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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

#231

Post by kennend3 »

dsego wrote: post #3

> The toilet was in a constant state of flowing. Just press the flush a few times or whack the water tank. Common problem with tanks in european households. If there is no water to flush, just fill a bucket, washbowl or pot with water and flush that way. Honestly, I stopped reading after this, seems like whining from someone without skills to deal with adulthood. Hey, maybe a lightbulb also burned out.

You seem like you would be the perfect AirBnB customer.

Things don't work as expected, and you simply pay up?

Not sure about you, but if I was staying at a place for a length of time i would expect things like the toilet work properly. As someone paying for a place to stay, "filing a bucket with water" to flush the toilet isn't something i should be doing. Toilets are not expensive and easy to replace, it sounds like this one should have been replaced some time ago.

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

#232

Post by bambax »

specproc wrote: post #66
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…

Hotels are great. They create jobs, they don't distort property markets in the same way as AirBnB, and you get breakfast!

Absolutely. The exception is when you're a large family, or even a not so large one. Most hotels have no good/affordable solution for parties larger than 2.

But when traveling as a couple, or alone as this lady is, there's no reason not to choose a hotel. Much better experience overall, and nowadays usually cheaper as well.

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

#233

Post by ghaff »

slivanes wrote: post #227
lifeformed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Doing the dishes seems reasonable, I behave as a guest in an Airbnb.

If there's a $150 cleaning fee? Not really. Sure, I'll throw a few dishes in a dishwasher and run it. But it's not like I'm staying in a friend's condo for free.

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

#234

Post by tediousdemise »

mancerayder wrote: post #149
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…

But it's also Airbnb themselves. It's well known that negative reviews are scrubbed and even edited, this is something many people including myself have experienced. Any doubts, spend some time on the Airbnb subreddit, which is run by hosts, and check out both their attitudes and their advice about how to remove bad reviews. Airbnb needs hosts for its revenue. Clients are the product. I used to love Airbnb and used i…

I bet someone on Hacker News can set up a website that mirrors AirBnB reviews as they are posted. This would prevent revisionism.

They can slap vacation ads on it and now they have a stable source of income!

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

#235

Post by ghaff »

site-packages1 wrote: post #230
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…

I’m an early adopter of things like this and I’ve been using Airbnb since about Day 1. There was so much promise early. One of my best AirBnB memories was staying at a startup hotel in SF through AirBnB, the hosts had purchased a Victorian house to turn into a boutique hotel, seemed young and optimistic, and it was a fun, quirky experience. There was still construction and things happening, apparently we were one of…

If I'm traveling on business I mostly just want predictability. I might want somewhere I can leave my bag after I check out. I want to be able to get in at midnight if my flight is delayed.

Sure I like less sanitized experiences and I'll roll the dice a bit more on vacation--and it usually works out. But for routine business travel I'll do without the variables.

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

#236

Post by Nextgrid »

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…

> Whereever people sense they can make a buck or save a buck, laws amd regulations be damned.

A lot of us would like lower prices as long as nobody is negatively affected. Laws and regulations aren't automatically just by design because they're laws, sometimes they're outdated or the result of lobbying/regulatory capture. There's a lot wrong with Uber such as how they treat their drivers/customers, etc, but I doubt many of us would shed any tears to the taxi medallion cartel they disrupted.

However, in this case, it's clear that laws have been broken, but not even the typical laws you'd associated with Airbnb (those around short-term rentals), the law that has been broken is the one that outlaws fraud or misrepresentation of goods/services. The problem isn't even that Airbnb has "disrupted" the market by breaking the law around short-term rentals, it's just that Airbnb is now using its size to break basic laws around online commerce with total impunity by charging for goods/services that aren't rendered and fraudulently pitching an insurance policy/guarantee that doesn't actually exist.

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

#237

Post by dylan604 »

mancerayder wrote: post #149
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…

But it's also Airbnb themselves. It's well known that negative reviews are scrubbed and even edited, this is something many people including myself have experienced. Any doubts, spend some time on the Airbnb subreddit, which is run by hosts, and check out both their attitudes and their advice about how to remove bad reviews. Airbnb needs hosts for its revenue. Clients are the product. I used to love Airbnb and used i…

>It's well known that negative reviews are scrubbed and even edited

If this is true, then I see no other blame than Airbnb themselves. If you make a platform allowing reviews in such a way that the "seller" can edit the reviews "users" make, then that's never going to become anything other than scammy. Even allowing a review to be scrubbed/removed by the seller is bad. There should be a mechanism to work with the platform to handle fake/false reviews, but the seller should never be able to do that on their own.

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

#238

Post by thepasswordis »

slivanes wrote: post #227
lifeformed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Doing the dishes seems reasonable, I behave as a guest in an Airbnb.

Do you charge guests in your home $100/night to stay there?

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

#239

Post by pjc50 »

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.

See "We become what we behold" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33273640 and https://ncase.me/trust/ from the first comment. A high trust society, or marketplace, is an opportunity for the defectors to extract value. Unless they can be punished somehow ...

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

#240

Post by ghaff »

smugma wrote: post #173
bell-cot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might you tell us about any large, modern, fast-growing businesses which happily limit profits, so they can pay for high-quality customer support? Yes, it's "a choice". Sadly, it's an overwhelmingly popular choice.

Zappos, from inception to 1B acquisition and beyond.

Although I would argue that Zappos didn't "limit profits." Rather they (correctly) surmised that the only way to successfully sell shoes online as a core business was to be seen as bending over backwards from a customer service perspective.

Which is not to take anything away from them but customer service is pretty much baked into their model.

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