Live data from Hacker News

How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

chriskiehl.com

321–330 of 377 posts

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#321
DO NOT USE AIRBNB IF YOU HAVE OPTION OF USING A HOTEL!

AirBnb is a minefield of gotchas.

1. They don't show you full price. Most of the hosts make bank from cleaning fees. $300-$500 cleaning fees tacked onto final price is usual. Please airbnb fees, resort fees, tourist fees, cleaning Brian Chesky's ass fees. 2x what you see on the listing is normal.

2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.

3. AirBnB is no longer primarily people renting out their house, but get-rich-quick crowd that own homes for the sake of putting on airbnb, shady cancellation policies, some make you clean the house. All sorts of weird house rules like bring your own towels. Every host can have slightly different official and unofficial policies.

4. The pictures are heavily edited, wide angle shots. I once booked based on pictures. They had 10 shots of living room, but no bathroom shots, I saw positive reviews and went ahead. It's like how hollywood creates beautiful sets just for one good scene. We stayed at a "renovated airbnb". Only the living room and kitchen was renovated (new paint), the rest of the house was a shack. Looked gorgeous from the pictures, but actual was quite the surprise. Had an old house smell, bathrooms weren't cleaned. (Again, the hosts will threaten you if you complain about any of these)

5. Support is a joke. They'll acknowledge but won't actually process a refund. Once stayed in an NY apartment. $700/night and it was a tiny room, with a bed that stank of urine. Support said the equivalent of "tough luck, life isn't fair".

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#322
post #30

This is the reason I hope booking.com are successful (they increasingly have aparthotel listings). They usually offer free cancellation and I've never had a problem cancelling for free if I had a good reason (such as illness). Other thing to watch out for is fees. The place I'm staying at charges 20000yen ($150) if you enter the apartment without taking off your shoes, 6000yen ($44) per hour overstayed after checkout…

They definitely cannot enforce those. Now if you do enter with shoes AND damage the floor a bit*, I still doubt they could even enforce those. Even courts here are not punitive in nature (they are restorative), so even if they sued you and won for going in with shoes, which I highly doubt, at most you'd have to pay for the damage they can prove that you made, which would be few thousand yens. The only one I am a bit…

Despite enforceable or not, it's considered extremely rude to enter a property wearing shoes in Japan.

Do you want to be a good guest or an entitled douchebag? (I don't mean you personally).

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haha, same here. A package was never delivered (though the tracking number said that it was). Home depot representative couldn't resolve the issue, and recommended to make a charge back. After I made a chargeback, HD contacted the bank with a supporting package (receipt, tracking number, etc) and reversed the charge back. At this point I decided not to waste any more time for $50 item and moved on.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#325
post #321

DO NOT USE AIRBNB IF YOU HAVE OPTION OF USING A HOTEL! AirBnb is a minefield of gotchas. 1. They don't show you full price. Most of the hosts make bank from cleaning fees. $300-$500 cleaning fees tacked onto final price is usual. Please airbnb fees, resort fees, tourist fees, cleaning Brian Chesky's ass fees. 2x what you see on the listing is normal. 2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave p…

> 2. The reviews are heavily biased. Hosts will pester you to leave positive review, if you leave even a 4 star, they get really mad at you. I left a 4 star review and the host gave me a 1 star that almost got me banned.

I've always felt that reviews should be not be visible until both parties had 'blindly' submitted their reviews. Or if only one party submits a review, then after a set period of time, it is published and the other party does not have an ability to rate the other party anymore to prevent retaliation reviews.

This would ensure more honest reviews and stop revenge reviews.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#326
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…

This will result in an immediate ban by Airbnb. I got screwed by Oculus and spent almost half a year getting my account back after a chargeback ban.

Don’t ever chargeback big tech. You will lose every time.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An important thing to remember is that the chargeback doesn't necessarily absolve you of the legal need to pay. This is a misconception that many people have - at least in the US market. I owned an MSP for about a decade, and this was often the most common surprise for merchants: charge backs were final and were actually pre-accepted by the merchant as part of their merchant agreement (it's similar in concept to bi…

I can’t find any reliable sources on this either way, but some blogspammy sites suggest that merchants are within their rights to pursue legal action outside of the credit card channels

Sure and I am in my legal right to sue you for making this post.

It doesn’t mean it will go anywhere if we actually end up in court.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#328
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…

This will result in an immediate ban by Airbnb. I got screwed by Oculus and spent almost half a year getting my account back after a chargeback ban. Don’t ever chargeback big tech. You will lose every time.

Why would you charge back Oculus?

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#329
post #19
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.

Personally I'd never want to use AirBnB ever again if I lost 900$ and they didn't care at all about good customer service.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scam is in listing so the actual location is inaccurate/uncertain so as to trigger the cancellation policy more often not the presence of a cancellation policy. Not that a scam being in policy is supposed to make something less of a scam anyways.

What about THIS listing would cause someone to think they could run afoul of AirBnB's TOS? [0] [0] https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/427

Obviously the OP didn't know the policy found in help article 427. They discovered it was an issue within an hour and tried to rectify it.
Post reply on HN