13 ms·

Why Airbnb is dead to me

358 points by longwave 11y ago

outside1234 11y ago
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.
- ghaff 11y ago
  But what should Airbnb (or any company managing rentals) do under that circumstance? The renter is doing the equivalent of a return for "item not as described." I'm perfectly willing to believe that this renter had some expectation or requirement that to your mind or mine was totally unreasonable. Or maybe they found a better deal nearby at the last moment. But there's no real way an Airbnb can start investigating the firmness of beds or other property details. The only alternative is to tilt the other way and basically make it impossible for renters to get a refund barring all but the most obviously mis-advertised rentals.
  - debacle 11y ago
    Caveat emptor.
  - josefresco 11y ago
    Day of arrival refunds don't work for any industry that relies on reservations, appointments, or rigid scheduling. It doesn't need to be "impossible" to get a refund, but being able to show up and say "no thanks" (for seemingly any reason) when the result is the business losing substantial revenue - is a bad situation for all.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Well, it often does with hotels up to 6pm or so if guaranteed with a credit card. My point is that there is a very wide variance in properties. While some walkaways will be for trivial or non-existent reasons in the minds of an average person, others will be for much more substantial reasons. Property ratings aside, it's really hard for the broker (Airbnb) to distinguish those except in the most extreme cases. As a result, you probably need a sensible default but that default is going to inherently favor either those renting or those renting out the property in the case of a dispute.
      - josefresco 11y ago
        "hotels up to 6pm" maybe big city, high volume hotels which have no problem re-booking. For smaller accommodation businesses with a limited stock, 24-48 hours is standard.
  - outside1234 11y ago
    They should stick to the contract first off. Secondly, they should look at the microsite for the listing and see that there was an exact picture of the bed.
archagon 11y ago
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.
- frandroid 11y ago
  Renting a spare room is a key differentiator. All these bad experiences in the thread here have one thing in common: they're all for a whole suite. That's basically renting from all these real estate tycoon wannabes.
  - pavornyoh 11y ago
    @Fandroid, I don't know about that analysis. My experiences have been good and bad. I rented a spare room and was kept up all night by the people in the next room if you know what I mean ..:)
matthewcanty 11y ago
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.
- archagon 11y ago
  No, the review gets published regardless after 14 days.
- spatten 11y ago
  If you both review, then the reviews show up immediately. If only one of you reviews, then the review shows up after a waiting period (I think it's ~2 weeks). So presumably the negative review will show up soon.
protomyth 11y ago
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.
- bachmeier 11y ago
  Welcome to the lemons problem. Information problems are very real in the hotel industry. Most of the customers have limited information. Akerlof (husband of Fed chair Janet Yellen) got the Nobel Prize for starting the literature. No, I do not have plans to use Airbnb. It sounded like a really bad idea from the start.
  - aianus 11y ago
    You're well-compensated for the risk you take on Airbnb, it's not like it costs the same as the Four Seasons.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      And the risk is overrated - if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can still check-in to an hotel. I find it depressing how this will probably go away, and people like me who can't afford to pay for a stay at an hotel will just lose the option of taking the risk. Hurray for the infantilization of society! /s
      - GVIrish 11y ago
        > you can still check-in to an hotel. That's assuming that you can find a hotel with vacancy easily (not always the case, especially when special events are occurring), then find transportation to get there. That's not always going to be easy if you don't speak the language, arrived to the location late at night, are traveling with kids, etc.
MaxScheiber 11y ago
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.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Doesn't sound like it, otherwise they'd prioritize customer service, and we wouldn't be heading as many of these stories.
calbear81 11y ago
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?
Quanticles 11y ago
It looks like Airbnb is focused on keeping their costs low instead of keeping their quality up. That's a good short-term strategy........
flippyhead 11y ago
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.
- ogezi 11y ago
  That's the problem with the on-demand companies' business model, you often have to put complete trust in complete strangers. This is generally dangerously. But this won't get the coverage it deserves until an "important" host is seriously injured or even killed by a guest.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    I think this is more the eBay/PayPal problem: if you are soliciting both sellers and buyers on your service, you are going to have various moments of ethical crisis when it makes absolute business sense to screw over one or the other (the two not always being in balance or not providing you the same amount of revenue). So what do you do? AirBnB without listings is like eBay without listings. (Though I've generally heard that eBay tends to come down on the pro-buyer side)
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Even without the ethical crisis, there are simply going to be situations where the true facts are simply unknowable to a customer service rep. So, do you screw over the person providing the property (who may in fact be a lying scumbag)? Or do you screw over the other person renting the property (who may be the lying scumbag)? (Or may simply have utterly unreasonable expectations.) And, yes, my understanding is that eBay evolved to simply default to the buyer being right.
patja 11y ago
Sounds like they may have gotten into the tough space where choices were few and you take a Hobson's choice and get burned. I've learned with Airbnb to be disciplined about ignoring any unreviewed listings and really only looking at listings that have at least 15 reviews over at least a year. It is clear that there are outright scammers using the site, as well as perhaps the well meaning but incompetent or those who play a little fast and loose, to be generous. I almost booked a place in London for a Christmas stay 4 months out before I discovered through my own sleuthing that 100% of the listing photos were from a real estate listing for the flat and it was for sale.
deveac 11y ago
>Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all. I don't know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn't even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting "no, it's cool, I know them"), and furthermore didn't even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred. It's nice that they were "all cool" with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and severely limited Airbnb's ability to quickly and effectively sort through the issue. A customer that didn't even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a "handshake" from the host to resolve it instead. Let's walk through the alternate scenario. Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB. Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly. No driving around in a strange city to a place you've never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books.
- Elessar 11y ago
