Earlier quoted context omitted.
How's that different that having a neighbour in hot love with his lawnmover at 6AM ?
Noise ordinances.
Do they work?
Airbnb removed my negative review
141–150 of 473 posts
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#142I recently stayed at an Airbnb that had non functioning internet. I mentioned this in my review but it was mysteriously edited out in 24 hours.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#143As someone whose main income source is from short term rentals, Vrbo provides a much better experience for both hosts and guests. Being able to easily call and talk to a helpful human at Vrbo and have them actually solve a problem is really refreshing.
vrbo is also waay more expensive. just looking at barcelona, I can get a place for around $1600+ month minimum. airbnb has places around 1200 and even less if you're willing to stay in a private room.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#144Any platform that extracts money from X has the incentive to get rid of any negative reviews about X. Reviewers are not the revenue source. That's why AirBnB, Yelp, Glassdoor, etc will get rid of bad reviews for the right price. Read all bad stuff about AirBnB on reddit, you see where airbnb is heading. People should stop using that platform, whenever you find an alternative.
When AirBnB became public, it wasn't about growth anymore but purely profit. These services were only "good" for the time they had to build positive buzz, now the bill is coming due and they are making as much profit as possible, at the expense of the guest. After all, what is the alternative now they have a monopoly in their niche? "Disruption" my ass... since Airbnb owns no property, the host is their lifeblood and…
Pump & hype > IPO > eventually dump all the negative externalities on others.
It's the startup dream.
We should aim to do better somehow.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#145Calling Airbnb was the right thing to do, I’d probably go the same route here - ask them what is needed to make the feedback acceptable, point out that the host doesn’t disclose the need for a cash deposit in the house rules and you want to warn people. That itself is worthy of discussion - anything not disclosed in house rules tends to get disregarded by Airbnb, and they generally don’t want money changing hands directly because they don’t get their 18%. Otherwise everyone would be listing their properties for $1 and requiring a cash tip on arrival. ;)
Airbnb is expected this year to make changes so prices are more transparent and this plays into that. Things have been trending towards the car rental model where you can rent a car for $1 a day but by the time you add in all the fees it’s closer to $200/day but you don’t find that out until the very last stage of the checkout. Airlines used to do the same thing then ~6 years ago they were forced to disclose everything up front.
I’m planning to list a place on Airbnb soon, am going to bake all the fees into the base price except for unauthorized guests, pets, and smoking - which are only there as a deterrent.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#146There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them. In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often. Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be…
To be fair, housing and rental markets in some places are kind of pre-ruined. There have been plenty of (and doubtless will be plenty more) scammy landlords for short-term rentals. AirBnB really just provided a modern online interface with some customer service stuff that papered over the bad stuff for a while. But like with actual bad construction, you can't hide the stuff forever so sooner or later the magic disapp…
Well, they're ruined because of zoning (and tax law but that's a whole other story)
In theory zoning is supposed be in residents interest to stop things like fracking from happening next to playgrounds (it doesn't but again that's another story). Cities follow zoning law to the letter when it comes to new apartments.
Airbnb repurposes residential zoned property as commerical hotels. If we're going to take zoning seriously this shouldn't be allowed.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#147Airbnb most recently has continued to ignore requests to remove houses that violate the building’s HOA where i live. People have been turned away when they show up by security as it’s not allowed but the people just try to sneak them in. When reporting this to airbnb they refuse to do anything. I’m getting fairly sick of the laissez faire stances these companies are taking. It’s not just that we don’t want airbnb its…
AirBnB's entire business is predicated on skirting regulation. The problem isn't that they don't care, it's that caring would cost them money and invalidate their business model.
> AirBnB's entire business is predicated on skirting regulation.
From time to time you spot underappreciated comments here. This is one of them
AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, etc - their entire business model is predicated on skirting regulations.
Then people are surprised they don't keep honest negative reviews? Why would a company which is knowingly violating rules care about your negative review?
They make money from hosts putting their places up for rent, not from those renting and if a negative review causes a listing to be removed... Clearly it is far more economical to remove the review instead.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#148Airbnb most recently has continued to ignore requests to remove houses that violate the building’s HOA where i live. People have been turned away when they show up by security as it’s not allowed but the people just try to sneak them in. When reporting this to airbnb they refuse to do anything. I’m getting fairly sick of the laissez faire stances these companies are taking. It’s not just that we don’t want airbnb its…
Frankly I'll back AirBnB over an HOA any day. HOAs are a societal cancer.
HOAs are the most local form of democratic government that most Americans interact with. They have an elected board, which you can run for if you're a member (owner), and an amendable constitution. In every state that I'm aware of, you have full access to the budget and all meeting minutes. I've even seen recall elections and funded campaigns. Democracy is never perfect, but for any place where I'm living in close quarters to my neighbors (e.g. not in a rural area with 20-acre lots) I'd 1000x rather an HOA than either anarchy or some builder-run "committee."
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#149Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback. They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested usi…
Why do you care so intensely about this? Edit: I should have expanded on my post a bit. It's quite obvious that the review was flagged by some ML model, most likely not because the reviewer is a liar but probably because the host has a high prior for shenanigans. Combined with the lack of social signals for the reviewer, I could see why an ML model might be overzealous. But back to my original question: nobody is bei…
Because a huge amount of value in AirBnB is its reviews.
That’s how you’re supposed to know where is worth staying and where isn’t.
If those can’t be trusted, then it’s an inferior B&B platform with doctored reviews that you can’t trust.
My advice to those reading this is just to get a hotel unless there is no alternative.
AirBnB was fine for a bit when it was cheaper than alternatives, but, in my experience, it’s now as expensive (if not more) as the hotels they’re trying to replace.
There’s usually a massively inferior experience when compared to Hotels the majority of the time. At least, that’s been my experience.
Re: Airbnb removed my negative review
#150Airbnb seems to primarily be interested in protecting hosts instead of guests. It's probably much more structural than people realize. I'd really love to know from someone that's deep inside Airbnb why they could allow the service to become such a poor experience for guests(1)? Is it because there's not enough host supply in the system? (1) https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com (1.3/5)
I’ve used Airbnb a few times a year for many years. My anecdotal and speculative belief is that their tools and site hugely favor hosts, but if you have a good history they will make anything right for a guest, and probably just eat the cost themselves to keep both host and guest happy. For instance, I had a week long stay booked in a “waterfront, two bedroom” in London. I needed the two bedrooms to set up an office…
the hosts entire enterprise was based on fraud and airbnb facilitated it for money