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Airbnb removed my negative review

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Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#271

Post by ornornor »

prepend wrote: post #261
seattle_spring wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve stayed in 100+ Airbnbs and literally never have paid or been asked to pay an extra fee. I have, however, been surprised several times by hotels charging an extra “resort fee” upon arrival.

You’ve never had to pay a cleaning fee?

These are so egregious and can be 50% of a night cost.

I’ve had so many bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s never like in the pictures. It’s always noisier, low quality mattress and furniture that looks good on pictures but isn’t functional or breaks if you touch it. I also feel like I’m living in ikea showrooms around the world. And given how expensive the cleaning is, it’s rarely passably clean. Moldy corners in the bathroom, dirt under the bed, chipped dishes…

And good luck trying to get Airbnb to help you. Best they can usually do (after you explain your case over from scratch because it’s always a new customer service person) is “alright we’ll check you out, you get a refund, and good luck finding a place for tonight out of pocket”

Never again. It’s hotels for me every time as well.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#272

Post by ww520 »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #181
chollida1 wrote: post #15

There is an old joke, how do you know that someone is a vegan or does crossfit? You'll know because they'll make sure you know minutes after meeting them. In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often. Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be…

I've seen all the comments about cleaning fees but didn't really believe it until I was looking for a place to spend March break; it's completely ridiculous! How is it that they aren't capped as a % of nightly cost? This is like the outrageous shipping costs of old eBay.

And you still have to clean up before leaving.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#273

Post by waboremo »

irjustin wrote: post #208
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback. They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested usi…

To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist. Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.

It is a problem, but it's also partially self-inflicted.

Compare reviews on Steam to reviews on Airbnb. You'll quickly notice something, Steam shows you far more information at a glance. You get to know whether someone bought the game themselves or if it was given free to them, how many hours they played before the review, how many hours they played in total, their rating, how other people feel about that review, how many other products the user has, if the review was edited, and of course review text.

Airbnb's reviews has a scoring system that was generalized, and review text, maybe a translation badge if the review was translated.

Reviews work best when you are given as much information as possible. Without it, you might as well be relying on an anonymous 5 star system.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#274

Post by seattle_spring »

wyclif wrote: post #251
Werewolf255 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its hard to think of another company outside of Facebook that has blown all their good will so quickly and so completely. Twitter comes rapidly to mind

The difference is that Twitter is better than it's ever been now, while Facebook and Airbnb continue to deteriorate.

I'm sorry but I literally laughed out loud after reading your comment.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#275

Post by lb1lf »

prepend wrote: post #261
seattle_spring wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve stayed in 100+ Airbnbs and literally never have paid or been asked to pay an extra fee. I have, however, been surprised several times by hotels charging an extra “resort fee” upon arrival.

You’ve never had to pay a cleaning fee?

Not the OP, but at least in my jurisdiction (Norway), AirBnB dutifully lists any cleaning fees before I press the 'confirm booking' button.

I think the point was 'No -surprise- fees.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#277

Post by nibbleshifter »

ericpruitt wrote: post #152
thefounder wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they work?

I've read they're taken very seriously in some places like Germany and Japan, but in my experience, a lot of people in the USA won't bother reporting noise violations because they know the chances of them being enforced and/or investigated in a timely manner is low.

Enforcement in Germany is quite funny. Lived there for some years.

If you have a problem with noisy neighbours you basically must make a "noise diary" with date/time/description of the noise over a period of time before anyone will give a shit.

Even then, enforcement varies wildly. Seems to depend where you are, etc.

The best person to complain to is building management, but even then, they vary.

The next best thing to do (and the most German solution) is leaving passive aggressive notes on the buildings noticeboard.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#278

Post by thefounder »

ghaff wrote: post #188
rootusrootus wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving every time a better opportunity comes up is a privilege enjoyed by a small section of the population. The vast majority of people move rarely, and when they do move it's usually within the same locality.

Even for people who can , family (spouse, kids in school, nearby relatives, etc.), friends, and so forth tend to make moving cities a pretty significant decision at some point.

It's a cultural issue. Give it 1-2 generations and people won't care that much about nearby relatives, friends etc.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#279

Post by luciusdomitius »

seattle_spring wrote: post #246
spacemadness wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I went back to hotels. Airbnb is a scummy company and can’t seem to survive without out of control “gotcha” fees added by either itself or its hosts which now make many hotels cheaper. I also am not obligated to do work for the host with a hotel. Some of the hosts have become super entitled over the years due to Airbnbs policies. It’s a shame as using Airbnb was an excellent experience when it first began…

I’ve stayed in 100+ Airbnbs and literally never have paid or been asked to pay an extra fee. I have, however, been surprised several times by hotels charging an extra “resort fee” upon arrival.

It is not the hotels, who charge it, but governments, most often the municipality. Usually there is no obligation to hide that from the guest or include it in the price. Just to pay. You can also go pay it straight in the town hall, the hotel is just doing you a favor.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#280

Post by onos »

irjustin wrote: post #208
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback. They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested usi…

To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist. Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.

That’s true. Another reality is that there are bad actors on the customer side too. A single person who gets off on being awful to people can leave an unwarranted bad review and materially harm an Airbnb host’s business.
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