Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 237 posts

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#161

Post by staticman2 »

closeparen wrote: post #159
staticman2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason it would have to be an injustice. The standards of proof for getting banned from Airbnb should be less than thrown in jail.

This kind of thinking is not, in the end, going to make you safer. Shunning actual criminals out of polite society - let alone people who have merely been suspects - guarantees they will turn to crime for subsistence.

Since you brought up convictions-- I'm pretty confident choosing not to co-share an Airbnb with a convicted violent criminal is in fact likely to make me safer.

There's a discussion to be had about how criminals can be reintegrated to society- but shared sleeping accommodations on vacation may not be the best scenario to have it.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#162

Post by himinlomax »

refurb wrote: post #109
himinlomax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Accepting hosts with prior criminal charges for battery, who then proceeded to sexually assault a guest. The article says the offender had been charged but not convicted; what are they supposed to do? Know better than the justice system? And then they'd have complaints that people who have been wrongly accused at some point and found innocent, many of whom are likely to be minorities, are denied business by AirBN…

Is it really that unreasonable to tell someone they can’t be a host until their violent crime charges are resolved?

"Innocent until proven guilty"

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#163

Post by jjeaff »

ghaff wrote: post #156
edmundsauto wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you got downvotes, but this is spot on. It also happened with Uber and taxicabs!

Uber and taxicabs I see. Hotels apps and websites have probably gotten better but I'm not sure how much of that is AirBnB vs. a general trend in the industry.

Ya, hotels have always had to be highly competitive. But i suppose in areas where the number of available rooms had been somewhat fixed for a long time due to the difficulty of building any new hotels, you would see a difference as the hotels start to see their vacancy rates go up.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#164

Post by jjeaff »

latchkey wrote: post #135
murph-almighty wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind talking a bit about your lifestyle? I've been tossing around the idea a bit and in particular I'm curious about how much the van cost to setup and what you do for Wifi.

Sure! As for cost... well... it really depends on what you get. I'd say a decent starter is cost of the van + 30-60k for the build out (including labor). AT&T has an unlimited 4G for business plan that is only about $100/month. They accept 'consultant' as a business (I went into a store to simplify the process of setting up the account). Get a mifi (Netgear M1)... it has 2 ports for a mimo antenna. Get an omni direct…

Is it truly unlimited? Or does it slow way down after x gb a month in traffic? I'm having trouble finding a truly unlimited hotspot on att's site right now.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#165

Post by nickpp »

chrisseaton wrote: post #82
rhino369 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels are usually easier and cheaper EXCEPT if you actually want a whole house. Traveling with kids and a babysitter requires like 3 rooms and having a kitchen is a huge plus. So for that, its really good.

> Traveling with kids and a babysitter I'm pretty sure you already know that travelling with personal domestic staff is a vanishingly tiny niche requirement of the super-rich.

They are called grandparents and you don’t need to be super-rich to have them in your family, just to not be an a__hole to your parents.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#166

Post by rsj_hn »

rawtxapp wrote: post #115
Mizza wrote: post #52

Is anybody else kind of over AirBnb? I loved it for a while, but now prices have gone way up, the "cleaning fees" are exorbitant and make navigating/browsing a minefield, and I've had a few sketchy incidents (which were, admittedly, a side effect of choosing the cheapest place I could find), including one where the apartment manager came in, went through our clothes and _stole the bed_. I've found myself just using h…

I think airbnb is great for month long stays, anything shorter doesn't make too much sense once you factor in all the fees (p.s. use Australian version to see the prices with all fees included on the search page). I really like their direction of enabling month-long/flexible stays and considering whether I replace my lease with that so that I can move around more easily and see different places rather being stuck at…

I did a month long stay with AirBnB in Miami and had an awesome time. I got a nice studio in a great location for $80/night. The various fees were offset by the discount for the long-term stay -- it would be really hard to do that with hotels.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#167

Post by chrisseaton »

nickpp wrote: post #165
chrisseaton wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traveling with kids and a babysitter I'm pretty sure you already know that travelling with personal domestic staff is a vanishingly tiny niche requirement of the super-rich.

They are called grandparents and you don’t need to be super-rich to have them in your family, just to not be an a__hole to your parents.

Do you really refer to your parents as a 'babysitter'?

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#168

Post by dorchadas »

anchpop wrote: post #160
antihero wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like feeling a part of the neighborhood or city, As long as you know that you're getting those cute feelings at the expense of contributing to screwing everyone that actually lives there (who isn't a landlord) by contributing to a market that creates a situation ever more hostile and unaffordable to renters.

Converting hotels to apartment buildings would also lower costs for renters. Staying in a hotel has exactly the same effect (the hotel would not exist and might be an apartment building if there was no demand for hotels, just like airbnbs might be rented traditionally if there was no demand for airbnb)

Except hotels don't drain the existing supply like AirBnB does. Hotels are built to be hotels, not to be rented to locals. AirBnBs were built to be homes for residences of the area...and instead are being rented to locals, thus draining the existing supply that's already there, which hotels don't do.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#169

Post by nickpp »

chrisseaton wrote: post #167
nickpp wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are called grandparents and you don’t need to be super-rich to have them in your family, just to not be an a__hole to your parents.

Do you really refer to your parents as a 'babysitter'?

I even refer to myself and my wife as a "babysitter" when, well, sitting our kids. We're also cooks, drivers, cleaners, and so on.

It's a job, sometimes you do in the family sometimes you outsource. No need to be super-rich for it.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#170

Post by aaomidi »

pc86 wrote: post #130
bad_good_guy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be in some serious denial or have complete lack of perspective to think having the means to bring a babysitter on your holidays is "solidly middle class"

There are literally dozens of comments elsewhere in this thread about how an au pair can be extremely affordable, borderline cheap. Feel free to read some of them, it's actually pretty enlightening if you're able to get over your unwarranted knee-jerk anger :)

Don't think anyone expressed "anger" so I'm not sure why you had the knee jerk reaction to assume that.
Post reply on HN