361–370 of 406 posts
Airbnb is nobody's friend except the CEO and stockholders. Have a problem, tough. File a lawsuit, now we're communicating. This is how Capitalism works.
I feel like we need some sort of hub for consumers to get together and share cost of initiating legal action. When you're solo, you are indeed powerless in this system.
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"If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. " Don't be so sure about that. I had a Marriott reservation but apparently they overbooked a whole bunch of us and tried to rebook us at Motel 8 without refunding any of our money. Luckily I had booked through Priceline.com and called their support and they rebooked us at the nearest hotel that's comparable to…
Marriott is shit. Stayed three weeks in Cancun at a four and five start Marriott. No air conditioning. In the middle of the fucking summer. The lowest it'd go was 73. The first week, they were doing construction so there was a jackhammer literally outside our door every morning until we complained enough for them to move us to one of many empty rooms. Unfortunately, it was already booked so I couldn't get a refund or…
The construction issue was pretty valid and shitty of them.
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 ph…
I'll add to this as well. I've had two incidents over the past year. 1. I rented a place and was told that I could check-in whenever. When I got there, the key wasn't available and I wasn't able to contact the host. I was essentially just standing around for three hours waiting for Airbnb to respond. Apparently, you can contact them, but it's extremely difficult to call them if you're international unless you want to…
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Reasonably, AirBnB has already served its purpose. It has bludgeoned the hospitality industry forcing it to be more competitive. [1] There is real opportunity for hotels to earn back customers and they should get this chance. Due to hotel architecture they do not have the same problems as one-off airbnb units in neighborhoods. So they should reasonably consider offering greater privacy and reliability. That said, the…
Hotels can't operate at the slim margin that would allow them to compete with airbnn, otherwise, they would already have. Vast majority of customers choose on price, and hotels offering privacy just doesn't seem like it'd be a selling point, esp. if the feature is assumed default already.
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I've had nearly identical experiences, the worst being an apartment infested with bedbugs. Despite having video proof [0] of our mattress literally crawling with bedbugs, Airbnb support took the landlord's side and bounced us between case managers until it was finally resolved almost 24 hours later. At least at a hotel they have to acknowledge and fix the issue on the spot. 0. https://youtu.be/RJHScbdp15s
Same, bedbugs in India, had to go to a proper hotel costing me more than $1000 between room and cleaning all my belongings, I take bedbugs seriously and didn’t want to bring any bug back home. I had pictures of the bugs and the hotel and cleaning invoices. They asked for a medical (!!!) report. Airbnb refunded me 1 of the 2 nights out of 7 I didn’t spend there. So Airbnb costed me more money than going directly to a…
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Not sure about recently, but I’ve had the opposite experience living in Airbnb’s three months at a time when I was in between my startup and current job. My two hosts were very friendly, and I got on great with them. My first host would throw weekly dinner parties, cooking fresh organic food with vegetables she grew in her garden. When I was sick she would bring me breakfast in bed. Indeed, this woman was a wonderful…
It's like contracts. When everything is good, they don't matter. They only matter when things go bad.
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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…
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I'll add to this as well. I've had two incidents over the past year. 1. I rented a place and was told that I could check-in whenever. When I got there, the key wasn't available and I wasn't able to contact the host. I was essentially just standing around for three hours waiting for Airbnb to respond. Apparently, you can contact them, but it's extremely difficult to call them if you're international unless you want to…
Id of called my credit card company and filed a chargeback. The credit card associations have more power than Airbnb every dreamt of. Always call the man that controls the money.
The last time I encountered this was with Air Transat. I had to submit my twitter and email correspondence to my Visa provider. I was never issued tickets but I spent nearly $3k on my card, then had to do it AGAIN so I'd get tickets in time for my trip. So I went on my trip missing pretty much all of my spending money, and Transat and Visa were both just playing a waiting game for the entire two weeks. Thankfully my accommodations were paid for in advance and food in Puerto Vallarta is delicious and cheap. I didn't get my money until about 3 months after they took it from me.
I've heard Mastercard will do chargebacks with no questions asked, but I've never actually done it.
Several times I've ran into hotels which advertise AC, but when you get there you realize it's impossible to get acceptable room temperature. When you contact the front desk, they simply tell you that during [this time of year] the entire AC system of the hotel has been set to [heat/cool] and we can not set an individual room to [cool/heat] even if it is 27C inside the room.
One time there was a sewage smell coming from the bathroom strong enough to be sensed in the bedroom. The front desk again did nothing to alleviate the problem, going as far as lying that they are unable to move us to another room because all the rooms are booked (despite us seeing very few guests in the hallways, indicating the hotel was mostly empty at the time).
Another time the hotel staff badgered us for extra money throughout our stay despite that the hole stay was paid for in advance. They claimed that we had "erroneously" been given too low of a rate ($200/night for a small room in Milan) because we had used a "bad agent" (a booking site they apparently disliked, yet chose to work with anyway). They had knowledge of our booking for a long time, and instead of contacting us before our trip, they badger us for additional payments after we arrive?
These are not really isolated incidents. The majority of the time I visit a hotel, something is wrong to the extent that I never want to visit that particular hotel again. In contrast 100% of my AirBnb experiences have been good so far.