  Have you ever travelled to a foreign country where you don't speak the language? You really need to put yourself in the tourist's shoes. If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. You rely on their ability to communicate, and if they're being kind and doing their best to make your stay comfortable, then that's fantastic. What you're suggesting is that you're going to start making international calls with some website's support staff while you have luggage on the street, no place to stay, in a foreign city and completely on your own. You're also going to blow off the only person (the host) who cares at all about your situation. Are you kidding me?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. Unless you're staying in some remote place, absolutely not! You can and should find some other place to stay unless the whole situation is very well explained. In any major city in the world, there are hotels and motels which speak English and other languages. There are also local guides if you need help making yourself understood. Just being helpless and allowing the host to take you wherever they want is not safe!
ermintrude 11y ago
I had a bad stay with airbnb. I can't be bothered to repost the whole situation but their customer service was fucking shit.
- mkw5053 11y ago
  Same here. They still owe me $500 (which they claimed in emails) and have since completely stopped responding to any emails.
autobahn 11y ago
Seems like a common theme in "sharing economy" companies - start off with a great concept and great execution, but once they become popular, some part of them just falls apart. For uber, it's the way they treat their drivers. The churn is incredible. But as long as they continue to offer cheap rides and can lure new drivers in with empty promises, they'll continue to exist.
- brianwawok 11y ago
  A sharing economy works when you have a lot of like minded people in the same social circle. Once you invite the masses and investors, you lose what made it work...
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    How can a driver be in the same social circle as a well off professional? At the end of the day, very few industries are peers between worker and client.
    - brianwawok 11y ago
      Yah right... they can't. Though the first drivers in Chicago were Hipster Musicans, which were fun.. similar culture to yuppie coders. But over time, it has moved to more and more recent immigrants who do not speak English as a first language.
- icebraining 11y ago
  What does Uber promise to drivers?
  - nikanj 11y ago
    Taxi-level income without medallion costs (renting / buying)
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
brianwawok 11y ago
When I travel I don't have time for dealing with this crap. Hence, I overpay for hotels. Not foolproof by any means, but the big chains will generally be pretty legit and have the room you ask when you get there.
- greg_harvey 11y ago
  I guess this is what I learned last week! :-(
pi-err 11y ago
TL;DR: friends had a bad experience once with Airbnb, will not use again. This is not about Airbnb as a business strategy or work place or UX etc. Speaking of UX, I do find that Airbnb does a pretty good job at managing expectations and making sure people find their fit (I don't have any figure though).
- s73v3r 11y ago
  It is entirely about AirBnB's UX. Going to the rental is the largest part of their UX. If that's a bad experience, why would anyone want to try it again.
notlisted 11y ago
Hmmm. I won't repeat my qualms with AirBnB. I'm afraid that this comment will get downvoted/banned in a bit, and like any negative post/discussion about AirBnB, the discussion will mysteriously disappear from the front page…
- icebraining 11y ago
  Do you have any links to those previous discussions?
  - notlisted 11y ago
    I don't want to tick anyone off here, I enjoy HN, and have for a long time (over 6 years). Perhaps I don't understand the ranking, but more than once active discussions just went away, with low-vote/low-interaction topics replacing them. I only see articles in my comment history from over a year ago. Search here isn't great, e.g. I can't find the article where PG himself commented on something I said. Here's a few where I participated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687 In this one I reacted to someone else with the same impression https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889 I asked for clarification on the policy, instead I got a downvote. Since that time, I'm keeping quiet.
    - dang 11y ago
      I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357? I appreciate that you don't want to "tick anyone off here", and you haven't, but you have said some things that aren't true. I think I've answered most of them at [1], but there's at least one other. It isn't true that we single anti-Airbnb stories out. We don't treat them any other way than comparable stories about something else. I think there's a general phenomenon affecting this. Once startups become hyper-successful, there's a noticeable HN backlash against them. Perhaps this is because they're no longer the underdog. Airbnb and Uber (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165) are clearly in this category, and we've noticed others. The trouble with such backlashes is that the discussions they lead to are super repetitive. Even more than the indignation, it's the repetitiveness that makes them unsuitable for HN. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239
hoopism 11y ago
Customer service is a joke. I posted this on HN about a year ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200 They turned me from being an advocate for their service to never wanting to use their service again. I travel frequently with kids, we use alternatives now.
IanDrake 11y ago
I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but rule of thumb...never use AirBnB outside your own country and that goes double for Spain[1]. 1) - Go to google, type in "AirBnB Spain", then look at the auto complete.
- robbyking 11y ago
  I'm an American, and I used AirBNB a number of times in Italy this past spring. I only booked rooms with 4.5/5.0 ratings, and only from hosts who have hundreds -- or at least dozens -- of positive reviews. My experience could not have been better.
  - archagon 11y ago
    All my Italian hosts were lovely!
leoedin 11y ago
This is a fundamental problem with online markets of any kind. There was a period in the early 2000's when "eBay SUCKS" type websites would surface regularly from angry users. But then, as now, you see both kinds of story. Ones like this one, where the seller / renter was anywhere from an outright fraud to unscrupulous, but also the other way - stories of buyers who "returned" goods and got refunds, only for the returned item turning out to be fake / faulty / nonexistent. I'm sure AirBnB have equally large problems with people who have an uneventful stay, leave and immediately lodge a complaint against the host. It sounds like AirBnB could probably be nicer about this, but equally the author of this post did violate their terms of service (which aren't unreasonable - letting people book for other people opens the door to agents and unscrupulous 3rd parties who charge a fee without adding value). It would be interesting to see the perspective of AirBnB support. I wonder how many possibly fraudulent refund claims they deal with on a daily basis?
scottmcdot 11y ago
Just tonight, my mother checked into an Airbnb in Vienna, Austria. She sent me photos of the bed which did not have new sheets, the towels which were not fresh, a band aid on the floor and some rubbish bins full of cigarettes and ash. The apartment was overall pretty dirty. The host's contact phone number goes straight to message bank (I also tried many times) and the host is not answering emails. In this situation, what do you do? She's travelling alone and in her 50s and as you can imagine, she's pretty upset. I decided to get her a hotel and called her an Uber. I then called Airbnb and they said they will attempt to contact the host and they will get back to us. She wouldn't know what to do without me and if I weren't available, she'd probably end up wandering the streets at night looking for a hotel because she'd be too upset to return to the Airbnb place. I think for now, I will stop recommending Airbnb.
