Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

chriskiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 377 posts

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#241

Post by jemmyw »

DangitBobby wrote: post #185
jemmyw wrote: post #144

Everything about this is silly. You can contact hosts beforehand on AirBnB and I almost always do that, and certainly would if I was going to be booking an even slightly unusual situation (for someone else). I've booked for third parties before too and did exactly that, during a COVID lockdown when we needed to find a place for an old couple. I'm not sure I believe the host either. Perhaps AirBnB have changed things,…

Maybe to you it seems like an unusual situation, but to people who maybe don't travel very much, "booking a room for my spouse" isn't something they'd think is "unusual". It's a little absurd that it's "unusual", in fact.

Nowadays I wouldn't even trust a traditional hotel to do that correctly without calling them first.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#242

Post by ghaff »

ScottEvtuch wrote: post #158
dghlsakjg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. I had the same reaction. Clearly this person has never had to deal with addresses in a database. There are any number of ways to represent the exact same address (apt vs. unit vs. suite vs. '#', 5 digit zip vs. 9- digit zip, st. vs. street), and there are cases where the same address serves multiple people (private/virtual mail boxes). A billing address is a loose identifier at best.

Surely almost everyone does address standardization on user inputted fields, right? You'd be silly not to do this.

But generally, you don't need to agree to it. (Which may or may not work if it's just standardized as the back-end.)

I have a couple slightly different addresses. One of which is probably 30+ years old but is still used by the two local telcos and a few local businesses.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#243

Post by hailwren »

Interestingly, the host was also violating AirBNBs terms of service and the author could have gotten a full refund if they realized. It’s against AirBNB’s ToS to charge a security deposit outside of the fees already charged by AirBNB. I’ve had AirBNB offer to kick a host off of the platform if they didn’t back down on this. You could probably get them to cancel a reservation because of it.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#244

Post by zamadatix »

carabiner wrote: post #232
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #85

This is a scam. We were almost a victim of something similar, but through Expedia. The scam is to induce you to cancel so they can extract a fee. Basically the listing was nonsense, but we didn't notice it immediately. In our case the flat in Paris was both in the 2nd and 14th androssiment, somehow. It was listed in the 2nd but elsewhere it says 14th. Of course we went to cancel but there was a 30% fee. We explained…

It's not a scam. Most Airbnb listings have a "no refunds" policy in the case of cancellation, regardless of circumstance.

The scam is in listing so the actual location is inaccurate/uncertain so as to trigger the cancellation policy more often not the presence of a cancellation policy. Not that a scam being in policy is supposed to make something less of a scam anyways.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#245

Post by crazygringo »

whiplash451 wrote: post #52

Note that the cancellation policy for Hosts is quite generous: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/990 This lets a host dump you three days before your booking and get away with "only" 25% in fees. AirBnB definitely invests in their inventory (the hosts).

I don't like AirBNB at all, but that doesn't sound "generous" to me.

The host isn't reducing their income. They're paying a fine outright, and it jumps to 50% 2 days before.

Since things out of your control can happen (the toilet breaks, the place floods) a 50% fine seems reasonable without being unnessarily punitive. And 25% seems OK too since more than 48 hours should be enough time to find an alternative?

I would expect to ban a host if they cancelled stays repeatedly or as any kind of pattern, however.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#246

Post by vkou »

dubcee349 wrote: post #197
dghlsakjg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important thing to remember is that the chargeback doesn't necessarily absolve you of the legal need to pay. Just because the credit card company claws the money back doesn't mean that a merchant can't come after you in court/debt collection. It's not common, but for a big enough transaction, there's nothing stopping a business from coming after you.

Suing someone across state lines for a small amount like 1k is not really worth it in most scenarios if the host is the one that tries to sue you. If its air bnb i don't think a jury would find they deserve the money if it was cancelled within 1 hour of booking due to a misunderstanding.

This would never go to a jury trial, this would be a small claims court thing.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#247

Post by toomanyrichies »

tiredrunner wrote: post #41

Airbnb hosts these days are insane for real. You pay a premium and still you do laundry, clear the garbage, mop the floor and what not and still be charged for cleaning.

I had a host in Quito who, out of the blue, asked me to water his (twenty-three) houseplants for him.

When I told him I was quite busy that day and didn’t have time, he replied “Oh that’s OK, tomorrow is fine too.”

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#248

Post by vkou »

tromp wrote: post #104
jeromegv wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit ca…

He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.

Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response.

A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#249

Post by jmugan »

trhr wrote: post #9

I had the same thing happen to me. Not only do I not stay at AirBNBs anymore, I cancelled my Discover Card when they refused to fix it... after ~15 years as a customer. Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good pay…

Is that what AmEx is for? I've always wondered in all honesty. I had a similar experience with non-AmEx. Got double billed by a hotel and the credit card company initially didn't have my back. I had to go back and forth with them multiple times even with a seemingly obvious fraud.
Post reply on HN