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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

#321

Post by denton-scratch »

nneonneo wrote: post #277

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 t…

> I stopped using Uber and went back to taxis.

I've never used Uber. But the various local taxi companies seem to have recently formed a cartel; they won't take bookings before 9AM, muttering about "the school run". This is new, I booked a taxi at 7:30AM two months ago, to go to the hospital, and that worked fine. Last week I was forced to either book before 7 (and spend an hour in a waiting room), or cough-up £18 for a ten-minute trip.

For clarity concerning this school-run nonsense, school starts at 9AM here, and few kids go to breakfast clubs.

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

#322

Post by Dylan16807 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #210
988747 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they can't do that, because, you know, competition. Basically, those few weeks/months of below market rate prices are the cost of bootstrapping your business. Of course, if, over time, you acquire stellar reputation, then you probably can price yourself slightly higher than competitors based on that. But that's very unstable state.

Competition from who? Every established, high trust, host will charge at least the minimum viable rate to break even. Anyone who charges lower then the minimum viable will simply never break even, given that the money spent to accumulate trust has an opportunity cost. The cheapest hotels will be priced about the same. Low or zero trust hosts can't compete against high trust folks without a huge discount as already di…

They will raise their prices until they are in the normal market range.

That's different from jacking up the price "to compensate" for the losses at the start. They just have to eat the initial costs, and it will take a while for normal market profits to put them in the black.

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

#323

Post by Spooky23 »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #144
ethbr0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post-Google, I don't think there's any excuse for founders of marketplaces / platforms to ignore the ultimate metastasization of their business models. If you are wildly successful (oh, to be so lucky), what will your company be forced to optimize? Mid-years Amazon's radically generous customer service refunds and Etsy's seller revolt yanked their courses away from volume optimization for a few years... but it's thei…

This sounds like actually healthy productive places to exist and exchange might have to... exist outside of the realm of continuous growth by individuals motivated by ideology over profit.

The the need for cancer-like growth is really a driver of the worst behavior.

As a consumer of B2B services, I’m always amazed by the awful deals companies make to show revenue growth. One in particular a few years ago was particularly amazing. The sales dude was getting paid on revenue, and pushed through a deal that cost the company fortune. The entire sales chain of command retired and bought boats.

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

#324

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

slivanes wrote: post #287
thepasswordis wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you charge guests in your home $100/night to stay there?

I wonder if this is a chicken/egg thing? Host are charging this silly fee because guests were not cleaning up after themselves? Like at a cafe, it's socially accepted that you put away (bus) your finished utensils.

More than likely but that's not the point. If I stay at a hotel and I don't clean up after myself, I won't get charged a fee.

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

#325

Post by datavirtue »

candiodari wrote: post #181
mcculley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a useful way to think about how markets/platforms evolve. I have yet to use Airbnb. But it seems that the target customer has changed. I have been aware of them since they first showed up on Hacker News. They were pitched as renting an airbed where hotels are not a useful choice. That target customer is a demographic that I had aged out of before they started. If they were still marketing only to very young p…

What I don't get is ... where is the government in all this? As the article points out: the owners of the property clearly violate a lot of laws. So I hear violating the law gets you into "trouble with the law". Well, clearly it doesn't.

Government resources are not web scale. They do not and cannot scale except through legislation in some cases.

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by Dylan16807 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #282
stickfigure wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unreasonable to expect AirBNB to enforce your HOA rules. That's a private contract between you and your neighbors.

Basically even if it's not expressly forbidden it's an obvious misuse in pretty much any multi family dwelling. If your lease doesn't forbid you from keeping cows indoors it doesn't mean your not an asshole for keeping cows in your apartment.

As long as it's not damaging anything, why should I care about someone having cows?

Damage is obviously a problem and not the issue at hand.

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

#329

Post by smachiz »

tallanvor wrote: post #75
steveBK123 wrote: post #68

This stuff is incredibly common in short term rental market. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel on landlord scruples. There was a recent fire in a summer vacation town popular with NYers. The town requires summer short term rental landlords to get a permit & inspection. The landlord did not get one. The landlord also had sketchy kitchen wiring that was probably some sort of DIY and not up to code. The landlord…

I'm on the board of the Norwegian equivalent of a condo association, and I wish we could fine an owner every time we got complaints from other residents! Unfortunately the laws still have loopholes that make it very hard for us to hold him accountable as long as he claims to actually be living there. --In Norway you have to have a primary residence registered, and you're allowed to rent out spare rooms in your primar…

Why does it have to be a third party? Can't it just be someone on the board who lives in the building?

Couldn't you just throw some security cams up at the entrances and just track coming and going and total stay time? You'd only have to review footage after a reasonable suspicion.

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

#330

Post by astrostl »

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…

Interesting take. I'll be thinking about that. I wonder how much aggressive and active curation and validation might improve things.
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