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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

#81

Post by tluyben2 »

soco wrote: post #51
brabel wrote: post #28

I hope the OP is well and managed to find better accomodation. If it was me, I would bit the bullet and just write off the place and check into the nearest hotel as soon as possible. But regarding fake hosts: I think this is standard practice on BnB. Nobody wants to expose their real names on Bnb and be subject to abuse by unhappy guests... unfortunately that's the reality of it. From the host's point of view, I can…

I had a similar (bad) adventure on Booking.com - dirt, crawlies, so I packed and went somewhere else. Booking.com didn't do anything about refunding "oh we contacted the host and he said nah" so I called the credit card company who refunded me the transaction. Lesson learned. From then on I check Booking.com for locations then compare the offers on hotel sites and lo, often they're cheaper when booked directly. And r…

This is the reason we stick to the same hotel chains we know that are good whenever we can; cannot really go wrong with higher tier french chains (not only in France; we used them in India, China, Thailand as well).

We often find that all in all the prices are not so different from airbnbs but with a lot more risk; so when you think about it, a E1200 airbnb for a month (which is hard to find in lisbon, by the way) vs a E1500 hotel, I would always pick the hotel; daily cleaning, breakfast included (usually so much I don't need anything further) and easy to cancel, extend or completely just get my money back or get relocated (especially when using the same chain like Accor).

I had awful experiences with booking.com and very good experiences with hotels.com. More than once, they rebooked us in far nicer and more expensive hotels after complaining. I found our favourite hotel that way; our booked hotel was overbooked and pretty crappy; the staff was nasty about it; one call and we got put up in a hotel 5x the price for the same number of days (2 weeks) instead swiftly and at their cost. More or less in the middle of a paradise.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#82

Post by Nextgrid »

Fnoord wrote: post #62
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm, I've never used it, but something like Silkroad worked, it did not have trust issues. To me it reads like they try to save pennies on customer support.

The differences between Silk Road and Airbnb is that the former didn't have lots of investors and techbros to pay returns to, so they could actually offer a fair escrow service and still remain profitable, where as Airbnb has to commit fraud by pitching you an "insurance" service that never actually pays out because doing so would lower or even negate the techbros' returns.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#83

Post by nobodyandproud »

ceejayoz wrote: post #73
elforce002 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family went to an Airbnb (basically they were selling themselves as sort of resort) and when my wife saw she had to cook, etc... She was really mad. The listing didn't say it. Long history short, never again. We're going to resorts and hotels ever since. The extra money is not that much since Airbnb basically ramping up their prices.

I’ve never seen an AirBnB listing say you have to cook, because it’s assumed.

“BnB” means bed and breakfast, which of course has lost its meaning with Airbnb.

I knew someone whose family ran a small bed-and-breakfast (pre-web).

I don’t think they cooked all 3 meals but they did at least provide breakfast and brownbag lunch.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#84

Post by [deleted] »

elforce002 wrote: post #58
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It'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…

My family went to an Airbnb (basically they were selling themselves as sort of resort) and when my wife saw she had to cook, etc... She was really mad. The listing didn't say it. Long history short, never again. We're going to resorts and hotels ever since. The extra money is not that much since Airbnb basically ramping up their prices.

[deleted]

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#85

Post by Nextgrid »

mavu wrote: post #79

> AirBnB might seem like they care, they might seem like they have processes and teams in place to take care of you but they do not. I am always surprised that people are surprised by this. This is what those companies do. AirBnB, Uber, deliveroo, twitter, whatever. It's what they mean when they talk about "disrupt the market". Offer a service with the bare minimum of humans (underpaid as much as possible). No concer…

> I am always surprised that people are surprised by this

In general, people assume good faith and law-abiding behavior, partly because when regular people don't abide by the law (even inadvertently), it catches up with them fairly quickly.

The surprising bit is that when companies break the law, there are no consequences. What Airbnb is doing here is effectively fraud, they've misled the customer into thinking they were covered by an insurance policy or some sort of money-back guarantee, but are not honoring their part of the bargain.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#86

Post by djray »

dsego wrote: post #50
JadoJodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, I stopped reading after this, seems like whining from someone without skills to deal with adulthood. In the case where the terms of the living arrangement are “you can stay here 30 days for free, but you’ll need to take care of any issues you come upon yourself.”, this would be an appropriate response. In this case, as mentioned in the article, they are “you can stay here for 30 days for $3,000”. Totally…

Sure, and as a potential home buyer in croatia, I have my qualms with airbnb and wealthy young western tourists causing every dump to be rented out and driving up real-estate prices. I just think that writing about a leaking flush tank like it's some kind of emergency doesn't make the case against airbnb hosts stronger.

You really should read the full article before commenting. The apartment was in breach of several local laws (for example, no working fire extinguisher or first aid kit, inadequate signage, non-working lock), and the electrical wiring was faulty, causing 2 people to be shocked. The lighting circuit had totally failed by the time the OP wrote the article. It certainly wasn't someone moaning about a minor issue, and it's not too much to ask for a $3000-per-month rental to be excellent quality and not...you know, try to kill you.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#87

Post by roenxi »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It'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 don't care if they're banned or reported. They'll just make a new fake account. Low ratings? No problem, just pay for some fake reviews.

Sorry, just a quick check - are you saying that rhetorically or do you mean it? Because as far as I know AirBNB relies on getting a genuine address in the system to work, and that is difficult to fake.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#88

Post by badcppdev »

elforce002 wrote: post #58
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It'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…

My family went to an Airbnb (basically they were selling themselves as sort of resort) and when my wife saw she had to cook, etc... She was really mad. The listing didn't say it. Long history short, never again. We're going to resorts and hotels ever since. The extra money is not that much since Airbnb basically ramping up their prices.

You make it sound like you weren't affected by the need to cook? Do you know how to cook?

Edit: If you weren't on that trip then please accept my apologies.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#89

Post by nobodyandproud »

specproc wrote: post #66
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

It'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…

Hotels are great. They create jobs, they don't distort property markets in the same way as AirBnB, and you get breakfast!

To add to that: Hotels are rightly regulated.

The consumer is naturally disadvantaged: They can’t assess until they arrive, they must reserve in advance, and packing up and going elsewhere is often not an easy option.

Though I’ll add that even regulated hotels can be a hit or miss experience.

Re: Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

#90

Post by ethbr0 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #69
mcculley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It changed when it turned into a big VC thing. All of the “Uber for X” models are fundamentally evil at scale. The founders vision is irrelevant to the investors need for return. 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…

Post-Google, I don't think there's any excuse for founders of marketplaces / platforms to ignore the ultimate metastasization of their business models.

If you are wildly successful (oh, to be so lucky), what will your company be forced to optimize?

Mid-years Amazon's radically generous customer service refunds and Etsy's seller revolt yanked their courses away from volume optimization for a few years... but it's their inevitable end state for boosting revenue. No public company can resist maximizing revenue by any means available, and especially when no other plausible alternatives are available.

So think really hard on how to set up a marketplace / platform with a business model that mixes in more user-aligned and sustainable goals? Looking at you, Apple...

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