We had good luck with Airbnb in the past, but only because of good (great) hosts. I have a feeling therein lies the rub - Airbnb's business model assumes a good host and a good guest, and when that falls short everything falls apart.
Why Airbnb is dead to me
121–130 of 236 posts
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#122Regarding the comments below the blog post, what is the point of countering him with anecdotes of good Airbnb experiences? Good experiences don't reveal anything about Airbnb itself, because the dispute mechanism isn't invoked; they are simply the result of a good host transacting with good guests (incidentally, by way of Airbnb).
That's like saying, "I've had only good experiences with ABC Insurance; their premiums are low, the coverage is great and their friendly staff answered all my questions." (Wonderful; but did you ever try to collect on a claim?)
Only reports of experiences of invoking the critical use-case are meaningful and relevant. A black spot in that area obliterates a thousand glowing reports about anything else.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#123I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I…
File a chargeback with your credit card company. That will get their attention.
This works fine if you live in north america. If you have a card in other countries, you won't be refunded until your dispute is settled. I my country it can take 1-6months for a very opaque investigation about which you usually can't know much about. And this is from fairly decent bank - top 3.
So companies acting like this on global scale is not good. I would not book a place to stay for a large sum and bear a risk from possibly sketchy situation like this.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the problem with the on-demand companies' business model, you often have to put complete trust in complete strangers. This is generally dangerously. But this won't get the coverage it deserves until an "important" host is seriously injured or even killed by a guest.
I think this is more the eBay/PayPal problem: if you are soliciting both sellers and buyers on your service, you are going to have various moments of ethical crisis when it makes absolute business sense to screw over one or the other (the two not always being in balance or not providing you the same amount of revenue). So what do you do? AirBnB without listings is like eBay without listings. (Though I've generally he…
Even without the ethical crisis, there are simply going to be situations where the true facts are simply unknowable to a customer service rep. So, do you screw over the person providing the property (who may in fact be a lying scumbag)? Or do you screw over the other person renting the property (who may be the lying scumbag)? (Or may simply have utterly unreasonable expectations.)
And, yes, my understanding is that eBay evolved to simply default to the buyer being right.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#125Sounds like a horrific experience but unfortunately, it's hard to assign much credibility to the OP. Sounds very difficult to deal with. Like, no, a random photo from a balcony in no way proves that you weren't staying somewhere else.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#126>Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all. I don't know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn't even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting "no, it's cool, I know them"), and furthermore didn't even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred. It's nice that they…
> Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly.
And customer has nowhere to sleep. During a big conference. In a foreign country.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#127Its equally bad as a host. I have a place that rents very well in the summer (its near the Ocean) and a group of people showed up, didn't like it for whatever reason, and AirBNB canceled the reservation with no penalty despite there being a super clear cancelation policy in place. No recourse (customer service blew me off: "sorry, renter didn't like the bed."), no way to rent it for a week on that short of notice, I…
But what should Airbnb (or any company managing rentals) do under that circumstance? The renter is doing the equivalent of a return for "item not as described." I'm perfectly willing to believe that this renter had some expectation or requirement that to your mind or mine was totally unreasonable. Or maybe they found a better deal nearby at the last moment. But there's no real way an Airbnb can start investigating th…
Caveat emptor.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#128I continue to use AirBnb but have been pretty disappointed in their customer service. I rent out a family cabin occasionally and someone who stayed there scratched the floor accidentally wearing winter boots with spikes on them. They admitted this, apologized and were generally totally awesome about it. It took me months to get Airbnb to figure out how to deduct money from their damage deposit. They first said I had…
This seems like a theme with pretty much all internet companies, big and small - undercut the competition by cutting corners on things that "don't matter", until they matter. Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You. Ditto Uber/Lyft/other cab companies, where there seems to be no end of people who were put…
> Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You.
That's not entirely true, I think it depends on the product.
I've had to contact them about two different Nexus devices and got someone on the phone in minutes. The support was unbelievable and the matters resolved in record time.
Google Apps also has 24/7 phone support for paying customers.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#129Just tonight, my mother checked into an Airbnb in Vienna, Austria. She sent me photos of the bed which did not have new sheets, the towels which were not fresh, a band aid on the floor and some rubbish bins full of cigarettes and ash. The apartment was overall pretty dirty. The host's contact phone number goes straight to message bank (I also tried many times) and the host is not answering emails. In this situation,…
Not defending the host's actions or AirBnB in any way here, but if you're not capable of getting a hotel on your own, then you probably shouldn't be traveling to foreign countries alone. Edit: well, that was unpopular. Am I wrong, or just saying it inartfully?
You're being inartful :-) but, yes, when I read that comment my reaction was that, at the very least, a conventional business hotel would have been a far more sensible choice.
Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me
#130This is an attempt to get a refund from AirBnB, right?
Has HN become a back channel customer service platform for YC companies?
Unfortunately since it seems to work so well. I expect we will see more of this.