- antr 11y ago
  Back in May I went to Barcelona with a friend. We booked the apartment with Airbnb. Among other issues (the address Airbnb gave us was wrong, and had to wonder the streets for a couple of hours with no response from the host, then the host turns out to be a real estate broker of some sort)... once we found the place at 10pm, it turns out that the beds had no sheets, and the broker asked us for €15 for "fresh" sheets. I found this to be a real abuse... and the real problem with Airbnb: lack of quality control of product and service.
  - matwood 11y ago
    So none of the reviews mentioned the 15 euro sheets charge? Did you leave a review stating that it was a dumb charge and rate accordingly? After booking did you contact the host through AirBnB ahead of time and ask them to verify the address and give you the quickest directions to the apt? It would be nice if all of this would be automatic, but you are dealing with individuals that may or may not understand how to be a host yet.
  - scottmcdot 11y ago
    The reviews were all very positive, so I think this may have been because the host has been caught up somewhere or has been busy with something. But it's still very irresponsible. I managed to find the host's Facebook and I would say he is around 24 years' old and studying at a university in Vienna. Had I known this, I probably would have told my mother to look elsewhere.
vchamakkala 11y ago
I think there are a handful of hosts that do not care about their guest' experience and instead are mostly focused on the financial gain of renting out their place. That being said, I'm an airbnb host who has rented out my 2nd bedroom in nyc to some of the most amazing individuals I've ever met, and many of them are some of my best friends now. It really depends on the host. And I think that 90% are fantastic.
chopete 11y ago
My ongoing first time experience forced me to create this basic question set. The realization is airbnb is no different from craigslist. There are no minimum standards/rules. There are awesome deals out there. Only people with a good question set end up choosing a better deal and the rest get stuck with bad deals. Room 1. Room size (width x length in ft) 2. What lighting do you have?. Or you have only one table lamp? 3. Is there a table? 4. Do you provide a towel? 5. Send me a picture of bed size and also the measurements. (width x length in ft) Please don't just say queen or king. I need the width and length. I have seen hosts mention the sizes incorrectly. 6. Do your personal belongins stay in the room?. Any don't touch belongings? 7. Does the room have a knob(inside) for privacy? 8. Is there a fan? 9. Total house built up area in square footage? (excluding garage) Sharing 1. How many airbnb guests stay there? 2. How many guests I share the rest room with? 3. Is there space in the fridge for me?. How much (approx)? 4. What is the typical temperature maintained in the house?. Are there guests with a requirement to keep the room warm despite me sweating? Cleaning 1. What is the cleaning schedule for house?. 1. What is the cleaning schedule for rest rooms?. 2. Who do we call if the shared rest room is soiled?. Location 1. Are there any loud sounds/noises from surroundings/roads at night?
- archagon 11y ago
  I quickly learned while traveling over the winter that my #1 question was: do you have heating?! Apparently some people get by in 0 degree weather without it somehow!
nikanj 11y ago
This July, I went on a weekend trip to Victoria with my parents who I see two or three times a year. About an hour before we should have arrived at the accommodation, our hosts calls me and tells us his son needs the place so he needs me to log on airbnb and cancel our reservation. He was _very_ persistent and kept calling me and leaving messages, despite me telling him he needs to tell airbnb himself. I guess he wanted us to take the heat for cancellation instead. I ended up spending most of my day communicating with airbnb, hotels and motels. Around 8pm I managed to score the last two hotel rooms in the city, and could finally join the rest of the family. Airbnb did pay the difference between the hotel and our original reservation, but I still lost an entire day with my family. Nowadays I only make airbnb reservations in big cities where coming up with on-the-spot backup is easy.
aianus 11y ago
You have completely the wrong expectation of how Airbnb works. The hosts are randoms and Airbnb has no way to deliver a consistent quality experience like a hotel. Airbnb is like eBay, not Amazon. You need to realize that when you get the last apartment in a city at conference-time (almost certainly not a superhost with good reviews), you're obviously taking a big gamble that it doesn't work out in order to save a few bucks. > so we had to shell out 9 nights of walk-in rate hotel fees So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river.
- bachmeier 11y ago
  > So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river. Worst case scenario for this story is that the driver takes them out of town, shoots them, and dumps their bodies into a river.
  - aeze 11y ago
    Or they get abducted by aliens, if we're talking about things that didn't happen.
  - dreamdu5t 11y ago
    Grow up.
  - phaemon 11y ago
    This is Spain we're talking about. It has a homicide rate about one sixth of the USA. It's a safe western European country.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  No, if AirBNB didn't exist, they would have booked at a hotel in advance and saved money and hassle.
  - ap3 11y ago
    Then why didn't they airbnb in advance? I just did airbnb for the first time - it's been great so far, but hotels were always plan B. I just wanted something different. I liked that I got to see reviews and logs of options for whole condos. Six people in a 3Bd/3ba condo in Cancun and I'm paying less than for a vanilla hilton hotel room with a queen bed.
xmlblog 11y ago
I will never use Airbnb again, either. Booked a flat in London that looked clean in the pictures, but was disgusting when we got there. Also wound up paying walk-in rates at a Holiday Inn (which were astronomical, but at least the room was immaculate and modern). Fortunately, I always book travel with my American Express card—and they sure know how to handle disputed charges.
davidhariri 11y ago
I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I've ever had. Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. Oh also, over the time you email their customer experience reps, they assign you a NEW customer rep each time so you have no relationship with whoever you talk to next during a conversation. Some people are understanding, others are aholes. Such a terrible experience, overall. It's a wonder they're as big as they are.
- deveac 11y ago
  >Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. You did not leave a rating or review of your unfit rental on airbnb?
  - larrys 11y ago
    So that's great but then you are doing part of the work that airbnb should be doing.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      >airbnb should be doing According to you. Paying in to something with zero or negative ratings on a reputation-based market always carries risk; it should be priced accordingly.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - deveac 11y ago
      Your opinion on who should be vetting what aside, there is very clearly material accountability built into the core of their system.
grishas 11y ago
Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco. We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big). As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts. We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately. Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind.
- mindotus 11y ago
  That really sucks...
- jenno 11y ago
  If you cancel on a guest as a host, Airbnb heavily penalizes your listings. They will be outranked by pretty much every other listing for at least a couple of months. (It happened to me and many other hosts I know.)
