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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

#201

Post by yakireev »

SapporoChris wrote: post #189
omgomgomgomg wrote: post #126

Oh my, oh my, how the tune has changed on hn and social media on this and uber. Whereever people sense they can make a buck or save a buck, laws amd regulations be damned. I have never swayed an inch off my view. I knew first hand how this affects housing prices and wear, I live in a severly affected area and pay the price for it, literally. Same for uber. Neither is cheaper than the previous thing, hotel offers bett…

>>"uber is literally outlawed in half of europe." Uber is banned or partially banned in UK, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. Eight countries out of forty-four of the European countries.

Yes, but.

As far as I understand, in the US Uber is a dude with a car and a drivers license, who installs an app on their phone and starts driving people around. In European countries I know Uber is just another way to call a taxi.

Big difference. I'd say it's not too wrong to say that the "dude with a car who installed an app" model is mostly outlawed.

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

#202

Post by kraquepype »

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #54

A bunch of remarks: Lisbon has a horrible housing crisis. Locals are barely (or not at all, in many cases) able to afford living there anymore, and airbnb has been there making the problem worse every step of the way. I hope the author gets plenty of evidence and reports this place to the authorities, then stops using airbnb. Note that in Portugal garbage is usually collected from nearby (unsaturated green colored) l…

Yeah the damp / mold smell is a no-go for me. I rented a place in a popular east coast resort town for the family, and the first thing that hit me was the damp and moldy smell of an existing or recent moisture problem. Not an AirBnB, but some hosts/rental places just don't care about guest comfort.

It cast a pall over the whole stay. It was hard for me to be comfortable, I could not imagine a long-term stay. The kids didn't mind though, and luckily we weren't worse off for it.

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

nlh wrote: post #191
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…

You make a great point about the (de)evolution of marketplaces. Does anyone have any thoughts about how marketplace operations could prevent this sort of race to the bottom rot? It does kind of feel like an inevitability these days and I wonder if there’s a real solution. I suppose part of the problem is that the growth-at-all-costs mentality exists in conflict of quality-at-all-costs. Maybe the answer is just to sta…

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by macspoofing »

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…

>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.

That AND at some point the platform stops subsidizing the service with investment cash - so inevitably the prices rise.

>How to deal with it? Personally I've started going back to hotels to be safe.

I think it will reach some steady state, where there is a niche for traditional hotels and "P2P" rental marketplaces.

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

#205

Post by AlexandrB »

gryzzly wrote: post #33

Yeah I have come to realize that you are on your own and be ready for any emergency. Airbnb will not help in a timely manner. Worse, they will make you re-explain the situation while you are in stress of urgency. Same goes for booking.com these days- no support response until after the problem.

Why would booking.com be any different? It's the same business model with the same economics and incentives.

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

#206

Post by NateEag »

soco wrote: post #114
NateEag wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the savings come from? If you aren't willing to accept some kind of reduction from hotel accommodations, you aren't willing to save money.

It's one thing renting a room in the host's own living apartment (like the old couchsurfing) and another renting a room in a shared rented-out apartment. The latter one might be plagued way more by the mentioned fake reviews.

Ahhh, I see your point. I misunderstood you.

Thanks for explaining!

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

#207

Post by asciimov »

nlh wrote: post #191
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…

You make a great point about the (de)evolution of marketplaces. Does anyone have any thoughts about how marketplace operations could prevent this sort of race to the bottom rot? It does kind of feel like an inevitability these days and I wonder if there’s a real solution. I suppose part of the problem is that the growth-at-all-costs mentality exists in conflict of quality-at-all-costs. Maybe the answer is just to sta…

Regulations.

Put regulations on the Market Places to tighten up their process for accepting new sellers, and direct punishment of the Market Places themselves for selling bad products. These Market Places have no skin in the game when it comes to the stuff they sell, they need a reason to care. If they care, these problems start to sort themselves out.

For example, instead of just fining the AirBNB host for an illegal rental, they should also fine AirBNB say $50k per rental. Something high enough that they do their own verification of product. Or fine Amazon a similar amount every time they send out a fake SD card.

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

#208

Post by karaterobot »

I don't think the interesting part of this article is that there are bad AirBnB hosts. I'm sure there are. I don't think they are the majority, and I'm basing that on my overwhelmingly positive experiences as a guest. So, that part of the article doesn't ring true to me.

The interesting part is how much of a hellish experience AirBnB support was. If you're staying in an AirBnB, you likely do not have the time to spend waiting for support to get back to you. Their customer service should help the customer immediately, and sort out the details later.

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

#209

Post by ghaff »

njarboe wrote: post #197
nebula8804 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People used to buy travel books from known publishers where the author had at least gone to the restaurant or hotel at least once. I haven't bought one in decades, but maybe that is the future.

I still buy guidebooks all the time. They're not perfect but there's some reliable curation and the cost is trivial compared to other travel costs.

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

#210

Post by MichaelZuo »

988747 wrote: post #180
MichaelZuo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then won't they have to jack up the price, after earning a sufficient threshold of trust, to compensate for the huge losses their making at the beginning? i.e. price their beds the same as hotels, or higher?

No, they can't do that, because, you know, competition. Basically, those few weeks/months of below market rate prices are the cost of bootstrapping your business. Of course, if, over time, you acquire stellar reputation, then you probably can price yourself slightly higher than competitors based on that. But that's very unstable state.

Competition from who? Every established, high trust, host will charge at least the minimum viable rate to break even.

Anyone who charges lower then the minimum viable will simply never break even, given that the money spent to accumulate trust has an opportunity cost.

The cheapest hotels will be priced about the same.

Low or zero trust hosts can't compete against high trust folks without a huge discount as already discussed.

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