Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
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Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#2> He emailed Airbnb's trust and safety team that night. Nothing.
> Five more days passed, correspondence shows, without Airbnb assigning a dedicated person to his case. Then on March 23, Airbnb wrote Grewal with what amounted to a shrug.
5 days and then a "shrug"? Wow. That's appalling as far as Customer Service goes. I haven't listed on, or rented from AirBnB. But is this kind of customer service normal or is the incident quoted above an outlier? Even if they intended to respond with a shrug, why did it take 5 DAYS for a response??
Has AirBnB become so big that, like Craiglist, they don't give a Sh*t anymore to the issues their users / customers face because they know that they've captured huge chunk of the market and know that their users ain't going anywhere else anytime soon?
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#3Man, the more I read stories like this about AirBnB the more I want them to fail. People hate regulations until they get screwed, and suddenly they understand that sometimes regulations exist for a reason. Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame. They fought to avoid paying taxes and whined when they lost, they refuse to take down listings when presented with evidence of them being illegal, they purposefully make complying with authorities difficult, they got their start by effectively breaking the terms of agreement on craigslist and spamming people like crazy to kickstart traffic to their site.
I love the idea of sharing homes. I just hate how AirBnB is doing it, and the more I read about them (obviously the media is writing articles to get clicks, so I'm sure it's somewhat biased) the more I think we'd be better off without them.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#4Terrible customer service but this seems like something a competent leasing contract should cover, no?
The owner should be directly able to pass on these fines to the tenants, assuming they were sensible with the contract.
If not... well, I guess there’s always civil court.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#5Man, the more I read stories like this about AirBnB the more I want them to fail. People hate regulations until they get screwed, and suddenly they understand that sometimes regulations exist for a reason. Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame. They fought to avoid paying taxes and whined when they lost, they refuse to take down listings when pres…
> Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame.
I dunno; it seems to me that in these cases, the people who are really to blame are the "tenants" who are actually breaking both laws and rental agreements.
I'm puzzled as to why the property owners aren't suing them to recover all the money they lost. I mean, yeah, lawsuits cost money, too, but when you're talking a $20k fine, I would imagine there's at least a good chance of recovering more than you pay...and it didn't sound like any of the mentioned owners were attempting to do anything to the bad-faith tenants.
I totally agree that AirBnB has some serious legal issues looming in its future in most if not all of the jurisdictions it operates in, but I honestly don't see these particular issues as being representative of them.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#6> He emailed Airbnb's trust and safety team that night. Nothing. > Five more days passed, correspondence shows, without Airbnb assigning a dedicated person to his case. Then on March 23, Airbnb wrote Grewal with what amounted to a shrug. 5 days and then a "shrug"? Wow. That's appalling as far as Customer Service goes. I haven't listed on, or rented from AirBnB. But is this kind of customer service normal or is the in…
The problem is that Grewal, the owner of the house that was illegally sublet, isn't and never was Airbnb's customer in any sense of the word. There's no incentive to solve his problem and take down the listing. In fact, the incentives run the other way because the real Airbnb customer -- Grewal's tenants -- are generating revenue for the site.
It would be very interesting if one of these municipalities changed their ordinance to make the booking agent (Airbnb, VRBO, etc) liable for any violation. And $20,000 per violation in Miami Beach does seem ridiculously excessive.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#7Man, the more I read stories like this about AirBnB the more I want them to fail. People hate regulations until they get screwed, and suddenly they understand that sometimes regulations exist for a reason. Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame. They fought to avoid paying taxes and whined when they lost, they refuse to take down listings when pres…
> Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame. I dunno; it seems to me that in these cases, the people who are really to blame are the "tenants" who are actually breaking both laws and rental agreements. I'm puzzled as to why the property owners aren't suing them to recover all the money they lost. I mean, yeah, lawsuits cost money, too, but when you're…
Because these tenants have no money. If they did, they'd likely be buying properties and listing them instead of doing these illegal sublets. The landlords in the area will likely drastically increase the rental deposit (unless it's limited by state or local law to some multiple of the monthly rent). That's the only real security against a tenant.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#8One solution would be to have the city levy the fines against the tenant, not the owner, because it is the tenant breaking the law.
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#9> He emailed Airbnb's trust and safety team that night. Nothing. > Five more days passed, correspondence shows, without Airbnb assigning a dedicated person to his case. Then on March 23, Airbnb wrote Grewal with what amounted to a shrug. 5 days and then a "shrug"? Wow. That's appalling as far as Customer Service goes. I haven't listed on, or rented from AirBnB. But is this kind of customer service normal or is the in…
Imagine it was a newspaper classified ad in your newspaper that someone has paid for all week and someone else phoned up asking you not to reprint it tomorrow.
Or the noticeboard in Publix
Re: Homeowners faced an Airbnb nightmare as renters left them facing huge fines
#10Man, the more I read stories like this about AirBnB the more I want them to fail. People hate regulations until they get screwed, and suddenly they understand that sometimes regulations exist for a reason. Beyond that though, what I despise is that AirBnB seems to reap all the profits and accept none of the blame. They fought to avoid paying taxes and whined when they lost, they refuse to take down listings when pres…
People hate regulations until they get screwed, and suddenly they understand that sometimes regulations exist for a reason
I love this quote:
Which is funnier: tech bros innovating their way to public transit, or bitcoin folks slowly reinventing financial regulation?
AirBnB, of course, is on a similar path.
I'm with you though, Uber, AirBnB, both seem to be good new age examples of the business strategy privatize the gains, socialize the risk/losses. Usually the company passes the taxpayer the bill; here, instead, a new patsy has been found.