Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

chriskiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 377 posts

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#51

Post by londons_explore »

fruit2020 wrote: post #23
Matheus28 wrote: post #4

I don't see why someone would still use Airbnb for short stays. At $1.5k for 5 nights in Seattle you can surely stay at a decent hotel (which the OP ended up doing anyway, at $1.3k), and not have to deal with some weird hosts. Hit them with a chargeback, who cares about getting banned from Airbnb.

Homes are sometimes nicer than hotels, better suited for families with children.

An airbnb feels like 'mine'. Whereas a hotel I have no confidence that some overzealous room service won't barge in and try to change the towels while I'm using them!

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#53

Post by vasco »

trhr wrote: post #9

I had the same thing happen to me. Not only do I not stay at AirBNBs anymore, I cancelled my Discover Card when they refused to fix it... after ~15 years as a customer. Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good pay…

Or just say that you’ll be staying there even if you're not and not trash anything? I feel like any normal person would not just throw $900 bucks away like this, probably because they wouldn't have planned for a $900 bucks extra spend. What is the host gonna do?

What if you book for a couple and the one that booked gets sick and has to return early? This makes no sense, I feel like most people would've edited the form through support and just added themselves in and not use airbnb again after this.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#54

Post by Matheus28 »

fruit2020 wrote: post #23
Matheus28 wrote: post #4

I don't see why someone would still use Airbnb for short stays. At $1.5k for 5 nights in Seattle you can surely stay at a decent hotel (which the OP ended up doing anyway, at $1.3k), and not have to deal with some weird hosts. Hit them with a chargeback, who cares about getting banned from Airbnb.

Homes are sometimes nicer than hotels, better suited for families with children.

True, but Airbnb isn't the only option. In the past I simply used local companies that specialize in that. It's extremely common in tourist heavy areas. And you don't have a laundry list of things to do before your checkout like some Airbnb hosts expect you do to. The keyword to google for is "vacation rental".

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#56

Post by gameman144 »

I wonder what the outcome would have been here if the author just turned this into a game of chicken with the host.

It sounds like the host said "You can't have this reservation you made", the author said "Okay, I'll cancel", and the host said "Whoops too late".

Since the host is the one who was requesting that cancellation, I'd be curious what would have happened if the author replied with "You can cancel the reservation if you can't fulfill it, not a problem".

Obviously no ruling out that AirBNB wouldn't just charge the author and not give access to the property, but seems like at least a higher probability of success.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#57

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

che_shirecat wrote: post #45
Nextgrid wrote: 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…

Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.

There are lots of alternatives. Agoda, Booking.com, and many similar sites offer short-term apartment rentals. Also, in much of the world outside the US, hotels are a better and surer bet than short-term apartment rentals.

Look at it like this: Would you pay $950 for the privilege of using AirBNB? I sure wouldn't. An "AirBNB Membership fee" on the order of $950 should seem absurd.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#58

Post by ghaff »

che_shirecat wrote: post #45
Nextgrid wrote: 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…

Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.

For most people I can't imagine that keeping AirBnB "happy" is so important that you wouldn't try to get $1000 back. But, yes, it's a problem when keeping AirBnB, Google, Twitter, etc. placated requires rolling over.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#59

Post by jeromegv »

nixpulvis wrote: post #40
avalys wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.

Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process.

Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate.

So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.

Post reply on HN