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Airbnb removed my negative review

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311–320 of 473 posts

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d rather all reviews stay, good and bad and let the consumer decide for themselves That's not a realistic solution. If all the reviews were fake 5 stars but it's just the property's friends always leaving reviews then when you got there, you feel there's no way it's 5 stars. But less obvious is property manager says, hey i'll give you a 5% discount for 5 stars, when really the place was a 3-star at best. Those sh…

Is there anything currently in place that prevents the 5% off situation? Seems like nobody is able to solve that one. Or wants to tackle it. Airbnb is incentivized to have higher scores because lower ratings might not push people to other properties - it might discourage them from booking all together. They need them to not be totally worthless, but score inflation is definitively in their best interest.

I left a negative review on a product on Amazon whose seller was doing this (but much higher than 5%). Amazon deleted the review.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People owning fractional buildings" has existed for almost 150 years, at what point should we start to see NYC buildings collapsing due to structural collapse?

This is false. The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old. There's some older buildings that have been converted, sure, but the legal concept isn't that old. And buildings start needing more significant structural work after forty or fifty years. Which is to say, yes, I expect many more condos to collapse over the next couple decades.

> The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old.

This is correct in the sense that it is technically correct (for residential dwellings; commercial condominiums have existed for almost a hundred years prior).

However, residential cooperatives (co-ops) have existed in the United States since the mid-1800s. These are functionally the same as a condominium with a slightly different legal structure. But the end result is identical: multiple owners jointly managing a building in which they all own a stake.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#313

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.

Ya we got charged a mandatory 20-30$ a day fee at a hotel recently for their “arcade”, which was 2 pinball machines.., and “bar“, which was a mini fridge in the lobby… (1 “free” drink a day).

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#314

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.

Because an Airbnb listing is cleaned every time a new guest checks in, it doesn't matter whether you stay for one night only or 10 nights. It's a fixed cost to the host.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#315
I hate the fact that hosts are allowed to cancel at the last minute, completely spoiling your holiday. You can't leave a review to warn other users.

It's open to abuse. We've been screwed over by hosts who cancel at the last minute (eg they couldn't find anywhere else to stay). There's literally nothing you can do.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#316
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…

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…

It forced hotels to have more competitive prices.

Honestly, there was not much else it could do in the long term.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#317
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Th trend line has been toward significantly less mobility relative to past decades--though you'd probably want to correct the numbers for demographics given that 20 somethings move the most (as one would expect).

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#318

AirBnB service has become awful. We checked in at a place with smoke alarms going off non-stop and a full-blown roach infestation (all dead roaches, but we counted about 10-15 in the kitchen cabinets). Only started uncovering roaches after I tried to disconnect the alarms and a few dried up roaches fell out of the smoke alarm casing. I'm from the city and have lived in apartments with roaches. Not a germaphobe but I…

You should have enjoyed the stay and study "The Amazing Social Life" of a roaches colony... And design a model of a colony. I mean it has been made for ants, right ? Here a link : https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/2032?show=fu....

Seriously, one day I left a buddy of mine leave 3 box of stuffs in my appartment because he was moving in another place... 3 months later I saw the very first roach on the open... They were everywhere, hidding in every corners in small groups, even in a f*cking hole punch...

Long story short, I finally get rid of them by buying on the web a kind of pasta in a big seringe with some kind of poison in it which acted at molecular level (or something) and prevented the roaches cells to absorb energy from blood stream. In short, they were dying of starvation even if they were eating. The poison passed also in their shit (because roaches eat their shit to be more discreet), so even their shit became poisonous.

That being said, they would likely not survive a nuclear apocalypse, contrary to the popular belief : https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/would-cockroaches-re...

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and AirBnB were always shady, both services were heavily subsidized by VC money in order to acquire customers. Now that these corporations went public, they stopped with the charade and are aiming at making as much profit as the business they claimed they "disrupted".

Airbnb lets me rent a whole apartment for a couple weeks. Couldn't do that before. And Uber is so much better than the cabs it replaced that there can't really be any comparison. It's not just about price relative to competition.

VRBO and subletting agreements existed long before AirBnB.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time. Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd. My theory on this is the same as usual – Air…

Proving you paid for it doesn't prove that you have no affiliation with the host.

Indeed. It's easy enough to funnel the money back to somebody you know, paying the 3% commission to Airbnb. There are probably tax ramifications too but as a business cost for a glowing review with no effort, worth it.
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