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

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#481

Post by edmundsauto » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

herodotus wrote: post #327

There is a larger problem here: there seems to be no way to hold these big internet companies to account for misrepresenting their product offerings. For example, some time ago, someone on HN reported on a plagiarized Python book for sale on Amazon. ( https://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Beginner-Intermedi... ). I emailed the author of the original book,(October 4) because Amazon have a form that allows authors…

I wonder what the response times across, say, US cities, looks like for police response to a stolen TV set. Copyright infringement is different than physical theft, so I would expect a much faster response to the latter. A better comparison would be if you reported a shop was selling pirated DVDs. That would compare Amazon's response time to that of the police, instead of comparing across different kinds of crimes.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#482

Post by jzwinck » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

zschuessler wrote: post #64

I hit a variation of this scam. I wasn't baited on a different space, but the listing was heavily misleading. I even had roommates even though the listing didn't state it! The listing had 5 stars because of a network of shill accounts leaving fake reviews. Additionally, there is no penalty for deleting a listing and recreating it when the fake 5-star status runs out. I contacted Airbnb about the shill account network…

I got surprise roommates once too. An entire family living in one of the bedrooms in what I booked as a 2 bedroom unit. Turned out the place had 3 total bedrooms, and while I would have understood if the host lived in the third, this was a totally unrelated tenant with multiple children. I contacted Airbnb and they said sure I can cancel, I just need to get the host to agree. Which he obviously did not want to do. This took hours to resolve.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#483

Post by paulgb » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

jzwinck wrote: post #477

paulgb wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suggestion is in these rare cases, it should be on AirBnB to relocate you. You already paid them plenty in the booking fee, some basic assurance that you will have a room to sleep in when you arrive should be part of that. Scammers will scam, but they will at least scam a victim (AirBnB) with the resources and incentives to root out the scam. In the current system, renters are stuck with such information asymmetry…

One of the reasons Airbnb is cheaper than hotels is that fraud and safety costs are passed on to guests and hosts. This is part of the business model. Once you build all the protections people want, you may find yourself at the same prices hotels were charging, and that's not very unicorn.

They're also cheaper than hotels because they allow people to exploit inventory that was otherwise sitting vacant. I agree that it's basically a form of regulatory arbitrage, but I'd argue that adding protections (as they already do for the property owners) is part of their competitive moat.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#484

Post by bvandewalle » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

codekilla wrote: post #473

erichocean wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't understand the value of a high trust culture until it's gone.

Yeah, Couchsurfing was incredible.....oh well

Couchsurfing was awesome and partially killed by Airbnb. It was an amazing concept that I used both as a an host and as a guest.

Airbnb pushed for the commercialization of every single Square meter (Thanks to VC $$) and now this high trust community is gone forever.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#485

Post by bsder » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #408

jschwartzi wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my fiance and I stayed at a place in Paia on Maui, the place looked immaculate from the pictures. But when we got there it was full of cockroaches. We had literally just gotten in at like 4 pm, put groceries down on the counter, and the little buggers were on them almost immediately. We were exhausted and didn't have the energy to really do anything after our 6 hour plane flight. The hosts came in and tried to r…

At least cockroaches don't bite. We got an Airbnb once in Belize that was effectively open air (it was too hot otherwise and there was no A/C) and the bed had mosquito netting around it which didn't go all the way to the ceiling . The host said "Oh just use the fan. Mosquitos hate fans." Of course the fan didn't work. We vacated that place quick. I still don't know whether this was a scam or simply a case of the loca…

> The host said "Oh just use the fan. Mosquitos hate fans."

This is true: Mosquitos home in on CO2, and fans scramble that quite a bit.

Whether that is sufficient or not is your own personal choice.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#486

Post by bvandewalle » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #412

Fomite wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often have a cancelable hotel reservation on hand.

Fewer and fewer hotel reservations let you cancel until 6pm day of though like they used to. More and more cancelable reservations want 24, 48, or even 72 hours these days.

and they removed the 6PM same day cancellation because they realized they became increasingly the "plan B" for a lot of Airbnbs.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#487

Post by someonehere » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

Airbnb does not care about what hosts do. They just want to be the source of short term rentals no matter what it takes. I’ve been hosed the last three stays and Airbnb does not care.

I stay at hotels now because if I’m not happy with service, I can get a different room, I can get a refund, I can talk to a human face to face.

Airbnb is a platform that just cares about hosting as many hosts as possible and they’re unregulated. I’m not asking they be regulated, but why doesn’t Airbnb check in on Super Hosts? It seems Super Hosts (from the three times I got screwed) run their places by outsourcing cleaning and maintenance, without ever spot checking.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#488

Post by jfaat » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

01010001 wrote: post #409

fma wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah...I'm 36, married, 2 young kids..taking the family for a vacation over Christmas. This article basically convinced me to book a hotel instead of an AirBNB. I have not had a bad experience w/ AirBnB when it was just my wife and I travelling, but I can't subject my kids to sleeping overnight in a dump - or supporting a company that does not actively address these issues.

The bit about supporting a company that scams people regularly is not being noticed by many.

Including the author of the article!

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#489

Post by pingec » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

jzwinck wrote: post #474

kitd wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar vein, a good friend of mine (+ all his family, about 10 in all) was kicked out of an AirBnB at the last minute because it had been double-booked on Booking.com at a higher price, and had just been rented via that site. I've come across a few such stories.

A family member of mine had something similar happen when using booking.com. She showed up at the hotel and they had sold her booked room to someone else. It was late and a bit of a nightmare to find another place to stay. Overbooking airplanes means someone might be stuck sitting in the terminal for hours. Overbooking.com means someone might be made to drive around late at night, tired, with nowhere to sleep.

When we accidentally took a double booking for the same place, booking.com demanded that we arrange and pay for equivalent accommodation for the booking.com guests. That is what we did, I do not know what would have happened had we refused to do so.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#490

Post by seibelj » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

14 wrote: post #480

dwaltrip wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is such an elegant scam. [...] Is there market where HN-type people come up with these and sell them to people to implement? Seriously? What kind of fucking question is that?

What type of question is that? I mean does adding fuck add something here? And honestly isn't there entire forums on the darkweb dedicated to scams and fraud and stolen goods? Those forums are full of ideas on how to rip people off are they not? Anyways I think you could get your point across without using fuck here on HN.

Who fucking cares about swearing? Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck