I'm not a huge fan of airbnb but I don't know of a great alternative for their services. When my family and I travel we want something that is a home, designed for kids, with spaces to cook, hang out, and near or in town (but not surrounded by loud drunks) so we can do things without driving. Ideally in a situation where a screaming baby isn't going to annoy too many other people. Hotels are miserable at this , and w…
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
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes me think that there's a market for a 3rd party website for reviews for AirBnB hosts (and probably guests). But a new host might not get any guests if they don't have a review on this site, and if the guests avoid them, then no one will review them. An idea would be for a host to pay a refundable deposit, and the website could indicate them as so, "We have no reviews for this host, but they have guaranteed with…
It's fundamentally a problem of trust. Hotels and big brands work because you can trust them. Why do you trust them? Because they have skin in the game. If their products suck their brand suffers and that's what they want to avoid the most. If Apple releases crappy products they can't just create a new "BtwNotApple" brand. They can sell overpriced products because you're paying for trust/brand. In these semi-anonymou…
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#63Will be interesting to see how this all plays out long term and if these companies can control quality at scale or if this whole mode of trying to play middle-person just fizzles out over time and we return to more traditional approaches that weren’t necessarily terribly broken in the first place.
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#64Why would the author set their Medium profile pic to a crop of the same picture the fake host used? I’m so confused
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#65If you still want/need to use AirBnB for cheaper travel, renting a room instead of a whole apartment is actually better. Then the host is an actual host and the reviews are more meaningful. I’ve gotten to know some pretty cool people that way. It’s a trade-off of course, as the set of potential issues is different.
But won't you get a room in an apartment shared with other guests then?
If you aren't willing to accept some kind of reduction from hotel accommodations, you aren't willing to save money.
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#66It'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…
They create jobs, they don't distort property markets in the same way as AirBnB, and you get breakfast!
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#67Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#68There 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 had removed batteries and hardwiring from 3 smoke detectors. These are the kind of things the inspector would have found immediately.
A family visiting from out of state lost 2 of their 3 children in this fire.
Apps like AirBnB create the facade of officialness on what are instead very sketchy markets. Family probably thought they were doing the right thing going through an app and the landlord must be verified and more "legit". Being from out of state they wouldn't know the intricacies of local town permit&inspection requirements and how to check if the landlord has one, etc.
Likewise in my condo in NYC, we had one particular owner who was trying to use their unit as an Airbnb. Regardless of the local laws which were tightening up at the time, our condo expressly forbid short term rentals, and had language around minimum length of stay and lease approval requirements. It only stopped when we started fining them $1000 per incident.
Stuff like this matters because you buy a condo to live in it and don't expect the unit on the other side of your bedroom wall to essentially be a hotel room with new neighbors every 3 days, staying up all hours (vacation, yay), dragging suitcases in&out at odd hours multiple times per week.. forever.
The building itself takes on a lot more wear & tear, and they put a burden on staff as they think the building porter&doorman are there for them like a hotel concierge and front desk.
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#69It'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…
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…
The business model is to grow until the market is saturated, and then become one of the 3-4 entities that dominate their niche. VRBO chalked out the “vacation home” scope, hotels do their thing, so AirBnb dabbles in everything, but owns the “shared” accommodation part of the market. While they advertise a treehouse in the rainforest or whatever, the socially problematic conversions of apartments to flop houses in locations without hotels ultimately drives the business.
Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed
#70We arrived, looked clean and decorated well enough, but had 4 glade plugins for a 500sqft place… seemed excessive like their might be a bad smell hidden.
Sat down on a chaise which collapsed because of a leg attached by gum. Found a cockroach under said chaise. Reported it and the owner said it was treated the other day, so it should be fine.
Sat down on the couch, which also collapsed, one leg was missing and was held up by a coffee mug. The bed frame had cinder blocks and children’s notebooks supporting it, (stubbed my toe on the cinder block). Bathroom fixtures were loose, sink basins were not properly seated to their countertops, inviting mold.
In the morning I found 3 more cockroaches roaming around the otherwise clean looking kitchen.
I named one of them Gregor. Airbnb gave us a refund for the nights unspent and we’ve spent the rest of the time at a brand name hotel. More expensive, but more options for recourse if things go south.
If not for the cockroaches it would have been bearable, but the combination of issues left too many doubts as to the safety of the place. My wife and I could not find rest there.
Airbnbs can be nice and give you a real sense of being a resident of a place, but the quality control truly is a gamble. These days, I increasingly prefer the consistency of a hotel bed.
I will say this, the thermostat was better at the Airbnb than the hotel. No auto feature in the hotel.