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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

#271

Post by jongunter1 »

Not surprised by this article. I lived in Airbnbs for 19 months during the pandemic and can share three similar horror stories. Airbnb's response was terrible. In one case, I had no water for three days and sewage leaking into the bathtub; Airbnb was totally unsupportive. In another case, the unit was run down and had no hot water; Airbnb was not able to help me so I actually had to shell out my own money to cancel the stay and book a new one. In a third incident, the unit was run down, unsafe, and was not following local rules that required it to have a STR license. Airbnb support did not seem to care that the host was breaking the law, and did the bare minimum to support.

The flip side is I had also some amazing AirBnb stays (thank you to my wonderful hosts in Port Angeles, WA and Galveston, TX), and that does give me some hope for the platform.

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

#272

Post by ghaff »

jamiegreen wrote: post #269
wcarron wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a good middle ground is the "serviced apartment" concept found in some places (entire apartment blocks reserved for short term rentals) You mean a hotel? Hotels are not inadequate for longer stays. If someone desires the comforts of a home, they can move there and actually rent/buy a home. > The reason AirBnB exists is that tourists are not properly accounted for in city planning and not properly serviced by hotels…

>You mean a hotel? Hotels are not inadequate for longer stays. If someone desires the comforts of a home, they can move there and actually rent/buy a home. What about a middle ground. If I go somewhere for 2-4 weeks? For that length of time I kind of want a proper kitchen, which I won't get in a hotel, but obviously it is not long enough to actually rent/buy a home.

>What about a middle ground. If I go somewhere for 2-4 weeks? For that length of time I kind of want a proper kitchen, which I won't get in a hotel, but obviously it is not long enough to actually rent/buy a home.

Not everywhere but at least in the US suite hotels with small kitchens are pretty common. Most of the big chains have one or more suite hotel brands. (Though honestly I not infrequently travel for 2-3 weeks and, while I definitely appreciate a refrigerator I pretty much never find I need a full kitchen. And being able to stretch out on a sofa is nice.)

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

#273

Post by pessimizer »

noasaservice wrote: post #147
mcculley wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started as being intended for VC, right? I remember YC being an investor and Paul Graham saying great things about the founders. Certainly they must have been counting on growth. Did they plan to just capture every airbed? Or to do to hotels what Uber did to taxis (both good and bad)?

All these (AirBNB, Uber, etc) e-companies do is take what's illegal, add "internet", and somehow is legal until the authorities can see through the shit-show. And of course, while the grift is going, the execs and shareholders get rich. But everyone knows when the gig is up. Evidence: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/11/uber-doordash-plunge-as-labo...

> authorities can see through the shit-show.

No, they hire the authorities, and the shit-show goes on forever. The gig is only up when they've passed their overvalued business on to late investors, who demand to be paid through strategic neglect of core functions, price rises to rational market values (or higher), and moonshot PR.

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

#275

Post by mewse-hn »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #219
joyeuse6701 wrote: post #70

Yep. Had an Airbnb setup this week in Atlanta, looked good, responsive host. We arrived, looked clean and decorated well enough, but had 4 glade plugins for a 500sqft place… seemed excessive like their might be a bad smell hidden. Sat down on a chaise which collapsed because of a leg attached by gum. Found a cockroach under said chaise. Reported it and the owner said it was treated the other day, so it should be fine…

> Airbnbs can be nice and give you a real sense of being a resident of a place I really don't get this. If you're vacationing there's no way you'll feel anywhere near a "sense of being a resident". It's vacations, you're a tourist, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't get what about the "experience" of a regular Airbnb is better than staying at a decent hotel. Of course this does not apply to exotic Airbnbs.

> I really don't get this.

The promise of AirBnB used to be you could get a spare room / apartment in a place where the locals actually lived, rather than the hotel & convention center district that's 2 blocks from the airport

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

#276

Post by pessimizer »

lambic wrote: post #127
specproc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Having stayed in some truly shitty hotels I would have to disagree with this sentiment.

Stay in better ones?

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

#277

Post by nneonneo »

I swear, we’ve gone over the hill with these dotcom companies.

I stopped using Amazon and went back to shopping at my grocery store, Costco, IKEA, etc. You get to actually see what you’ll be getting, bring it back the same day, and know it’s not some fake that you need to ship back the next day. Hell, even the dollar store sells me better junk than Amazon does, and cheaper too.

I stopped using Uber and went back to taxis. Three times now I’ve arrived at my home airport to Uber surging their prices to $100+ for a simple airport pickup. The last Uber I took in Vegas decided it was ok to run red lights and Uber wouldn’t do a thing about it. No thanks, I’ll take the fixed-rate taxi service, or even just rent a car.

I stopped using AirBnB and now book hotels. Prices are comparable, and the quality is far more predictable. It’s getting harder and harder to find good listings, and when my family shows up and the place “isn’t as described” it’s a real downer.

A recession of sorts might be the perfect thing to force these companies to start focusing on their product again, instead of this growth-at-all-costs mentality.

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

#278

Post by yamtaddle »

fruit2020 wrote: post #111
specproc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They are sometimes too small if you go with young kids and want to spend a week or so.

Really, in general, any time you want a real "home base" you don't mind spending hours in if, say, some outdoor activity gets rained out, AirBnBs are far nicer than a hotel. Hanging out in a hotel room sucks, hanging out in an AirBnB can be like hanging out at home except... kinda better, in some cases and in some ways.

Or for any getaway kind of situation where the point is mainly to be at the place that you are staying, not necessarily to get out a ton. Hotels are terrible for that, aside, perhaps, from ultra-expensive huge suites (I wouldn't know, I've never tried one, too pricey and I have a suspicion it'd still feel like being in a hotel room).

They're also great in rural areas. Often you can get an AirBnB much closer to some 2nd- or 3rd-rate way-off-the-interstate attraction you're interested in, than a hotel. Otherwise your only options would be camping or an RV.

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

#279

Post by trap_goes_hot »

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…

Chain-of-trust

The problem you've described applies to a lot of stuff, from hiring to finding a reliable mechanic. I've started relying more on word-of-mouth, whenever possible. Let someone else waste their money trying out new products/services.

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

#280

Post by iudqnolq »

dylan604 wrote: post #237
mancerayder wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pla…

They have a long list of things you can't complain about. One example is things that the seller can't change, like a loud train nearby. At least when I last used it if a single sentence in your review violated one of those policies your whole review was deleted and you couldn't submit a new one.

Interestingly their dispute process is very buyer-friendly, though. When a seller demands money in compensation for damage they often lose. I believe this is because Airbnb is on the hook if they can't collect from the buyer.

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