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Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#151

Post by gwd »

thepangolino wrote: post #64
paulgb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the Vice piece that sparked all this strongly implies that this is already happening: > Even some of the positive reviews of Becky and Andrew’s Chicago rentals seemed odd, especially those left by other pairs of hosts. Kelsey and Jean, for example, said Becky and Andrew were “awesome and communicative guests.” But they themselves were based in Chicago, where it seemed they had at least two properties…

That doesn’t seem strange at all to me. A friend of mines regularly rents their place on Airbnb. Then in turn they rent a cheaper property and pocket the difference.

Not sure why you're downvoted. At least one place I stayed at in Switzerland, it was pretty clear something like that was exactly what was happening: The family were living in the house normally, and when someone rented it, they just vacated it and went somewhere else. (I sort of suspect that there had been a recent divorce and the mother was trying to figure out how to be able to avoid having to move due to changed financial situation.) It seemed a bit weird to be taking over this family's house, but they decided it worked for them, and the house was as described, so... shrug

Don't know where they went, but a cheaper AirBNB place nearby would be an obvious candidate.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#152

Post by ttsda »

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.

Europe is not all the same. A bedroom is well defined in Portugal.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#153

Post by taejo »

personlurking wrote: post #144
paulgb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the Vice piece that sparked all this strongly implies that this is already happening: > Even some of the positive reviews of Becky and Andrew’s Chicago rentals seemed odd, especially those left by other pairs of hosts. Kelsey and Jean, for example, said Becky and Andrew were “awesome and communicative guests.” But they themselves were based in Chicago, where it seemed they had at least two properties…

This also strikes me as odd. I've recently been seeing extremely short reviews for places. That is, 10+ reviews per place that are basically "was great, would recommend!" or "the host was responsive, I'll come back!". I can't tell if this is a thing people do or if they are somehow fake 5 star reviews.

ISTR last time I used AirBnB there was some flow that really pushed you to leave a review, which obviously leads to those kinds of uninformative reviews.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#155

Post by gwd »

matheist wrote: post #125
YokoZar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBNB reviews are unpublished until both sides either finish their review or time out. It is simply not possible to read a bad review and then write a bad review in retaliation.

The retaliation is in response to contacting support, it works like this (I posted this elsewhere in the thread too): guest => support: "the place was filthy, I want a refund" support => host: "guest says it was filthy is that true" host => support: "lol no" host reviews guest: "terrible, all they did was complain, beware"

The Vice article also talked about retaliation, but I'm not clear how that worked: At least in the last few years, you can't see the owner's review until you've posted your own (or until a timeout happens and you lose your opportunity to make a review). And you can comment on reviews to tell your side of the story.

It would make sense for AirBNB to wait until the owner had left their initial review (or the review window timed out) before alerting them to the fact that they were going to get a bad one.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#156

Post by feintruled »

ogre_codes wrote: post #12

From the comment in the article it sounds like they are trying to offload the cost/ effort of verifying listings to their customers as well: " But he said the process would involve asking users whether the information in certain listings turned out to be accurate " So when he says AirBNB is going to verify every listing, he doesn't actually mean they are paying people to do it...

Using their customers as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Perhaps the analogy works a little too well, when carbon monoxide detectors are involved.

Tech companies always expect us to swallow the "oh there's too much to possibly check manually!" (even when they are the richest companies in the world) but surely they could hire an inspector to do random spot checks? I used to have a friend who worked for Guinness who did that, dropped in on random bars to sample the quality of their stock. Quite the job.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#157

Post by rkangel »

jonplackett wrote: post #154

What’s happening? This link goes to an article about poli tal ads on Twitter, not Airbnb. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/dealbook/boeing-...

I think someone must have mistakenly edited the link? This appears to be the correct article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/airbnb-verify-li...

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#158

Post by londons_explore »

personlurking wrote: post #144
paulgb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the Vice piece that sparked all this strongly implies that this is already happening: > Even some of the positive reviews of Becky and Andrew’s Chicago rentals seemed odd, especially those left by other pairs of hosts. Kelsey and Jean, for example, said Becky and Andrew were “awesome and communicative guests.” But they themselves were based in Chicago, where it seemed they had at least two properties…

This also strikes me as odd. I've recently been seeing extremely short reviews for places. That is, 10+ reviews per place that are basically "was great, would recommend!" or "the host was responsive, I'll come back!". I can't tell if this is a thing people do or if they are somehow fake 5 star reviews.

For a while AirBnB forced you to write a review before you could book another place.

During that time, I always just wrote expletives in the review box and gave everyone 1-star. I'm not going to be the unpaid QA person for AirBnB!

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#159

Post by londons_explore »

fierarul wrote: post #72
thepangolino wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t seem strange at all to me. A friend of mines regularly rents their place on Airbnb. Then in turn they rent a cheaper property and pocket the difference.

For every odd situation I see in HN comments there comes somebody like you saying: "why, I just did that yesterday!". A location getting good ratings from other people in the same city that rent 2 other apartments is so odd it should be denied by default and require manual approval. The odds of collusion are quite high. Of course sellers would help each-other with good ratings! Even at the actual cost of paying for a…

You don't even have to pay many AirBnB fees - you can steeply discount a night, and then get your friend to book it.

Re: Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing

#160

Post by bkor »

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…

Via the stories from "talesfromthefrontdesk" I learned that hotels will pay a room for you in another hotel in case they cannot accommodate you (e.g. overbooking). IMO AirBNB should by law have a similar rule. This as (as you say) last minute prices are indeed significant higher than booking in advance. Further, the risk should be on AirBNB, not on the customer.
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