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How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

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Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#271

Post by kuschku »

olliej wrote: post #160
Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

Don’t do this. Not in America, and not in places with “consumer protection”. Chargebacks are for fraudulent or erroneous charges, not for “you changed your mind about a purchase” (1) first up in this case, I’m fairly sure that every other party to the transaction would have grounds to say that the chargeback is fraudulent. The author is not saying that they didn’t make the reservation, they’re saying they realized af…

A contract is a meeting of minds. A valid contract requires that both sides know what they're agreeing on.

He thought he was paying for a reservation for a family member, the host and AirBnB thought he was paying for a reservation for himself.

No actual contract was agreed upon here, as the parties did not actually agree on anything.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffles_v_Wichelhaus for one of the earliest examples of case law on this, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds for more general discussion on this topic

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#272

Post by subpixel »

Matheus28 wrote: post #4

I don't see why someone would still use Airbnb for short stays. At $1.5k for 5 nights in Seattle you can surely stay at a decent hotel (which the OP ended up doing anyway, at $1.3k), and not have to deal with some weird hosts. Hit them with a chargeback, who cares about getting banned from Airbnb.

Surely not, I’m afraid, at least not outside of a city.

I just returned from a ski trip where in order to not pay $500/night at a hotel I turned to Airbnb, where the prices were the same. I wound up renting an off-grid cottage that stank of sewage backup and required a generator to run while bathing for $300/night- and I had to feed tbeir mangy cat and leave them a wonderful review so as not to get dinged with a personal review that might make it hard to rent in future.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#273

Post by foobar1962 »

barrkel wrote: post #134

AirBnB is like a no-recourse Paypal for random third parties of unknown psychological stability. You do not contract with AirBnB. I recommend staying well away from them. I have my own horror story, involving an overflowing toilet and hysterical accusations from the host. We noticed the toilet was backed up in the bowl in the morning and alerted the host. The person the host sent round to look at it found some kind o…

> You do not contract with AirBnB.

Indeed you do. I was a host for several years, and there is NO direct contract between the host and the guest. The host has a contract with Airbnb, and the guest has a contract with Airbnb. This is why hosts need to enforce the "no third party bookings" rule because if something goes wrong Airbnb will not honour their "insurance" and the host cannot even get the guests contact details out oof Airbnb due to "privacy".

Many hosts send guests a contract to sign and insist on getting government issued identification (I refused to accept bookings from guests whose account image was a child, a pet, or a sunset) for each and every person entering the property.

Note that I didn't allow instant bookings, and would only accept requests after the guest had confirmed they had read the listing fully, read the house rules and understood the refund policy. The house rules were basically "no parties, no smoking, no pets, no third-party bookings".

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#274

Post by Nextgrid »

vkou wrote: post #246
dubcee349 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wouldn't even get anywhere near there for multiple reasons:

1) once a competent human (and not a third-world boiler room which is what "customer service" is in any large tech company nowadays) looks into it, they may very well make a reasonable decision and rule in the guest's favor to begin with

2) even if they were in the right from a legal/contractual point of view, they'd spend more flying someone out to argue the case in court than to just take the loss right away, so there's still no point defending the case.

3) Airbnb and maybe even the host have skeletons in the closet they'd rather not draw any attention to (search for Airbnb horror stories and you'll notice how they happily profit from obvious, brazen scams and effectively engage in fraud or false-advertising including about their insurance service, and a significant chunk of hosts break their local laws with regards to short-term rentals and/or taxes, which is the only way to make their pricing attractive), so it would be suicide for them to willingly draw any more attention to themselves than they need to.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#275

Post by ausbah »

delegate wrote: post #76

There was a time, not so long ago, when you could 'fix' the things that didn't work in the world by building a new app or website. This is how airbnb came about. Sadly, that is a lot harder now, because all the apps have already been built and they're huge and have all the users. And now millions of people have to deal with the side effects or poorly built or abusive online services which are too big to disrupt or ch…

real disruption would be building mountains of new housing in high demand areas!

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#276

Post by marcus_holmes »

FractalParadigm wrote: post #101
bboygravity wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by the banning comments. Can't you just create a new account with a new payment method and different email address? Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.

Personal experience shows you can typically use the same payment method and often even the same email address (with a different alias) to get around most bans. You'll get the odd place where this doesn't work, usually because they're implementing IP bans instead of just user bans. Bans are typically, at worst, a minor inconvenience for the person/party receiving it.

> IP bans

VPN to the rescue!

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#277

Post by throwabnb »

jedberg wrote: post #118

Another notch in the "AirBnB is a totally different experience outside the USA vs inside of it". Every story I've heard, as well as my personal experience, is that people outside the USA are very customer service oriented, want you to have a good time exploring the place they live, and are generally very attentive and accommodating. Inside the USA people are just in it as a side hustle. Usually it works out fine, som…

I’ve stayed in airbnbs in over a dozen countries and 4 continents. The side hustles and scams are everywhere. Like booking a place in Krakow, plane arriving at night in winter, getting to a locked up apartment with no lights on, just to hear from the host that the key is 10 blocks away and there will be an additional 200€ non-refundable deposit on checkin. Or the “guest house” in Chili that said it had a bathroom and shower just to find out they meant a communal outhouse and outdoor shower with no hot water or even potable water on premises. I could go on. But scams and crappy hosts are not a US-specific problem.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#278

Post by ajbourg »

briHass wrote: post #156
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…

Not Home Depot. Their support representative was worthless for an online order that was never delivered (lost in transit). They advised me to do a charge back. Luckily, it was an online chat, so I screen capped that to add to the CC docs you have to submit. Blows my mind; reshipping the item would (given they sell it for a profit) cost HD less than me doing a 100% chargeback, and it would be better customer service.…

Oh my goodness, I had the exact same experience with Home Depot. But then they responded to the chargeback and said it was delivered and no going back and forth with American Express would get them to help. I closed my AmEx card and am deeply skeptical of doing business with Home Depot.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#279

Post by foobar1962 »

gameman144 wrote: post #56

I wonder what the outcome would have been here if the author just turned this into a game of chicken with the host. It sounds like the host said "You can't have this reservation you made", the author said "Okay, I'll cancel", and the host said "Whoops too late". Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reserv…

> Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reservation if you can't fulfill it, not a problem".

Airbnb punishes host when they cancel both financially and through "the algorithm" that determines placement in search results. Also the host could have allowed the booking and have Airbnb cancel it when an unregistered guest arrived, or not allowed them into the property (they had no legal right to occupy the premises).

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#280

Post by soul_grafitti »

avalys wrote: post #19
Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Charge it back via your bank and explain the situation. Worst case scenario, it gets denied, you don't lose anything either way. The initial misunderstanding was cleared up just one hour after the booking - it should be very reasonable for the host to offer a full refund, it's not like it was a last-minute cancellation where the host would struggle to get it rebooked in time and lose out. The host is clearly being ma…

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address.

And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.

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