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

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#291

Post by orting » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

lb1lf wrote: post #142

gesman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 app…

> 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’…

> -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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#292

Post by r00fus » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #225

oarsinsync wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

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.

Seriously, aint nobody got time for that. I'm not playing that game.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#293

Post by kube-system » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #162

dfxm12 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sinc…

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#294

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #212

mattrp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 re…

> 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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#295

Post by lb1lf » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

chachachoney wrote: post #282

lb1lf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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’…

It's amazing that a billion dollar digitally facilitated reservation system in 2019 allows for double bookings.

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#296

Post by goldenkey » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

modelica wrote: post #233

Jd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ea…

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 i…

Damn, that is brutal... Shoulda stayed at Hotel Penn that price ....

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#297

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

Interesting. When I signed up years ago to rent from Airbnb, I had to post verification from passport photos to Facebook to LinkedIn.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#298

Post by true_religion » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

throw_m239339 wrote: post #78

moccachino wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#299

Post by treis » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

chachachoney wrote: post #282

lb1lf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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’…

It's amazing that a billion dollar digitally facilitated reservation system in 2019 allows for double bookings.

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#300

Post by kingbirdy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

JadoJodo wrote: post #170

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 ca…

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.