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

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#441

Post by yesenadam » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #357

greggman2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stayed at 22 airbnb's 11 were fine. 11 had issues most with false advertising in some form or another. One listed the wrong location and if they had listed the correct location I would not have rented even though the room's interior matched. A few claimed to include onsite parking but didn't which of course is very inconvenient. The last one that did that claimed "Easy Street Parking" as AirBnb's blatant lie. I…

PG wrote an essay about how he and and Sam Altman prefer to invest in companies that run scams, as long as they aren't too evil. Remember that AirBnB's first marketing campaign was hiring women (or men using female names online) to violate Craiglist ToS to spam people posting housing listings. http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

>...Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. ...They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.

>...we asked [Sam] what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers.

That's what you meant?! I can't see which other part you might mean - it's only 750 words. Describing it as "an essay about how he and Sam Altman prefer to invest in companies that run scams" seems as misleading as the worst of the deceptive AirBnB descriptions written about on this page. Maybe you meant to link to a different essay.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#442

Post by ragle » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

elchupanebre wrote: post #342

Here is another scam that someone tried to pull on me. I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from the host asking me to increase the price of stay by $20. That was small and I did not want the hassle of arguing but just decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I looked at it again on computer (as opposed to the phone) and saw something odd: the date…

Interesting - makes me wonder if this scam is what was being pulled in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21410039

Though in this case, the difference in price is about 50%.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#443

Post by AJ007 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:23 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…

Had a similar situation and ended up having to book someone a $2000 a night hotel room. It’s no joke being out of a room in a place where hotels are 100% sold out, or non existent. This is one of the reasons I refuse to use Airbnb in most normal situations. It’s a wild card.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#444

Post by tialaramex » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

perlgeek wrote: post #380

longerthoughts wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Any idea what hotels typically do in this situation? They pay other hotels to take you in, and have insurance for the worst case (house burning down).

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.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#445

Post by AJ007 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

greggman2 wrote: post #158

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've stayed at 22 airbnb's 11 were fine. 11 had issues most with false advertising in some form or another. One listed the wrong location and if they had listed the correct location I would not have rented even though the room's interior matched. A few claimed to include onsite parking but didn't which of course is very inconvenient. The last one that did that claimed "Easy Street Parking" as AirBnb's blatant lie. I…

I wonder what kind of class action or civil enforcement exposure Airbnb has. Certainly this has to be revealed honestly in their S-1 docs.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#446

Post by ghaff » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #419

ghaff wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized Crime mostly fails because people get thrown in jail. Obviously not happening here.

Usually because someone ends up betraying them, e.g. the Chicago Outfit. In other words, dishonesty ends up ruining them. So the comment still makes sense.

Well, yeah, a faction ends in jail because someone rats them out—either inside or a competitor.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#447

Post by 205guy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #336

205guy wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it sounds as if you are saying "I want the charm\location\social experience of staying with a local resident AND I want the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of the hotel industry AND I don't want to pay for the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of a hotel." As with software, pick two.

Airbnb has functionally became where it is expected to get the latter two. When I've used Airbnb I have never expected nor cared about the "charm" or the "local resident", it's been a de-facto hotel. If there was a problem, of course I would expect Airbnb to do their job . Why wouldn't you?

I'm not defending AirBnB, because they totally enable and profit from scams as documented in the original article. But it is just the user expecting to get hotel services (rebooking and room swaps) from a non-hotel (whether genuine homestay or micro-hotel-entrepreneur).

AirBnB wont play down that expectation because again they profit more from it, but from the website and concept it is clear that you are dealing with random unprofessional strangers with a minimum of guarantees. Its kinda like the Uber contractor-vs-employee categorization for drivers.

AirBnB should definitely do a better job, but I maintain the risks are inherent in the business model, and you and the other users want the benefits of the risk (lower prices), without accepting the consequences of the risk.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#448

Post by biztos » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #374

nathancahill wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm in charge of booking a ski trip for ~15 friends each year, and the amount of reading between the lines I have to do to make sure everyone has a comfortable place to sleep is crazy. Tons of places count sofas/pullouts/day beds in the "Sleeps # of People", and they often count the temporary beds as space for 2. So you'll see places that say, Sleeps 16, but there are only 3 or 4 real beds. Hotels have it right…

What ridiculous is when you try searching for 'whole homes' and you end up getting 'apartments' which are nothing more than someones basement. Airbnb seems to encourage this too by letting people put whatever tags they want. It's kind of a joke. In addition, hiding the address makes it hard to double check on google street view. Edit: My workaround is selecting super hosts only, 3-4 bedrooms, 1+ bathroom. Seems to fi…

I rarely book for more than two people, but when I have I found that filtering on "2+ bathrooms" very quickly gets me the flats that really have several bedrooms.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#449

Post by ir77 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

I've used Airbnb exactly once, probably 8 years ago once. Me, wife, her parents and my parents all met up in Paris. I rented a 'luxury' apartment that was enough to sleep 8 people and looked great in pictures.

When we got there half the furniture was gone because the guy apparently got divorced between when the pictures got taken and his life "now", half the beds were kid's mattresses on pull out beds, there was no longer a shower but literally a full fledged hot-tub that had a flex shower over it.

the coffee machine and half the utensils in the kitchen had mold on it. we never got enough towels for all the people.

we stayed there for one day and couldn't do it anymore, i sent an email to Airbnb and the owner asking that we part ways amicably and they let us out of the contract, both replied that it was past 12 hours that we stayed there and i was liable for full cost.

i went outside to a payphone, called collect to a number listed on my platinum amex and explained the situation, the first thing the amex rep said: "i'm sorry to hear about your situation, we're immediately refunding you the full amount, go find a hotel room, enjoy the rest of your vacation and we'll call you when you get back to the states".

when i got to the states i had my money back from amex and Airbnb for weeks would write to me that "they're investigating my situation", at which point i didn't even bother reading their emails anymore. it was a crap company then and it seems like it's a crap company now. there really isn't any reason to do business with companies that don't value the customer, no matter how appealing the "price" may be.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#450

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #439

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #406

I've only used Airbnb once, but it was a smooth experience. But after reading this and all the comments here, I'm unlikely to use them again. As far as I'm concerned, Airbnb is complicit in all these scams. They literally give zero shits about these scam artists, because they're getting paid either way.

It sounds like you are overly risk-averse (I'm guessing you are not a founder?). AirBnB is rewards versus risks, as the article author implies right at the end. I have used a wide variety of accommodation: AirBnB, hotels, staying with friends, short term rentals, campervans, cars, outdoors, staying with randoms I have met. They all have benefits, and they all have risks. AirBnB has given me a huge range of different…

Correct, I'm not a founder, and honestly I roll my eyes a lot about how founders on this site are treated like some sort of demigod.

You didn't comment on my opinion that Airbnb is complicit in the scams. Do you not agree?