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I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

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Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#611

Post by hispanic »

jancsika wrote: post #76
julienchastang wrote: post #51

There have been a few threads about AirBnb lately with a lot of people reporting negative experiences so I will add my own $0.02. I have stayed in many AirBnbs. The reason is, I find it is the only way to have a tolerable family vacation is when everyone has their own sleeping quarters. When we are all piled into one (often overpriced and not so clean) hotel room, it makes for less than ideal sleep and everyone ends…

> The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations. How do you corroborate the information on those properties? The clean, affordable, well-placed hotels I've stayed in had reams of reviews and news articles from various sources to confirm they were indeed clean, affordable, and well-placed. The cost of faking all those sources must be orders of…

> How do you corroborate the information on those properties? There is no way to corroborate. For most listings, Airbnb is the only source. However, I've never found this to be an issue. I don't believe I've ever been "scammed" by an Airbnb host in 40+ bookings.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#612

Post by hispanic »

julienchastang wrote: post #51

There have been a few threads about AirBnb lately with a lot of people reporting negative experiences so I will add my own $0.02. I have stayed in many AirBnbs. The reason is, I find it is the only way to have a tolerable family vacation is when everyone has their own sleeping quarters. When we are all piled into one (often overpriced and not so clean) hotel room, it makes for less than ideal sleep and everyone ends…

> The main downside for me concerning AirBnb is it takes a long time to analyze the listings to find quality accommodations.

Completely agree. If you don't want to put in the time or effort required to analyze for “assumed”, “missing” , and “bonus” amenities, scrutinize each listing’s description, photos, and guest reviews, and sniff out the nature of each Airbnb and the host’s motivations, I say stay away from Airbnb. More thoughts here - https://blog.michaelscepaniak.com/how-to-find-choose-and-boo...

The more negative comments I read here, the more I think that most people shouldn't use Airbnb. With that being said, I've been happy with Airbnb, warts and all.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#613

Post by hispanic »

swozey wrote: post #73
julienchastang wrote: post #51

There have been a few threads about AirBnb lately with a lot of people reporting negative experiences so I will add my own $0.02. I have stayed in many AirBnbs. The reason is, I find it is the only way to have a tolerable family vacation is when everyone has their own sleeping quarters. When we are all piled into one (often overpriced and not so clean) hotel room, it makes for less than ideal sleep and everyone ends…

Yeah I've stayed at lot of airbnbs (20-30 a year) and only had good to great experiences. I've met a lot of hosts that I specifically look up when I visit their city again. I've had plenty where they weren't exactly what I expected, like thinking a cabin I was renting was in the woods from the pictures but it was on a gravel driveway with trees in the background, but my trip wasn't ruined or anything. I've unfortunat…

> Quit using it as a way to lower the daily cost so that you show up on more searches. When looking through search results, my eyes always go straight to the total cost, which factors in the cleaning and service fees (but not the occupancy taxes and fees).

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#614

Post by Jedd »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #502
pingec wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we accidentally took a double booking for the same place, booking.com demanded that we arrange and pay for equivalent accommodation for the booking.com guests. That is what we did, I do not know what would have happened had we refused to do so.

Wow that’s messy. I have trip this coming month through Expedia and the last leg of our bargain basement flight got cancelled. The rep told me there were no flights for days surrounding our original flight date. I had to sit on hold for a long time but I have to say they were great. United swept our transportation out from under our feet but the rep was able to wrangle a flight with fewer stops that arrives earlier w…

> Wow that’s messy.

How so?

It sounds like a very reasonable policy -- the person responsible for making the mistake needs to rectify it.

No one's out of pocket -- the double booking was never going to make double revenue, after all. The time / inconvenience imposition is on the responsible party, who also likely has more service industry & local knowledge than the customer.

This policy makes me feel more positively towards booking.com.

As per TFA, AirBNB does that hand-wavey thing where they assert some problems are beyond their competence to solve -- the kinds of problems other sectors and organisations have already got policies and procedures in place to deal with.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#615

Post by bufferoverflow »

gmanley wrote: post #387
chippy wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

over $1000 lost is still greater value?

Where are you getting $1000 from? He says 3 figure so it's in the hundreds, I'm assuming lower. Everyone has there point where they'd be fine burning the bridge. To me the ability to get a place quickly with an app from anywhere has a good amount of value, but I'd have trouble putting an exact price on it.

Read the article. He paid $1,221 plus for the new last-minute hotel. Got refunded $399.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#616

Post by JetSpiegel »

hispanic wrote: post #605
JetSpiegel wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not stay at the hotel and avoid the hassle all together? Is it penny pinching? Irrational ideological prejudice of helping a 'startup'?

There's a number of reasons why we choose to stay at Airbnbs instead of hotels. We save money. We break out of the cookie-cutter hotel bubble. We direct our dollars toward individuals and small businesses rather than faceless corporations. We gain access to amenities such as bicycles, beach chairs, etc.

Maybe when AirBnB was a site to share you spare room/couch this would apply. With the rise of people buying entire buildings to rent on the site, professional hosting companies that sub contract another company that eventually pays some college kid under the table to deliver the keys and yell at the cleaning crew, it's about as faceless as it gets. Just with a lot more faceless faces now...

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#618

Post by MrQuincle »

vinay427 wrote: post #506
MrQuincle wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note also that if a host cancels on you at the last moment, you can't give a negative review at all. That would never happen with a hotel.

I have seen the automated messages along the lines of "host canceled booking 24h before check-in" on many or even most Airbnb listings. Is this not still a thing? You can't leave a written review, but maybe that's appropriate if you haven't actually stayed at the place.

Yes, that's indeed nowadays happening. In practice if they cancel two days before you arrive and you have fly to another continent to stay somewhere, it still sucks. Add to that for example a fair like CES and no normally priced hotel alternatives, and it's a big issue.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#619

Post by ric2b »

saghm wrote: post #381
yason wrote: post #335

The late cancellation by host without no specific penalties seems to be one of the most prevalent yet disturbing elements in this. The one who's travelling has the weakest odds of all. The traveler will be in a foreign place with no place to stay. In contrast, the host has no losing cards except some income. The rules should, thus, have been written to protect the traveler at the expense of the host because the host…

> If the host really needs to cancel they should have to put the traveler in a real hotel as an upgrade to remove all doubt of the traveler getting into a place that could be worse. They have already received the money from the traveler so they only need to pay for the difference. New scam: post a listing for a very high-end place you don't own, cancel the booking once you've been paid and book the client a cheap hot…

Obviously you'd have to issue a full refund, which solves the loophole.

Re: I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

#620

Post by ric2b »

erichocean wrote: post #467
herodotus wrote: post #327

There is a larger problem here: there seems to be no way to hold these big internet companies to account for misrepresenting their product offerings. For example, some time ago, someone on HN reported on a plagiarized Python book for sale on Amazon. ( https://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Beginner-Intermedi... ). I emailed the author of the original book,(October 4) because Amazon have a form that allows authors…

> So Amazon have, for more than a month, been told that they are selling a stolen book. And yet the listing is still there. If Amazon acted quickly, you could easily take down the listings of your competitors simply by making false claims—which has happened in the past.

Acting quickly does not mean acting blindly.

And getting a human to start looking into it within a week isn't that much to ask.

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