outrageous things in your home. But the hosts want their cake and to eat it too. Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it! (As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of…

> It's funny to me, because AirBnB runs in to all the same problems we had with hotels a hundred years ago.

Every startup is banking on consumers forgetting this. "Hey, X is far too inefficient/expensive, you deserve Y".

If the startup becomes a unicorn, it's never going to be long before they start following the same rules as the incumbents they toppled.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#119

Post by ilikehurdles »

Tsubasachan wrote: post #98

This is a tough one. There are some seriously nuts and creepy people out there. If you use Airbnb with your teenage kids and somebody has hidden a camera somewhere for their own personal pleasure what can Airbnb do? Inspect every property that they list? At least with a hotel the owners usually care about their business and reputation.

At some point if they don’t start inspecting every property they list, then a competitor will come out with a selling point on inspections and trustworthiness.

Re: Airbnb and security camera disclosure

#120

Post by philip1209 »

I've lived in Airbnbs full-time for about 18 months while traveling, and Airbnb has lost my trust repeatedly in terms of reliability, safety, and user-friendliness.

- Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it's many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay.

- Airbnb support response times are horribly slow. They hide their phone number, then force you to go through a ticketing system for urgent issues. Then, they start assigning you a new "case manager" every few hours as their shifts change, which means the rep never is caught up on the issue. Sometimes, they forget to transfer you to a new rep before ending their shift, which could result in zero responses for days until the rep works again.

- When there is a problem, Airbnb supports the host and makes little to no effort to relocate users. For example, when our unit flooded, among other problems, the feedback was basically "well we can book you into another available unit". The problem was that it was peak Summer in Barcelona, we were there for a long period of time, and the only available units were minimum 5x the price.

- We had an Airbnb burglarized. Again, we waited hours for a response, as a police forensics unit was dusting the unit for fingerprints. We suspect that the host was complicit after realizing that previous tenants were also burglarized. Airbnb's insurance policy covered none of our losses ($10K+ in electronics, jewelry, watches, clothing, etc). We ended up feeling unsafe and canceling the reservation with 3 weeks remaining. As a "courtesy", Airbnb support credited our account for less than the cost of one night at a local replacement unit. Because we accepted the credit, they considered the matter "resolved" and did nothing else.

I've spent $30K+ on Airbnb. It started as a great alternative to hotels. Now, I can no longer recommend it, and I prefer a hotel.

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