wehadfun 11y ago
Unless you are 21 and looking for an adventure use Hyatt, Hilton, ... when dealing with foreign countries especially if you don't speak the local language.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Eh. I'm no particular Airbnb enthusiast--indeed, I've never used it. However, I have stayed at any of a number of non-chain places around the world from the large to the tiny and I've rarely had a terrible experience. (And some of my worst hotel experience were at large chains.) Especially for business travel, I do like a degree of predictability but that doesn't mean I feel a desire to restrict my travel to where I can stay in business hotels.
  - mfringel 11y ago
    I think it's more about "governed by local hotel regulations."
    - ghaff 11y ago
      That's not what the parent wrote though. He named a couple of large international chains. (Of course "local hotel regulations" may also not amount to much in some places I've stayed but that goes with traveling.)
suyash 11y ago
Airbnb has the worst customer service, no one to respond emails etc.
LePetitDev 11y ago
On a related note, Drupal is dead to me.
RomanPushkin 11y ago
For me it's the same as hotels, but with less service. I've relocated to SFBA a year ago, and it was cheaper to rent Extended Stay America rather than AirBnB with weird rules. We had a kid, and one guy was mentioning "no dogs or kids" in his AD. That's ridiculous! DOGS OR KIDS! O-k-a-y. Will never never never use AirBnB again.
- anoonmoose 11y ago
  "No dogs or kids" in the ad is going to sound pretty fair to a lot of people on HN.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Any number of bed & breakfasts and other small properties that aren't Airbnb are "no kids." And, of course, the majority of hotels are no dogs.
  - lotsofcows 11y ago
    I think he's complaining about the manner of writing. It's very reminiscent of "No dogs, blacks or mexicans".
malyk 11y ago
Just because this thread is filled with negativity... My wife and I have stayed in a bunch of airbnb's (Aptos CA, Oregon House CA, Portland OR, Palo Alto, CA, San Diego CA, Princeville & Kapa'a HI, Seville & Barcelona (Las Ramblas) Spain, Venice & Florence & Rome Italy, and maybe another one or two that I'm forgetting) and the experience has been well above average every single time and every one of them were cheaper than the hotel alternatives. No idea what we're doing differently, but we meticulously look through reviews and make sure we exchange a few messages with each host before we book.
iamleppert 11y ago
Serves you right for owning a Drupal IT Consultancy.
ampersandy 11y ago
The root of these bad host stories seem to be that the guests arrive and don't immediately contact Airbnb about issues with the rental. Because of this, Airbnb just denies any liability and puts the blame on the renters instead of the host. This seems trivial to solve -- Airbnb should make check-ins a mandatory part of all stays, and any issues with the accommodations would obviously be included in this initial check-in. There would be no chance for a host to move you across Barcelona before realizing you've been totally screwed or before Airbnb starts denying any and all responsibility for the problem.
- dbot 11y ago
  Excellent idea (I would even add GPS confirmation), but no way Airbnb would do it. From their perspective, you are creating a new channel to lodge a complaint for every single transaction. Often, those complaints would be resolved privately between the renter and owner (or wouldn't be raised at all).
- patd 11y ago
  I've had an issue with Airbnb this summer. I contacted them within the first 24 hours (as it's the rule to get a refund) and contacted the host exclusively through Airbnb so there would be a trace. They told me that I should have left more chance to the host to fix the issue (I left the place after 20 hours and tried to get ahold of the host multiple times). They never fully refunded me even after countless mails and calls where I quoted their own terms and conditions to prove that they needed to refund me. In the end, the customer service told me that "refund" does not mean "a total refund" but whatever they're willing to give. The customer service lady was very nice but it seemed like her hands were tied and she was not allowed to just fully refund me. I'll never use them in the future.
brador 11y ago
This is the Groupon/Kickstarter/Ebay problem. Everything is awesome until something goes wrong. Then the user leaves forever, and tells their friends. Trust is broken. Eventually the loses mount and the company crumbles from bad press. Amazon fixes this with 10/10 customer service. The only known solution.
- jprince 11y ago
  I once had a terrible experience with their kindles. They shipped me one that was a dud, and when the screen went haywire in the first few days I called and they admitted that this batch had issues. Unfortunately, they told me, I would have to shell out 100$ for a new one, even though it was their fault. Even Amazon screws up royally, too. I bought a Nook and never looked back, and haven't bought a book from Amazon since.
Beltiras 11y ago
I just booked at AirBnB for the third time for an upcoming conference. The two previous times were a very good experience for me. All three times I'm getting prices way below alternative lodgings. I do take care to research the places and make sure to only use well reviewed hosts. I think that rather than make a dodgy AirBnB booking I'd pay more. I've booked hotel rooms that turned out to be rather shitty. This is a horror story to be sure. I think AirBnB dropped the ball but I can see their options narrow since the customer didn't complain immediately. They should kick the host regardless.
mschuster91 11y ago
This, my friends, is why regulation does make sense. Unregulated markets end up fucking people over.
- josefresco 11y ago
  No too much! just enough.
renderfox 11y ago
Not sure a bad Yelp review is really HN worthy...
debacle 11y ago
We had good luck with Airbnb in the past, but only because of good (great) hosts. I have a feeling therein lies the rub - Airbnb's business model assumes a good host and a good guest, and when that falls short everything falls apart.
kazinator 11y ago
Regarding the comments below the blog post, what is the point of countering him with anecdotes of good Airbnb experiences? Good experiences don't reveal anything about Airbnb itself, because the dispute mechanism isn't invoked; they are simply the result of a good host transacting with good guests (incidentally, by way of Airbnb). That's like saying, "I've had only good experiences with ABC Insurance; their premiums are low, the coverage is great and their friendly staff answered all my questions." (Wonderful; but did you ever try to collect on a claim?) Only reports of experiences of invoking the critical use-case are meaningful and relevant. A black spot in that area obliterates a thousand glowing reports about anything else.
pbreit 11y ago
Sounds like a horrific experience but unfortunately, it's hard to assign much credibility to the OP. Sounds very difficult to deal with. Like, no, a random photo from a balcony in no way proves that you weren't staying somewhere else.
- josefresco 11y ago
  That fact that they were even asked to provide "proof" is insane on so many levels.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    Yeah, it's comically insane that a company like that would not bend over backwards to appease its customers. First, make sure travelers have a place to stay. Second, treat all parties as innocent (unless it's chronic). Third, try to sort out what happened in an empathetic manner.
spikels 11y ago
This is an attempt to get a refund from AirBnB, right? Has HN become a back channel customer service platform for YC companies? Unfortunately since it seems to work so well. I expect we will see more of this.
- greg_harvey 11y ago
