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How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

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Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#71

Post by vasco »

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.

I used airbnb for a couple of years but soon became apparent that booking through a hotel website directly was cheaper and lots of times included breakfast and you don't have to be their housekeeping at the end. I don't know why people still do it. Since then I've only used it as backup for last minute bookings in the middle of nowhere for just a night if I can't camp because it's raining.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#72

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

avalys wrote: post #19
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…

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

And nothing of value was lost.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#73

Post by JumpCrisscross »

che_shirecat wrote: post #62
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is how the service is going to work - why would I want to be part of it? I'm not interested in playing some VC's network effects game. The era of free money is over for now, they're going to want business soon.

You assume you have a choice in playing. Most of the supply will never consider listing on multiple marketplaces, because its a massive hassle. $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market, they have strong financials and are massively profitable. The growth-at-all-costs play DID work, and now you have no choice but to bend the knee. Edge cases like this will never materially affect their business.

Just have a friend use their account. Or make a new account. Or use VRBO or a number of Airbnb’s competitors. Or use a sock Airbnb account to connect with a host and then negotiate directly.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#74

Post by stavros »

I don't know why nobody is suggesting this, but wouldn't the simplest thing be for the author to say "oh oops, yeah, OK, I'll stay there then" and then just... not stay?

What was the host going to do, go make the guest show ID to verify they're the author?

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#75

Post by lotsofpulp »

bboygravity wrote: post #66
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.

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.

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.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#76

Post by delegate »

There was a time, not so long ago, when you could 'fix' the things that didn't work in the world by building a new app or website. This is how airbnb came about.

Sadly, that is a lot harder now, because all the apps have already been built and they're huge and have all the users. And now millions of people have to deal with the side effects or poorly built or abusive online services which are too big to disrupt or change. Policies upon policies, which, when applied to particular cases mean 'you gave us your money, now it's ours and you get nothing in return and we'll get away with it'.

I think time is ripe for new disruptions.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#77

Post by ghaff »

vasco wrote: post #53
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 for…

Are they going to have bed checks?

But depending on the circumstances of how the rental is handled with respect to checkin etc., if the host is going to be an ass, now you have someone else thinking they have a bed and the host won't let them--because you already told them you won't be there.

It does sound in this case though that they could have just checked in with their friend and then taken off.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#78

Post by ralph84 »

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…

Meh, Amex denied my chargeback when StubHub was illegally refusing refunds for events canceled due to covid. I don’t think there is any card out there that hasn’t gotten much tougher on chargebacks recently due to both the covid shitshow and the massive increase in chargeback fraud.

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#79

Post by zeroonetwothree »

londons_explore wrote: post #43
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…

Are you actually likely to win this chargeback? I'm sure that airbnb made the terms very clear in their million page T&C's document...

He paid for a service they didn’t provide. So there is definitely some argument to it.

I guess they could say they will still provide the service? lol

Re: How to lose $950 quickly on Airbnb

#80

Post by zeroonetwothree »

goshakkk wrote: post #35
grandpoobah wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nicky (from the movie Casino): Where the f** do you get off talking to people about me behind my back going over my head? I'm guessing if he does a chargeback he gets banned from AirBnB.

This is correct. I had an issue with an Airbnb at some point that Airbnb was struggling to resolve. When I said "whatever, I'll just dispute the charge", the rep said that it is their policy to permanently suspend an account when a user initiates a chargeback. Not "may" but "definitely will". The issue did end up getting resolved after countless phone calls and escalating the issue to supervisors of supervisors but

That seems like more a ‘pro’ than a ‘con’
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