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

It occurs to me that the very existence of Airbnb(and so many other startups that offer cheaper alternatives) is a grift on people who can’t afford the real cost of travel and vacations.

As usual, the companies make money and the product is the economically strained consumer. We see this kind of grift everywhere from car sales to real estate interest rates where poor people and people of colour are targeted because they want something more than they can afford.

Everyone is always looking for a deal or something cheaper even when they don’t have to..and there are others who have been conned into parting with the few dollars they have because they have been convinced that they deserve a certain experience even if it’s sub par.

The only way to deal with this societal malnutrition is to find joy in everything. Example: The notion that one has to go on a family vacation annually like it’s a sacred vow pilgrimage is a uniquely western phenomenon. and a seemingly recent one.

Something strange has been happening recently. The attachment to material things has somehow made people blind to reality. Their own reality. The reality of their wallets.

Consumers in the west are not the true poor, but due to social media and some perverted sense of entitlement, they want the experiences of gazillionaires. Which makes them artificially poor. Quantity over quality is the first indication that one is living with a sense of lack or scarcity.

But I don’t understand the new found middle class obsession with luxury at cheap deals. Never has anyone in the world lived in such abundance. No one has childhood memories of overseas travels or annual cruises or vacations. So this must be a planted desire. It’s not real. The Airbnb customer is the product. Consumers minds are just fertile grounds where unreasonable expectations are seeded. Hence the wild chase for something cheaper.

The first priority for any vacation stay should be safety and then cleanliness and then comfort. The reviewing system and site should be independent.

But that’s a long game. Companies that want to stay forever put in such controls. Short grifts don’t have to worry because in a Ponzi scheme, the people at the top would have made the money early on well before the decay and rot sets in the balance sheet.

I think you need to consider both parties:

1. The incentives of the platform

2. The incentives of the individual

For 1, a big part of the problem is the growth-at-all-costs mindset coming from VC incentives. In this case, having more hosts and deleting bad reviews directly helps the platform because it increases the market size and short-term profitability. You could argue that it hurts in the long-term when quality drops to unacceptable levels, but most companies don't care about that. Founders have already exited and executives have gotten paid. Also, by not growing quickly you're vulnerable to competitors that do grow more quickly. The only solution that comes to mind is to not have for-profit entities where founders/VC get rich behind these kind of platforms. It needs to be fully community-driven.

For 2, I think it's about skin in the game and trust. In many industries you can't go out and scam people without facing serious consequences. On these online platform you can, but you don't face real consequences. It's just another ban. Regulation with serious fines or jail time is one solution. Another solution is a (hypothetical) world where online identity is connected across services and tied to your real identity. Imagine getting a bad review on Airbnb actually has real-life consequences because it's tied to your identity. Perhaps that's what you get with the CCP, where people's online accounts for many services are associated with their government identities. I'm not saying these are desirable solutions, but they certainly would deter hosts from trying to game the system.

> 225 in cleaning fees

Ah yes, and then you read in the notes that you also have to do the laundry and wash the dishes.

This. A bad AirBNB can affect a customers health and safety. How can they justify taking days to come to a resolution?

In this case I also wonder why the author didn’t take faster action themselves. Immediately move out into a new hotel or rental and sort out a refund later.

Probably the root cause to both inaction is money.

Airbnb doesn’t want to pay for a prompt help desk and for a customer friendly refund Policy.

The customer doesn’t want to or can’t pay for a market rate hotel.

This makes me far less likely to trust airbnb for long term rentals myself, knowing you can’t trust that listings are authentic and that you can’t count on airbnb to help if you get duped.

Unfortunately suite hotels are usually outrageously expensive