171–180 of 473 posts
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Frankly I'll back AirBnB over an HOA any day. HOAs are a societal cancer.
My HOA is primarily a collective bargaining tool for trash pickup. Over 80% of the annual fee goes to trash service. The cost of the HOA is significantly less than even the most budget-minded trash service.
My nextdoor neighbor sold their house last year and now it's an Airbnb. Despite the fact that I live in a house in a normal residential neighborhood, I'm now forced to live next to a hotel. And I have no say in the matter. Super frustrating. I've read people talking about how Airbnb screwed the host or the guest. But few people talk about how it screws the neighbors.
Why would or should you have a say in what the property owner next door does? What does having a say look like?
AirBnB then in its infinite wisdom did nothing to help, they are just a platform that gets your money, without any assistance, solution or due diligence, they just get paid but whenever you need something you are on your own, they can put you in touch with any mentally challenged person, and still they would get no responsibility for that. In general it's just this new economy of disruptors that sucks, just pay with no reliability, hope it will be over soon before it spreads too much to segments that still invest in being reliable, before they understand that apparently it's just a cost and people doesn't mind
I think they might have a policy that you can’t review a place that you didn’t stay at. That policy falls short in instances like this where a guest cannot or will not check in due to issues with the host. You might also try calling AirBnB again and see if you can convince them to put the review back up. BTW, $300 cash deposit is absurd. AirBnB already has a security deposit mechanism that the host could use.
They actually requested a review after cancelling this stay due to cash deposit issue. Whole thing is bizarre.
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Since when is a social media account required to do online business? You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?
Don't exaggerate. There is a difference between doing online business and leaving an optional review. OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.
After that, they’ve already made the fees on the stay. Most people won’t be losing 20% or whatever to farm good reviews.
Why would the final and optional review step be the part where they decide to verify if the stranger staying in someone else’s house is a real person.
My nextdoor neighbor sold their house last year and now it's an Airbnb. Despite the fact that I live in a house in a normal residential neighborhood, I'm now forced to live next to a hotel. And I have no say in the matter. Super frustrating. I've read people talking about how Airbnb screwed the host or the guest. But few people talk about how it screws the neighbors.
I’m genuinely interested to hear what are the specific harms you have suffered due to this.
Where I live now is area of all single family homes. One house on my street is also a full time Airbnb. There have been fewer issues, but there was one occasion where some people rented the house, threw a party in the house, shots were fired, and bullets went through a neighboring house. There have never been issues at this level in the neighborhood, so this was out of the ordinary.
Not all short term, full time Airbnbs are disrespectful. Not all long term, non-Airbnb neighbors are respectful. But IMO, with non-Airbnb neighbors, you have a better chance of working something out since they are there for the long haul.
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I think there's a point to be made about single family dwellings, but it's hard to imagine how a 50 condo building would operate without one. Who takes care of the pool? Or fixes the elevator? The governance is definitely poorly structured, though. In my (limited) experience I've seen a board that gets elected and then proceeds to abuse their power to advance their own financial positions. I think there should be a 3…
My takeaway from dealing with a condo HOA is that condos shouldn't legally exist, because people owning fractional buildings is doomed to result in structural collapse. Elected residents aren't qualified to make decisions about long-term maintenance which becomes more severe and expensive over time, and they have perverse incentives to avoid spending money. Faced with a substantial enough cost, board members can opt…
There 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…
Is there a big tech company that people brag about working at anymore?
Airbnb 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…