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Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#91

Post by RustyBucket »

RHSeeger wrote: post #67
greggman2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple > does this listing have a stove Guest: Well yes but it doesn't work. Or, well yes but the flame shut off after 2 minutes AirBnB: Sucks to be you but it has a stove so not a lie > does this listing have wifi Well yes but they say it's only got 1meg data so it will run out in probably 2 days and we booked the place for a month. AirBnb: Sucks to be you but it has wifi so not a lie > does this listi…

I'm be curious if you could have pushed back on the bedrooms one. The term "bedroom" has a legal definition in many places (ex, must have door and closed).

In many places (e.g. in Europe) there is no standard definition of bedroom at all. Rather generic room, which is space surrounded by walls.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#92

Post by dragonwriter »

Teever wrote: post #80
libria wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Door + closet + fire-escapable window are a few reqs around here.

How does that definition work on the 30th storey of a condo building?

Fire escapes are a thing, and required in tall buildings, so it works exactly as stated.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#93

Post by pas »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #81
umvi wrote: post #14

Would it kill AirBnB to do random (or even algorithmically-determined) audits? Auditor signs up for a night in your house. Let's say your listing has fake pictures or fake amenities. Or you try to bait and switch the auditor by having them stay in some crappy other property because the main listing "is having plumbing problems". Bam, audit failed, your account is frozen, your listings are removed, and you are banned…

I have a bedroom in my house that I make available through Airbnb. I live in the house so this isn't an investment-for-Airbnb scenario. I'm totally down for these audits, but expect the auditor to pay the fee like anyone else if he/she stays, or if he/she consumes the timeslot that I could have sold to someone else.

Airlines already do this, they have employees that do QA in plain clothes, naturally they QA the whole process, from ticket purchase through helpdesk and so on.

Even though AirBnB, like airlines has all the data, customers love leaving feedback on rentals.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#94

Post by toss1 »

AirBnB's existing guest verification process loks onerous, but is trivial to work-around.

For some reservations, they demand to have your Driver's License image, both sides (to include he various barcodes, etc.) and some other items.

For a friend who did not want the risk of having their full set of data floating around out there, I used some readily available & free tools to make some (self-consistent) edits to the documents to reduce personal identification risk in that DB of IDs.

Although quite bogus, the docs passed verification instantly. So, now, AirBnB and the host now erroneously think that they have a verified guest, when they have no such thing.

Their verification is not only an onerous process that crates a massive honeypot of personal-ID information just waiting to be hacked & stolen, it is also a farce insofar as filtering out even any mildly motivated person, whether intent on protecting their privacy, or on scamming.

Dubious that their host-side listing will be any more valid.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#95

Post by frostmatthew »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #81
umvi wrote: post #14

Would it kill AirBnB to do random (or even algorithmically-determined) audits? Auditor signs up for a night in your house. Let's say your listing has fake pictures or fake amenities. Or you try to bait and switch the auditor by having them stay in some crappy other property because the main listing "is having plumbing problems". Bam, audit failed, your account is frozen, your listings are removed, and you are banned…

I have a bedroom in my house that I make available through Airbnb. I live in the house so this isn't an investment-for-Airbnb scenario. I'm totally down for these audits, but expect the auditor to pay the fee like anyone else if he/she stays, or if he/she consumes the timeslot that I could have sold to someone else.

Yes they would pay, you wouldn't even know the person(s) were conducting an audit. All major hotel chains already do exactly this, typically at least once a year and the property has no idea until weeks later when they get the (very detailed) report.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#96

Post by zootam »

umvi wrote: post #14

Would it kill AirBnB to do random (or even algorithmically-determined) audits? Auditor signs up for a night in your house. Let's say your listing has fake pictures or fake amenities. Or you try to bait and switch the auditor by having them stay in some crappy other property because the main listing "is having plumbing problems". Bam, audit failed, your account is frozen, your listings are removed, and you are banned…

i think as part of an audit there would be a lot of questions regarding the gray area of auditing illegal AirBnb listings- ones where you have to pretend to be just 'visiting your friend'.

verifying that a place is abiding by certain standards and has passed AirBnb's audit but still breaking local laws would probably anger lots of neighbors.

lots of illegal listings exist, and auditing would bring that to light even more.

paying a small team of auditors would probably do a ton more damage to the business in terms of losing listings than turning a blind eye or making other attempts for users to indirectly police the issue of misleading or fraudulent listings.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#97

Post by ogre_codes »

briandear wrote: post #75
situational87 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like we are intentionally bending over backwards to avoid hiring some human beings to do some real fucking work. When did this become the mantra of every tech company? Any time a job is created it's viewed as an unfortunate mistake or side effect? Who are we even building all this for?

Are you suggesting hiring employees to check every single listing on AirBnB? Does Craigslist verify every listing? For that matter, have newspapers ever done that with their advertising? AirBnB is a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Suggesting that a newspaper for instance send an employee to verify that an advertised car in a classified ad is precisely correct is a bit ridiculous but that’s what you seem to…

When they say “We’re going to verify all our listings” I fucking expect them to verify listings.

When listings cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and they skim a significant fee off every rental they need to take some significant steps to eliminate fraud on their platform.

Craigslist is a horrible example because they don’t profit from most sales, and they don’t process the money between buyer/ seller. If AirBnb worked like CL, you’d be pay your host cash when you show up and if your host tried to pull shit like this you could just walk.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#98

Post by ars »

libria wrote: post #71
RHSeeger wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm be curious if you could have pushed back on the bedrooms one. The term "bedroom" has a legal definition in many places (ex, must have door and closed).

Door + closet + fire-escapable window are a few reqs around here.

The closet part is not actually true, it's a commonly believed myth.

There may be a few rare localities that require it, but it's not normally required.

Rather the definition requires a certain size of the room.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#99

Post by swang »

lostdog wrote: post #68
djohnston wrote: post #25

My worst AirBnb was let via a proxy agent. The flat wasn't actually rentable even though it was online, and so I showed up to a locked flat, no key, with all of my bags in a new city. AirBnB refunded it and gave me 50 AirBnb Bucks (TM). I only do hotels now, unless someone else is handling the reservation.

The worst thing about AirBnB is that they make no effort to fix the problem. When on a vacation, and we found our AirBnB had fewer beds than advertised, we complained, and then were told that the owner wanted us "out immediately." So now we're stranded in a new city. Great. AirBnB offered to put us up anywhere cheaper than the original price we had booked. Of course, booking 2 months in advance is much cheaper than t…

same thing happened to me in terms of getting money back.

the reason for the refund was completely different but i was very unhappy with a stay. i wrote a very lengthy description of my complaints and had pictures to back it up. a large part of the issue was they didn't clean the room. i ended up having to fight with airbnb for weeks to get the full refund (they initially refused to give back the "cleaning fee" when a large part of my complaint was the place wasn't clean).

i am not totally against staying at an airbnb, but i haven't booked one since and look primarily at hotels. that bad stay ruined my plans for the last night of my trip and i barely saved $50 from staying at a nice hotel.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#100

Post by dickeytk »

RustyBucket wrote: post #91
RHSeeger wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm be curious if you could have pushed back on the bedrooms one. The term "bedroom" has a legal definition in many places (ex, must have door and closed).

In many places (e.g. in Europe) there is no standard definition of bedroom at all. Rather generic room, which is space surrounded by walls.

I would be very surprised if that was the case. It's certainly not in the US or UK: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/68/part/X in the US it"s that it needs a window + closet I think.
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