Why Airbnb is dead to me

#1

Post by longwave » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

Why Airbnb is dead to me
drupaler.drupalgardens.com

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#2

Post by outside1234 » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

Its equally bad as a host. I have a place that rents very well in the summer (its near the Ocean) and a group of people showed up, didn't like it for whatever reason, and AirBNB canceled the reservation with no penalty despite there being a super clear cancelation policy in place.

No recourse (customer service blew me off: "sorry, renter didn't like the bed."), no way to rent it for a week on that short of notice, I lose $1000. Really shitty experience - I prioritize Holiday Lettings now.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#3

Post by archagon » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:22 PM UTC

Wow, what a nightmare. I'd like to think that they'd have my back in this kind of situation, but I guess not.

Personally, though, I've stayed in almost 40 different European Airbnb rentals over the past year and didn't have any problems. It's not risk-free, but it's certainly better than trawling through the local equivalent of Craigslist. (Granted, I mostly stayed with people renting out a spare room, so there was probably less of a chance of them being terrible or crazy.)

As with all booking services, I always engaged my sketchiness radar before booking. Does the host sound conversational in their listing? Do the photos have the Airbnb official photographer seal? (Or do they have lots of grainy photos interspersed with unrelated photos of attractions in the city?) Do they have a fleshed out profile with photos? Reviews? References? What do they sound like when I message them? Even on a supposedly safe booking service like Airbnb, it's important to assume that each listing is sketchy until proven otherwise. You can usually tell if a host has good intentions by taking these things into consideration.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#4

Post by matthewcanty » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:26 PM UTC

Shame there are no negative reviews on his apartment to cement this all together.

I think I'm right in thinking that both parties must review one another before it is published. Therefore why would he ever review your negative experience.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#5

Post by protomyth » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:27 PM UTC

This is why hotel regulations popped up in the first place. If you don't want the government to crack down, you really need to protect your customers. If this happened to the son or daughter of a US Senator (I know it happened in Spain, but kids do take trips) then I would expect a whole world of problems.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#6

Post by MaxScheiber » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

First, sorry to hear about your experience.

I wonder if you would have any luck escalating this to Chesky, Gebbia, et al. The Airbnb founding team really seems to take pg's advice on start-ups seriously. I'm sure that they're huge proponents of delighting their users, which your experience obviously isn't an example of.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#7

Post by calbear81 » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

As a host themselves, they afforded the other host too much of a courtesy before reporting a bait and switch to AirBnB and letting them get involved. Getting the AirBnB team involved is more about leverage as the host doesn't want to get booted from the platform so they are more likely to not push you around taking you from apartment to apartment.

Also, what was the reputation and reviews on the host used?

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#8

Post by archagon » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

matthewcanty wrote: post #4

Shame there are no negative reviews on his apartment to cement this all together. I think I'm right in thinking that both parties must review one another before it is published. Therefore why would he ever review your negative experience.

No, the review gets published regardless after 14 days.

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#9

Post by Quanticles » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

It looks like Airbnb is focused on keeping their costs low instead of keeping their quality up. That's a good short-term strategy........

Re: Why Airbnb is dead to me

#10

Post by flippyhead » Mon, Sep 28, 2015, 4:34 PM UTC

I continue to use AirBnb but have been pretty disappointed in their customer service. I rent out a family cabin occasionally and someone who stayed there scratched the floor accidentally wearing winter boots with spikes on them. They admitted this, apologized and were generally totally awesome about it.

It took me months to get Airbnb to figure out how to deduct money from their damage deposit. They first said I had to call the police and get a police report, which I refused to do -- call the police on these nice tenants who already explained it was their mistake and were 100% willing to pay! Ridiculous.

Every few times we'd exchange support emails it seemed like some new person would take over and never read the past emails so I had to repeat the same stuff multiple time. Ultimately I ended up emailing the CEO after I found some blog post where he said he wanted to personally hear from everyone and anyone. He never replied but the problem magically got fixed soon thereafter.

I fear the day I end up with really terrible hosts like you did because I have no faith AirBnb will actually be there for me.

Looking forward to trying housetrip, there really need to be a solid alternative to AirBnb.