  Nope, it isn't. I didn't post it on HN. I didn't even have a HN account until I decided to reply to a few comments (including this one). This is simply someone so annoyed and frustrated with Airbnb's apparent indifference to bad hosts they decided to blog it and tweet the blog post. Everything else was beyond my control. And actually, the money is a side point. It was company account, meh, who cares? The REAL point is there's someone gaming Airbnb, they know this, but they're not removing this person from their listings. That's what really pees me off.
whiddershins 11y ago
I must say, anecdotally, I have friends who have had similar, very scary, air bnb experiences, even in California. I stayed in an Air BNB in Baltimore with a dog that genuinely tried to bite me. I'm great with dogs, this one was crazy. And my girlfriend and I had a similar very uncomfortable experience in Rome, being moved from place to place and having our rooms double-booked ... I can't remember whether that particular reservation was booked through Air BNB or not, but the feeling is very unsettling not to mention a time and money drain. I think the blog post is spot on, in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. Of course property damage to the host is a concern, but it can be seriously scary to be stuck somewhere strange feeling unsafe and with nowhere to go. Compare to Uber. With Uber, if a driver gets many negative ratings, they are booted. Yet there are still many many drivers available here in NYC. I've talked with drivers, and they expressed a lot of concern about their ratings and how they are perceived. Air BNB is failing to create a culture of accountability, and failing to step in quickly to make things better for people who use their marketplace. If at all possible, I think they should at least do more to address the edge cases. Unhappy, scared, customers are not going to use the service. I love Air BNB, they are not dead to me, but if they don't address this well I am afraid competition or regulation might.
- cwilkes 11y ago
  in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. I tend to think of the people that have to live next to this modern day flophouse. They didn't buy a space in a hotel, they didn't expect random people to come in at all times of the day.
1024core 11y ago
AirBnB's customer service is undergoing growing pains. We rented a place via AirBnB that seemed to have good reviews. Upon checking in, as soon as the lights were turned off, cockroaches came out and were crawling over us! So at 3AM I called AirBnB and wanted to get out. They helped me find another place, but I could not leave a review of the previous place! No wonder they had such good reviews! It defeats the purpose of a review if you can't leave really bad ones.
randyrand 11y ago
He instant booked without reading the reviews? Reviews are so important on transactions like these. Basic interneting rules.
- greg_harvey 11y ago
  Nope. "He" (me) read the reviews. They were OK. I can only assume the user has only recently started using (gaming?) the Instant Book feature, because we're the apparently the first to report a "bait and switch", but I doubt we'll be the last.
dmitrygr 11y ago
One word: chargeback Let AirBnB explain their idiotic policies to Amex/Visa/MC
warfangle 11y ago
Hotel regulations are awful!
pavornyoh 11y ago
What a story. A bit scary especially in a foreign country.
cirenehc 11y ago
I've had some horrible experience with Airbnb in LA. One place has close to perfect reviews (the lowest scored category is 8/10 in cleanliness), but the place is dirtier than a gas station's bathroom (smelly sheets, moldy showers, dirty old floor and squeaky bed). I've never met the host in person and he ran this thing like a refugee camp; there are about 50 people living in that (fairly large) complex and no one seemed happy. I went back to hotels/hostels after that experience.
unKlever 11y ago
A sample size of n=1 is an anecdote not data. Totally horrible experience but seemed to hinge on a particularly bad actor with knowledge of how best to exploit customers and airbnb. It is pretty shitty, I hope they make it right because it sounds like you acted in good faith, but this seems like a really complicated edge case. I had a similar experience this week with Dashlane (a password mgnt app) where i installed it and it corrupted >70 passwords locking me out of vital accounts. This is why my HN UN is green for instance. Customer support was totally shit for a while but I tweeted them and they responded and actually read my responses. I ended up losing all the data but they[0] eventually provided some time to look into the issue deeper as well as a free 12 month account. Should they have helped me better up front, when the data may still have been recoverable? I think NO, but want to say yes. I had a free account and didnt had non-traditional settings. So while i would gladly trade the free account for my credentials back I bear some responsibility. I AM NOT INDICATING YOU(or the writer) ARE RESPONSIBLE. My point is that some situations are really shitty and are not indicative of the experience/views of an organization. If this occurs only very rarely, conpanies can still have a great business and unfortunately some people will be casualties to circumstance [0]xavier, if you are reading this. Thanks for the account credit and making things right, Cheers!
- greg_harvey 11y ago
  Right, but an organisation is only as good as its response when something goes wrong, no? And Airbnb's response was... well...
jbverschoor 11y ago
Had a very bad experience with airbb support too.. Appartment was digusting and not as advertised. airbnb refused to help. 1500 euro gone, as we moved to something else. I've had a bit too many bad experiences with the offerings of hosts and service of airbnb. I hope this unicorn will die, and will be replaced by something proper
bouyoul420 11y ago
This happens with registered hotels and Expedia too. I had to be in Paris for a few days a couple of years ago so I chose a nice hotel on Expedia, and not very expensive as well. However, when I showed up, the hotel had no trace of the reservation. The manager didn't want to call Expedia because it would not change anything (no space left, he claimed). Instead, he very nicely called another hotel to find space for me. I even thanked him... However, the other hotel was the shittiest hotel I have ever stayed at and would probably not have survived a listing on the Internet. The manager there was crazy and the hotel was so bad they couldn't even manage to track which rooms were occupied by guests. And since it was a walk-in, I paid super high rates. While staying at that hotel, I heard multiple guests with the same story as me so it was not an isolated technical problem on the part of the local hotels (seems more than one hotel was in on it). When I complained to Expedia, it turned out the first hotel had cancelled the reservation right before I showed up so no foul for them (despite my never being told about it before showing up at the hotel). Expedia gave me a voucher in the end but the listing for that hotel stayed on the site.
- greg_harvey 11y ago
  Yup, Expedia are also terrible. I blacklisted them some years ago when they had a hotel listed as 100m from the centre of Santiago De Compostela (also in Spain) when it was actually 10km from the centre! Bit of a difference. I don't mind a mistake, but Expedia basically tried to deny all responsibility and blame the hotel. Had a real scrap to get a refund.
freedombeer 11y ago
> Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. That clearly is the business model employed by these glorified Forms, fancy photos and legal agreements companies. No silver bullet, you get what you pay for, etc, unfortunately. Little has changed, clearly. For the unfortunate visitors, I'd recommend one of the regulated accommodations in Barcelona.
damian2000 11y ago
My opinion is that when you're using something like AirBnB, you can't expect hotel level service when things go wrong... instead of making last minute decisions, research the place a bit - look through the comments, start up a thread of conversation with the host to make sure they can communicate in your language...

