I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb • Hacker News Board

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#81

Post by cryptozeus » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

“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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#82

Post by magashna » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #76

julienchastang wrote: post #51

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…

> 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…

You roll the dice and hope for the best. There's only so much you can do. Pick 2, cost, comfort, reliability

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#83

Post by thatfrenchguy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #56

bluetidepro wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Well you’re not getting paid more when it’s on your free time.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#84

Post by jcomis » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#85

Post by mattrp » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #51

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…

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#86

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#87

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

axaxs wrote: post #48

wholepointofcc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try calling your Credit Card company and flag it as fraud. That's what I would do. That failing I'd submit a police report.

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#88

Post by toast0 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

throw_m239339 wrote: post #24

jrochkind1 wrote: post #9

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 r…

> These people seem truly untouchable.

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#89

Post by netsharc » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

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

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#90

Post by 4ntonius8lock » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

bluetidepro wrote: post #20

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…

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 do wish they would monitor their platform more.