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Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

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Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#151

Post by throwaway2037 »

MikePlacid wrote: post #133
specproc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels are great. They create jobs, they don't distort property markets in the same way as AirBnB, and you get breakfast!

> Hotels are great. You got to be kidding? Last time I’ve used AirBnb it was a 1 bedroom half of the house, shady, private area with a creek, private yes - but in a walking distance to the downtown. I had a full kitchen, an office place to put my computer and monitor in and a personal, fast Internet connection. I even had a shed to put my bicycle in without a need to drag it into the house. The host configured the lo…

Where was this?

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#152

Post by nebula8804 »

hourago wrote: post #102
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It's not surprising at all. All of these review-driven P2P marketplace businesses end up with the same problem. After the initial phase of early adopters that offer generally high quality products, a flood of fake or low-quality listing tries to squeeze money out of the platform. These people are not listing their homes on Airbnb, they are trying to make a living by extracting as much money from the platform as they…

> App Store app reviews, restaurant review apps and food delivery apps. Fortunately it's not a big deal if these are scams. It's just a few dollars. Tourists traps excel on this niche of scam. They serve bad food at high prices, but quite often not so bad or expensive as to be illegal. The only reason this business exist is because most people would visit them just once, customers are replaced each day with new arriv…

You can't win in this race. Do research in your tourist destination to avoid these places? Well Youtube is full of influencers pushing garbage info, Reddit is being quietly stuffed full of authentic sounding comments and you might as well forget Yelp/Tripadvisor. It seems like a massive scam perpetuated at all levels of the stack.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#153

Post by boringg »

mancerayder wrote: post #149
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It's not surprising at all. All of these review-driven P2P marketplace businesses end up with the same problem. After the initial phase of early adopters that offer generally high quality products, a flood of fake or low-quality listing tries to squeeze money out of the platform. These people are not listing their homes on Airbnb, they are trying to make a living by extracting as much money from the platform as they…

But it's also Airbnb themselves. It's well known that negative reviews are scrubbed and even edited, this is something many people including myself have experienced. Any doubts, spend some time on the Airbnb subreddit, which is run by hosts, and check out both their attitudes and their advice about how to remove bad reviews. Airbnb needs hosts for its revenue. Clients are the product. I used to love Airbnb and used i…

Hopefully those properties will come back on the market at a reasonable price so that we can offset some of the housing inequity that airbnb is directly responsible for.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#155

Post by ehnto »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #15

We need a new AirBnB, what it promised to be initially. A club for ordinary (or extraordinary) people to find/share a room rather than an indistry-scale business platform.

The trouble is that everyone is on the net now, so it will just get corrupted immediately by people trying to commercialize the space.

I think house-swapping gets around this by doing away with any possible financial gain, but this precludes you have a house of your own you're willing to have people live in while you're in their home.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#157

Post by vertis »

scarface74 wrote: post #107
vertis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artificially lowering prices? You mean basic supply and demand? The regulations aren't guests responsibility the hosts and airbnb should be compliant. AirBnB and competitors are very important despite their flaws. Standard rentals are too inflexible for long term (month long) travellers and the hotel industry is either too expensive or not designed for long term stays. As a digital nomad, I've had my share of bad acc…

For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33286238 > Standard rentals are too inflexible for long term (month long) travellers and the hotel industry is either too expensive or not designed for long term stays. Most of the major hotel brands have chains intended for long term stays. My wife, son and I stayed at one for five months a few years ago when we moved out of our apartment and decided to get a house…

Yeah, we've stayed in accommodation like this as well. Often very shitty experiences in business aparthotels. Always good to have a list though.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#158

Post by bell-cot »

stewx wrote: post #139
fareed79 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

basically, author expects calibrated minimal services, good support, and a minimal standard of quality. This is what you call a classic hotel/lodge. I fully agree with you, and those living close to these miserable BnB businesses surely would agree as well. This "model" is rotting city centers and popular places. AirBnB will never care about that poor lady. AirBnB will know how to make her anger disappear into the ze…

There's no good reason AirBnb could not offer proper support. Showing contempt for your customers like this is a choice.

Might you tell us about any large, modern, fast-growing businesses which happily limit profits, so they can pay for high-quality customer support? Yes, it's "a choice". Sadly, it's an overwhelmingly popular choice.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#159

Post by fortran77 »

This is why I won't do AirBnb any more. Even with a relatively honest host, they are simply not equipped to handle an issue the way a hotel can. Hotels have engineers on duty or on call to fix a bad toilet, broken lock, or electrical problem and/or swap you to another room (or even another hotel!) if there's something wrong with your room. If there's a problem with the room you rent from an AirBnb host, there's nothing they can do.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#160

Post by rjsw »

vertis wrote: post #132
elforce002 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilty as charged. I saw this and went back to use hotels ans resorts (they employ thousands and help local economy).

AirBnBs tend to employ people as well (cleaning, maintenannce, administration). With many hotels the money is actually flowing out of the local community as the business is owned by a big multi-national. It's not really so cut and dried in favour of hotels.

AirBnB isn't paying me to clean up after the "guests" that use my apartment block.
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