Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#171

Post by micromacrofoot » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #160

micromacrofoot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they need a fixed fee they should set bounds on the duration of stay. They keep shifting the burden to users when it should be on hosts. AirBnb hosts have had their hands on the scale for too long now because the company is terrified of a mass exodus of hosts (many of whom act just as entitled as your average landlord, who will beat every penny out of you). It used to be a much better service for the users.

But there aren't bounds on the duration of the stay. Many places will take you for 1 day or 4 weeks, and there is still just a single cleaning fee. FWIW I think pretty much every vacation rental I booked pre-AirBnB (or, for that matter, pre-Internet) charged a cleaning fee in a similar manner.

Right, I'm suggesting duration bounds as a host-focused solution to a problem that's been frustratingly shifted to users. Better for the user experience to limit the stay to 3 nights (and thus removing it from results for single nights) instead of trying to put a $200 cleaning fee on an overnighter, IMO.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#172

Post by ghaff » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #134

xvector wrote: post #16

I almost forgot how annoying Airbnb is until I started staying in hotels again. I will gladly take a smaller property in exchange for dealing with people that have actual hospitality training, daily room cleaning, room service, etc. Hotels are just a nicer experience. I don't want to spend my vacation cleaning the room or worrying about a "host."

I've found that hotels have cut back on the services also. I tend to stay at middle-tier hotels, i.e. Hampton Inn or something similar and they often don't service the room if you are there for multiple nights. I get not replacing towels if they are hanging up but even making up the beds and removing the trash isn't always done. I'd guess that post-pandemic they just don't have enough staff to get all the rooms done…

Well, like being "green" with respect to towels, it also just saves them money. (And, yes, couple that with labor shortages for a job that pays poorly.)

Honestly, it's fine. It's not like I wash my towels or my sheets daily at home. To the degree the pandemic was a forcing function to think about what labor people actually cared about, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#173

Post by jmbwell » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

One more rule written in blood. How much abuse has it taken to reach this point? Incalculable.

This is how you do it. Come in as a "disruptor," ignore all the rules the establishment has already learned the hard way, and make shitloads of money for as long as you can without pesky old oversight or constraints.

Eventually, you wind up with the same rules the establishment had, if not more. Your catalog gets clogged with cottage enterprises that game your algorithms to steal your customer equity. While you're neck-deep in customer complaints and bad press, you're reduced to a clearinghouse for someone else's business -- little more than a classified ad service. You lose, your customers lose, and -- unless, god forbid, they get organized -- your original suppliers lose. Everyone loses except the scalpers and the scammers. Except now you've run out the competition, and consumers have little other choice.

In this example, why use AirBnB when all you get is either a Sonder that is more hassle and no better than a hotel, one of a dozen apartments leased by the same weirdo, a retirement-home-in-waiting in a bland suburb, or a sketchy individual's greasy rathole?

In the end, welcome to niche status. You do actually have a unique product (in this case, places for big groups to stay for several days), but the market for that isn't big enough for perpetual "growth," so you're on track to be acquired by a hedge fund, rolled together with your former competitors, soaked with debt, and then put out to pasture. But your founders are long gone, booking corporate speaking engagements between yacht voyages. Some "vice president" decides your labor pool stays cheapest if you disincentivize things like career development. Eventually everything is parceled out altogether. What's left of the value of your brand gets smeared over commodities. "Welcome to AirBnB, powered by Motel 6 (an SV Capital Partners, LLC experience)."

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#174

Post by _puk » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #138

_yb2s wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point the cleaning fees are just a scam to make the listing fee seem artificially lower. People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface, e.g. by letting you sort by price + shipping and showing shipping fees before you click.

> People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface There’s a longer story to this: eBay used to exempt shipping fees from its commissions. So sellers would be screwing eBay and, being an efficient market, as it often is on eBay, the savings would be passed onto the buyer. I’d sell games for 1 cent with $10 shipping (cost to me: ~$2) and…

As a user I always avoided those low cost, high postage listings as it just seemed a good way for a seller to avoid refunding the full amount.

Refund would always be minus postage costs, so you'd get 1 cent back for your $10.01 purchase when returning (i.e. no point)

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#175

Post by temporarara » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

nick12r55t1 wrote: post #66

alistairSH wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need to reserve and pay for a cleaning crew as if it was always a disaster. Yet hotels manage this fine - it's just baked into the price. I don't have a problem paying a cleaning fee. I just don't want to pay the fee AND be required to do 90% of the cleaning myself. I'm happy to put the dishes in and then start the dishwasher. I'm not going to wait around for it to finish and then put them away. I'm happy to pile…

My wife and I have an airbnb and this is exactly how we structure our check-out. It still costs $250 per turnover for a reliable cleaning crew to come and clean the 3br, 3ba two level house.

