How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb • Hacker News Board

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#151

Post by toomanyrichies » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:36 PM UTC

I recently stayed in Panama City, Panama for a week, and booked an Airbnb for my stay. When I checked in, I was so tired from the flight that I just wanted to take a hot shower and crash. I turned on the shower and waited for the hot water. And waited. And waited. Finally I messaged the host to ask if I was doing something wrong with the shower controls.

The host’s response: “We don’t offer hot water at this rental.”

I was, let’s say, surprised.

I asked them where in the listing they mentioned that, and they said “We didn’t list hot water as one of the amenities. That was intentional.”

So essentially, Airbnb considers hot water to be an “amenity”, on the same level as a coffee maker or a carbon monoxide alarm.

Of course I escalated to Airbnb support and of course they sided with the host. So completely aggravating. Like, ok but you also didn’t list “front door” or “roof” among the amenities. What should I infer from that?

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#152

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #139

baremetal wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?

Haha. I had the same reaction. Clearly this person has never had to deal with addresses in a database. There are any number of ways to represent the exact same address (apt vs. unit vs. suite vs. '#', 5 digit zip vs. 9- digit zip, st. vs. street), and there are cases where the same address serves multiple people (private/virtual mail boxes). A billing address is a loose identifier at best.

[deleted]

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#153

Post by plantain » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

123pie123 wrote: post #102

whiplash451 wrote: post #52

Note that the cancellation policy for Hosts is quite generous: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/990 This lets a host dump you three days before your booking and get away with "only" 25% in fees. AirBnB definitely invests in their inventory (the hosts).

I will never ever use airbnb again In munich I had booked 3 night stay, 2 HOURS!! before i was to turn up the host made an excuse of their dad had died and cancelled the reservation - this was obv nothing to do with the fact they had just realised there was an exhibition on in the area (where rates sky rocket x4) I spoke to the person and they was extremly unconvicing of the real reason of cancelling - luckly I manag…

There's something in the water in Munich - I had the same experience, probably because it was just coming into Oktoberfest...

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#154

Post by dawnerd » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

ralph84 wrote: post #78

trhr wrote: post #9

I had the same thing happen to me. Not only do I not stay at AirBNBs anymore, I cancelled my Discover Card when they refused to fix it... after ~15 years as a customer. Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good pay…

Meh, Amex denied my chargeback when StubHub was illegally refusing refunds for events canceled due to covid. I don’t think there is any card out there that hasn’t gotten much tougher on chargebacks recently due to both the covid shitshow and the massive increase in chargeback fraud.

chwrgebacks from stubhub/Ticketmaster/etc are hard since they have you basically agree to not charge back and they use that against you. Had to try a chargeback one with them and also got denied because I signed a waiver. Complete nonsense

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#155

Post by r00fus » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #57

che_shirecat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.

There are lots of alternatives. Agoda, Booking.com, and many similar sites offer short-term apartment rentals. Also, in much of the world outside the US, hotels are a better and surer bet than short-term apartment rentals. Look at it like this: Would you pay $950 for the privilege of using AirBNB? I sure wouldn't. An "AirBNB Membership fee" on the order of $950 should seem absurd.

The alternatives are often better than airbnb too.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#156

Post by briHass » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #59

nixpulvis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.

Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit ca…

Not Home Depot. Their support representative was worthless for an online order that was never delivered (lost in transit). They advised me to do a charge back. Luckily, it was an online chat, so I screen capped that to add to the CC docs you have to submit.

Blows my mind; reshipping the item would (given they sell it for a profit) cost HD less than me doing a 100% chargeback, and it would be better customer service. I guess they use the friction of doing a chargeback to be their fraud prevention.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#157

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #124

baremetal wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?

With the same name? I think the probability is low enough to accept the false positive.

[deleted]

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#158

Post by ScottEvtuch » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #139

baremetal wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?

Haha. I had the same reaction. Clearly this person has never had to deal with addresses in a database. There are any number of ways to represent the exact same address (apt vs. unit vs. suite vs. '#', 5 digit zip vs. 9- digit zip, st. vs. street), and there are cases where the same address serves multiple people (private/virtual mail boxes). A billing address is a loose identifier at best.

Surely almost everyone does address standardization on user inputted fields, right? You'd be silly not to do this.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#159

Post by just4down6 » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

I had a terrible experience this January with airbnb and it's support.

I had a 6 days stay in Zakopane, Poland. My friend was physically attacked by the owner of the house, and support done nothing but removing my review from one of his apartment page(it's seems that the owner can create identical listing pages for one house, and just hide/show the ones with best reviews on it)

At first support seemed very supportive, but it the end they done nothing, but a "close investigations with an undisclosed results by internal guidelines", according to one of the support-stuff. I also got my review removed because of the "links to external resources"(I've attached the link of the video with screaming home-owner) and emotional advice to use other services like Booking(without direct link). The last one is understandable. Through it wasn't specified as a reason to remove the review, the support gave me no chance to edit or re-post the review.

So at the end I can surely say the only thing they care is the money, and your well-being is the latest thing they care.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#160

Post by olliej » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”.

Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase”

(1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized after entering a contract that the contract was not what they wanted. Similarly the “host” is not breaking the contract: the person agreed to these terms of the contract, apparently having not read them. So this is not a fraudulent transaction, and claiming it is (for a charge back) just sounds like fraud

(2) charge backs are not free to the merchant - as I understand it the merchant is subject to penalties from the processor and/or bank that can easily be hundreds of dollars. So even if the bank doesn’t take you to court for fraud, airbnb maybe unhappy at having to cough up a few hundred dollars.

(3) it seems like (IANAL) your chargeback could also be taken as a breach of contract by the host, and frankly they don’t seem like people who will take a no harm, no foul response to this, especially if they not only don’t get paid but if Airbnb offload any of the chargeback costs.

Fundamentally your running into the reason that there are regulations governing hotels and rental, and why Airbnb insists that in spite of all evidence that is not what they are providing.