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Airbnb removed my negative review

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#391

Post by esprehn »

wyclif wrote: post #326
seattle_spring wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I literally laughed out loud after reading your comment.

Laugh away, but Old Twitter was run by some pretty scummy people who allowed the FBI and CIA to backdoor the service. It was also a lot slower and broken compared to how fast it is now, especially outside North America (they recently added a lot more server capacity). Also massively bloated as recently as a year ago. Loads of people working there who didn't seem to do much except tweak icons 2000 times, enforce DEI m…

Added more server capacity? They just shut down an entire data center (they had 3, so that's a -33% reduction if you assume they're the same size.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/technology/twitter-elon-m...

What's the speed enhancements?

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#392

Post by amf12 »

Airbnb reviews suck. I once had a terrible experience with an issue. I worked with Airbnb to check out early. The host left me a terrible review which was false. Airbnb knows this because the facts were on their support chat with pictures, but Airbnb did not remove the review.

I stopped leaving reviews after that and have been avoiding Airbnb.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#393

Post by greggman3 »

opportune wrote: post #299
greggman3 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBnB sux but zoning has arguably been a net negative on most societies in many ways https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house

Not true in SF. Plenty of apartments are on streets that are not main thoroughfares. In fact busy streets are often primarily zoned commercial

Name any apartment complex on a quiet street in SF that's not in Mission Bay that's been built in the last 15 years

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#394

Post by nerdbert »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #279
seattle_spring wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not the hotels, who charge it, but governments, most often the municipality. Usually there is no obligation to hide that from the guest or include it in the price. Just to pay. You can also go pay it straight in the town hall, the hotel is just doing you a favor.

A resort fee is not the same as a tourism tax.

Tourism taxes are per head, per night and generally Airbnbs are required to charge them as well (though they often don't).

A resort fee is a bogus surcharge added by hotels to "cover" advertised amenities, like if a cinema charged you a Dolby Surround fee after you showed your ticket at the entrance.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#395

Post by cycrutchfield »

yifanl wrote: post #80
cycrutchfield wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care so intensely about this? Edit: I should have expanded on my post a bit. It's quite obvious that the review was flagged by some ML model, most likely not because the reviewer is a liar but probably because the host has a high prior for shenanigans. Combined with the lack of social signals for the reviewer, I could see why an ML model might be overzealous. But back to my original question: nobody is bei…

I imagine being indirectly or directly called a liar/fraudster by a giant multinational is personally upsetting to the parent poster.

“Indirectly” is likely an understatement. I doubt at any point airbnb called this person a “liar”, that’s just their own interpretation of events

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#396

Post by rwalle »

streetdumpling wrote: post #344
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then make it a % of a 1 night stay. A $150 cleaning fee is nonsense. It used to be 20-30.

How much cleaning fee depends on the local market price of cleaning. Depending on how big the place is, $150 is possible. In SF e.g. you can't find a cleaner with $20-30. Hotels pay less on cleaner labor because it's more efficient (cleaners are probably full time employees cleaning all rooms every day anyway). And why it would be % of night rate? Cleaning fee is flat for one cleaning service.

Only makes sense if the host is actually paying professional cleaning service, or doing it themselves at the level provided at those services, after each stay.

And I am very sure that's not the case 99% of the time based on my own experience. I'd be thankful if the kitchen counter is clean and there is no trash. That's actually not a low bar.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#397

Post by nerdbert »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #347
irjustin wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist. Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.

> To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. I wonder if "tipping" could improve things. A new platform like airbnb could have an expected tip built in to the platform. Hosts are expected to provide good service and get a tip. Customers are encouraged to tip at the end of their stay (with a lower base price than airbnb to account for that). Hosts can see the average, median, max, and min tips of poten…

Oh god please no more tipping. It's spreading like a virus. Each time I visit the USA there's more pestering for tips from every possible angle. Just pay people a fair wage already.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#398

Post by quadrifoliate »

charcircuit wrote: post #306
quadrifoliate wrote: post #105

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.

Yeah, but I don't think Airbnb has sophisticated enough infrastructure to figure out if every person leaving a review has an online presence before deleting their review.

It's possible there's something more mundane, like not having a browser cookie when the review was left or something like that.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#399

Post by rishabhd »

At this point, AirBnB is too much of a trouble for a weary traveler. No worries of following arcane house rules, doing the dishes and praying to a non existent customer support. Better to stay in a hotel and call it a day.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#400

Post by nerdbert »

threeseed wrote: post #197
pitaj wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market. And restrictions on short term rentals have little to no effect on housing prices. It's just another scapegoat (like foreign owned housing) that people like to use because they can't accept the fact that the s…

> From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market It changes depending on the location. Some places e.g. Byron Bay in Australia have been significantly affected by short term rentals.

Maybe... though whenever I look closely it turns out that cities are suffering from structurally broken property markets, and short-term rentals are a convenient, highly visible scapegoat that puts the blame on something involving foreigners.
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