358 points by longwave 11y ago

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.

ghaff 11y ago
But what should Airbnb (or any company managing rentals) do under that circumstance? The renter is doing the equivalent of a return for "item not as described." I'm perfectly willing to believe that this renter had some expectation or requirement that to your mind or mine was totally unreasonable. Or maybe they found a better deal nearby at the last moment. But there's no real way an Airbnb can start investigating the firmness of beds or other property details. The only alternative is to tilt the other way and basically make it impossible for renters to get a refund barring all but the most obviously mis-advertised rentals.
- debacle 11y ago
  Caveat emptor.
- josefresco 11y ago
  Day of arrival refunds don't work for any industry that relies on reservations, appointments, or rigid scheduling. It doesn't need to be "impossible" to get a refund, but being able to show up and say "no thanks" (for seemingly any reason) when the result is the business losing substantial revenue - is a bad situation for all.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Well, it often does with hotels up to 6pm or so if guaranteed with a credit card. My point is that there is a very wide variance in properties. While some walkaways will be for trivial or non-existent reasons in the minds of an average person, others will be for much more substantial reasons. Property ratings aside, it's really hard for the broker (Airbnb) to distinguish those except in the most extreme cases. As a result, you probably need a sensible default but that default is going to inherently favor either those renting or those renting out the property in the case of a dispute.
    - josefresco 11y ago
      "hotels up to 6pm" maybe big city, high volume hotels which have no problem re-booking. For smaller accommodation businesses with a limited stock, 24-48 hours is standard.
- outside1234 11y ago
  They should stick to the contract first off. Secondly, they should look at the microsite for the listing and see that there was an exact picture of the bed.

archagon 11y ago

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.

frandroid 11y ago
Renting a spare room is a key differentiator. All these bad experiences in the thread here have one thing in common: they're all for a whole suite. That's basically renting from all these real estate tycoon wannabes.
- pavornyoh 11y ago
  @Fandroid, I don't know about that analysis. My experiences have been good and bad. I rented a spare room and was kept up all night by the people in the next room if you know what I mean ..:)

matthewcanty 11y ago

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.

archagon 11y ago
No, the review gets published regardless after 14 days.
spatten 11y ago
If you both review, then the reviews show up immediately. If only one of you reviews, then the review shows up after a waiting period (I think it's ~2 weeks). So presumably the negative review will show up soon.

protomyth 11y ago

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.

bachmeier 11y ago
Welcome to the lemons problem. Information problems are very real in the hotel industry. Most of the customers have limited information. Akerlof (husband of Fed chair Janet Yellen) got the Nobel Prize for starting the literature. No, I do not have plans to use Airbnb. It sounded like a really bad idea from the start.
- aianus 11y ago
  You're well-compensated for the risk you take on Airbnb, it's not like it costs the same as the Four Seasons.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    And the risk is overrated - if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can still check-in to an hotel. I find it depressing how this will probably go away, and people like me who can't afford to pay for a stay at an hotel will just lose the option of taking the risk. Hurray for the infantilization of society! /s
    - GVIrish 11y ago
      > you can still check-in to an hotel. That's assuming that you can find a hotel with vacancy easily (not always the case, especially when special events are occurring), then find transportation to get there. That's not always going to be easy if you don't speak the language, arrived to the location late at night, are traveling with kids, etc.