$250 sounds like a lot of cleaning, multiple hours of cleaning by one person for sure, of course depending on your location. But that really gotta be some mansion or your customers are really the absolute worst if that's always required. Meanwhile my friend who does this stuff changes the sheets and towels and wipes the tables together with some light vacuuming and that's basically it, only a few times per year he does a more thorough cleaning. And he does it by himself since he has reasoned that he wants to check the apartment personally every time it's used anyway and he can carry those operations at the same time since it takes something like half an hour to do so.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#176

Post by jupp0r » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #60

mholt wrote: post #22

I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts. Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their guests to do the cleaning. We just stayed at one this weekend, and like almost all our previous bookings, the host asked us to: - Take off all bedding and towels and start a load of laundry - Do all the dishes and start the dishwasher (but required to hand-wash…

Honestly I think those requirements are perfectly reasonable for the originally intended purpose of the site, which is people renting out their personal homes. I have stayed in several Airbnbs that had the owner's clothes in the closet and pictures of their kids on the wall, and in those situations, it just seems rude to leave dirty dishes in the sink. These places aren't hotels. I agree that doing laundry is a bit o…

That's all fine. The $200 cleaning fee on top of that isn't. The $200 cleaning crew will do the dishes no problem.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#177

Post by culopatin » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #35

mholt wrote: post #22

I'm worried this ban will only affect honest hosts. Anyway, what Airbnb should really ban is hosts charging a mandatory cleaning fee when also requiring their guests to do the cleaning. We just stayed at one this weekend, and like almost all our previous bookings, the host asked us to: - Take off all bedding and towels and start a load of laundry - Do all the dishes and start the dishwasher (but required to hand-wash…

I’d say if it’s not mentioned in the ad up-front, you don’t have to do any of that. I’ve found high cleaning fees to sometimes be an intentional discouragement to shorter bookings, but sometimes I’ve paid it because it was still the best option and I like that they maintained the option. Sucks that the only way to push on fixed costs (it’s not just cleaning) is via the cleaning fee.

That’s how you get a bad review and charges for $800 to replace a napkin. Airbnb will side with the host, not you.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#178

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

callalex wrote: post #167

SoftTalker wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that hotels have cut back on the services also. I tend to stay at middle-tier hotels, i.e. Hampton Inn or something similar and they often don't service the room if you are there for multiple nights. I get not replacing towels if they are hanging up but even making up the beds and removing the trash isn't always done. I'd guess that post-pandemic they just don't have enough staff to get all the rooms done…

I think there has also been a generational change in culture/expectations. Personally even if I’m staying at a nice place I don’t like having someone come into my room and rearrange stuff. I am a neat enough person that I don’t need someone’s help keeping a room usable after using it for only a day. I’d rather save that money.

Yeah I'm nostly that way myself but I'd like at minimum empty the trash and restock the toilet paper, etc. without needing a call to the front desk to ask for those things.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#179

Post by kibwen » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

callalex wrote: post #136

usaar333 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cleaning fees exist to charge a fixed fee for a reservation, regardless of the number of days. There's more overhead for a reservation beyond just "cleaning". The most consumer friendly thing would be for AirBnB to just explicitly have a fixed "stay" fee and a per-day fee. That said, AirBnB's site shows the total cost for a stay when browsing, so I don't really see this as particularly deceptive. I don't care how the…

It only shows total price in markets where it is legally required to. Meaning they took the time to implement the feature and actively decided to be shitty to their customers when they are given the choice.

> they took the time to implement the feature and actively decided to be shitty to their customers when they are given the choice

Ah, but companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to be as shitty to their customers as they can get away with.

Re: Airbnb is banning indoor security cameras

#180

Post by ddasdassds » Mon, Mar 11, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

I'd put this under "enshitification".

I've had plenty of complaints in the past about terrible airbnb hosts, but this seems to me to be clearly motivated to bring more money into AirBNB at the expense of the hosts and neighbors. Just like Paypal made conscious decisions to ignore customer fraud and hold sellers liable for everything, now AirBNB is trying to squeeze more out of the hosts by supporting and enabling bad behavior by guests, removing options for hosts to control or respond to terrible customers. I stopped using AirBNB several years ago, but then I noticed that hotels have copied AirBNB's shitty policies, like the price doubling on the last page due to unexpected fees. They're enshitifying the whole hospitality industry.