371–377 of 377 posts
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I'm curious. What's your ethical issue with AirBnb?
Usually it’s about how they drive up rent and make apartments unaffordable for the locals.
You could also make an argument that hotel prices have been exorbitant for people, and AirBnB (despite whatever numerous flaws it currently has) did some good for people in providing a massive adrenaline shot of competition to that industry.
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> Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. I struggle to think that a person should bear literally any consequences if they weren't in the wrong, which AIUI in this case he isn't.
Why do you think a non-monopoly business should be compelled to continue to serve a customer that does chargebacks against it? You can fire that business as a vendor, they can fire you as a customer.
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> 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 detai…
I'm talking about the consumer experience. The practical upshot is you give your money to AirBnB, it's not coming back, no matter how dreadful an experience you have. You have to go after the host. The risk is not worth it.
The host's payment from Airbnb does not include fees and taxes that guests need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required) and it doesn't include the fees and taxes that hosts need to pay that Airbnb keeps (and passes on when required). So completely refunding guests full payment can mean a host is deep out of pocket.
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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…
A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up.
If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban.
The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
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It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
Myths that programmers believe about reality: - Only one person can live at an address - Two people with the same name can't live at the same address (Jr/Sr)
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I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.
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.