MaxScheiber 11y ago

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.

s73v3r 11y ago
Doesn't sound like it, otherwise they'd prioritize customer service, and we wouldn't be heading as many of these stories.

calbear81 11y ago

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?

Quanticles 11y ago

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

flippyhead 11y ago

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.

ogezi 11y ago
That's the problem with the on-demand companies' business model, you often have to put complete trust in complete strangers. This is generally dangerously. But this won't get the coverage it deserves until an "important" host is seriously injured or even killed by a guest.
- ethbro 11y ago
  I think this is more the eBay/PayPal problem: if you are soliciting both sellers and buyers on your service, you are going to have various moments of ethical crisis when it makes absolute business sense to screw over one or the other (the two not always being in balance or not providing you the same amount of revenue). So what do you do? AirBnB without listings is like eBay without listings. (Though I've generally heard that eBay tends to come down on the pro-buyer side)
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Even without the ethical crisis, there are simply going to be situations where the true facts are simply unknowable to a customer service rep. So, do you screw over the person providing the property (who may in fact be a lying scumbag)? Or do you screw over the other person renting the property (who may be the lying scumbag)? (Or may simply have utterly unreasonable expectations.) And, yes, my understanding is that eBay evolved to simply default to the buyer being right.

patja 11y ago

Sounds like they may have gotten into the tough space where choices were few and you take a Hobson's choice and get burned. I've learned with Airbnb to be disciplined about ignoring any unreviewed listings and really only looking at listings that have at least 15 reviews over at least a year. It is clear that there are outright scammers using the site, as well as perhaps the well meaning but incompetent or those who play a little fast and loose, to be generous. I almost booked a place in London for a Christmas stay 4 months out before I discovered through my own sleuthing that 100% of the listing photos were from a real estate listing for the flat and it was for sale.

deveac 11y ago

>Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all. I don't know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn't even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting "no, it's cool, I know them"), and furthermore didn't even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred. It's nice that they were "all cool" with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and severely limited Airbnb's ability to quickly and effectively sort through the issue. A customer that didn't even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a "handshake" from the host to resolve it instead. Let's walk through the alternate scenario. Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB. Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly. No driving around in a strange city to a place you've never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books.

Elessar 11y ago
Have you ever travelled to a foreign country where you don't speak the language? You really need to put yourself in the tourist's shoes. If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. You rely on their ability to communicate, and if they're being kind and doing their best to make your stay comfortable, then that's fantastic. What you're suggesting is that you're going to start making international calls with some website's support staff while you have luggage on the street, no place to stay, in a foreign city and completely on your own. You're also going to blow off the only person (the host) who cares at all about your situation. Are you kidding me?
- icebraining 11y ago
  If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. Unless you're staying in some remote place, absolutely not! You can and should find some other place to stay unless the whole situation is very well explained. In any major city in the world, there are hotels and motels which speak English and other languages. There are also local guides if you need help making yourself understood. Just being helpless and allowing the host to take you wherever they want is not safe!

ermintrude 11y ago

I had a bad stay with airbnb. I can't be bothered to repost the whole situation but their customer service was fucking shit.

mkw5053 11y ago
Same here. They still owe me $500 (which they claimed in emails) and have since completely stopped responding to any emails.

autobahn 11y ago

Seems like a common theme in "sharing economy" companies - start off with a great concept and great execution, but once they become popular, some part of them just falls apart. For uber, it's the way they treat their drivers. The churn is incredible. But as long as they continue to offer cheap rides and can lure new drivers in with empty promises, they'll continue to exist.

brianwawok 11y ago
A sharing economy works when you have a lot of like minded people in the same social circle. Once you invite the masses and investors, you lose what made it work...
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  How can a driver be in the same social circle as a well off professional? At the end of the day, very few industries are peers between worker and client.
  - brianwawok 11y ago
    Yah right... they can't. Though the first drivers in Chicago were Hipster Musicans, which were fun.. similar culture to yuppie coders. But over time, it has moved to more and more recent immigrants who do not speak English as a first language.
icebraining 11y ago
What does Uber promise to drivers?
- nikanj 11y ago
  Taxi-level income without medallion costs (renting / buying)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

brianwawok 11y ago

When I travel I don't have time for dealing with this crap. Hence, I overpay for hotels. Not foolproof by any means, but the big chains will generally be pretty legit and have the room you ask when you get there.

greg_harvey 11y ago
I guess this is what I learned last week! :-(

pi-err 11y ago

TL;DR: friends had a bad experience once with Airbnb, will not use again. This is not about Airbnb as a business strategy or work place or UX etc. Speaking of UX, I do find that Airbnb does a pretty good job at managing expectations and making sure people find their fit (I don't have any figure though).

s73v3r 11y ago
It is entirely about AirBnB's UX. Going to the rental is the largest part of their UX. If that's a bad experience, why would anyone want to try it again.

notlisted 11y ago

Hmmm. I won't repeat my qualms with AirBnB. I'm afraid that this comment will get downvoted/banned in a bit, and like any negative post/discussion about AirBnB, the discussion will mysteriously disappear from the front page…

icebraining 11y ago
Do you have any links to those previous discussions?
- notlisted 11y ago
  I don't want to tick anyone off here, I enjoy HN, and have for a long time (over 6 years). Perhaps I don't understand the ranking, but more than once active discussions just went away, with low-vote/low-interaction topics replacing them. I only see articles in my comment history from over a year ago. Search here isn't great, e.g. I can't find the article where PG himself commented on something I said. Here's a few where I participated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687 In this one I reacted to someone else with the same impression https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889 I asked for clarification on the policy, instead I got a downvote. Since that time, I'm keeping quiet.
  - dang 11y ago
    I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357? I appreciate that you don't want to "tick anyone off here", and you haven't, but you have said some things that aren't true. I think I've answered most of them at [1], but there's at least one other. It isn't true that we single anti-Airbnb stories out. We don't treat them any other way than comparable stories about something else. I think there's a general phenomenon affecting this. Once startups become hyper-successful, there's a noticeable HN backlash against them. Perhaps this is because they're no longer the underdog. Airbnb and Uber (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165) are clearly in this category, and we've noticed others. The trouble with such backlashes is that the discussions they lead to are super repetitive. Even more than the indignation, it's the repetitiveness that makes them unsuitable for HN. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239

hoopism 11y ago

Customer service is a joke. I posted this on HN about a year ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200 They turned me from being an advocate for their service to never wanting to use their service again. I travel frequently with kids, we use alternatives now.

IanDrake 11y ago

I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but rule of thumb...never use AirBnB outside your own country and that goes double for Spain[1]. 1) - Go to google, type in "AirBnB Spain", then look at the auto complete.

robbyking 11y ago
I'm an American, and I used AirBNB a number of times in Italy this past spring. I only booked rooms with 4.5/5.0 ratings, and only from hosts who have hundreds -- or at least dozens -- of positive reviews. My experience could not have been better.
- archagon 11y ago
  All my Italian hosts were lovely!

leoedin 11y ago

This is a fundamental problem with online markets of any kind. There was a period in the early 2000's when "eBay SUCKS" type websites would surface regularly from angry users. But then, as now, you see both kinds of story. Ones like this one, where the seller / renter was anywhere from an outright fraud to unscrupulous, but also the other way - stories of buyers who "returned" goods and got refunds, only for the returned item turning out to be fake / faulty / nonexistent. I'm sure AirBnB have equally large problems with people who have an uneventful stay, leave and immediately lodge a complaint against the host. It sounds like AirBnB could probably be nicer about this, but equally the author of this post did violate their terms of service (which aren't unreasonable - letting people book for other people opens the door to agents and unscrupulous 3rd parties who charge a fee without adding value). It would be interesting to see the perspective of AirBnB support. I wonder how many possibly fraudulent refund claims they deal with on a daily basis?

scottmcdot 11y ago

Just tonight, my mother checked into an Airbnb in Vienna, Austria. She sent me photos of the bed which did not have new sheets, the towels which were not fresh, a band aid on the floor and some rubbish bins full of cigarettes and ash. The apartment was overall pretty dirty. The host's contact phone number goes straight to message bank (I also tried many times) and the host is not answering emails. In this situation, what do you do? She's travelling alone and in her 50s and as you can imagine, she's pretty upset. I decided to get her a hotel and called her an Uber. I then called Airbnb and they said they will attempt to contact the host and they will get back to us. She wouldn't know what to do without me and if I weren't available, she'd probably end up wandering the streets at night looking for a hotel because she'd be too upset to return to the Airbnb place. I think for now, I will stop recommending Airbnb.

antr 11y ago
Back in May I went to Barcelona with a friend. We booked the apartment with Airbnb. Among other issues (the address Airbnb gave us was wrong, and had to wonder the streets for a couple of hours with no response from the host, then the host turns out to be a real estate broker of some sort)... once we found the place at 10pm, it turns out that the beds had no sheets, and the broker asked us for €15 for "fresh" sheets. I found this to be a real abuse... and the real problem with Airbnb: lack of quality control of product and service.
- matwood 11y ago
  So none of the reviews mentioned the 15 euro sheets charge? Did you leave a review stating that it was a dumb charge and rate accordingly? After booking did you contact the host through AirBnB ahead of time and ask them to verify the address and give you the quickest directions to the apt? It would be nice if all of this would be automatic, but you are dealing with individuals that may or may not understand how to be a host yet.
- scottmcdot 11y ago
  The reviews were all very positive, so I think this may have been because the host has been caught up somewhere or has been busy with something. But it's still very irresponsible. I managed to find the host's Facebook and I would say he is around 24 years' old and studying at a university in Vienna. Had I known this, I probably would have told my mother to look elsewhere.

vchamakkala 11y ago

I think there are a handful of hosts that do not care about their guest' experience and instead are mostly focused on the financial gain of renting out their place. That being said, I'm an airbnb host who has rented out my 2nd bedroom in nyc to some of the most amazing individuals I've ever met, and many of them are some of my best friends now. It really depends on the host. And I think that 90% are fantastic.

chopete 11y ago

My ongoing first time experience forced me to create this basic question set. The realization is airbnb is no different from craigslist. There are no minimum standards/rules. There are awesome deals out there. Only people with a good question set end up choosing a better deal and the rest get stuck with bad deals. Room 1. Room size (width x length in ft) 2. What lighting do you have?. Or you have only one table lamp? 3. Is there a table? 4. Do you provide a towel? 5. Send me a picture of bed size and also the measurements. (width x length in ft) Please don't just say queen or king. I need the width and length. I have seen hosts mention the sizes incorrectly. 6. Do your personal belongins stay in the room?. Any don't touch belongings? 7. Does the room have a knob(inside) for privacy? 8. Is there a fan? 9. Total house built up area in square footage? (excluding garage) Sharing 1. How many airbnb guests stay there? 2. How many guests I share the rest room with? 3. Is there space in the fridge for me?. How much (approx)? 4. What is the typical temperature maintained in the house?. Are there guests with a requirement to keep the room warm despite me sweating? Cleaning 1. What is the cleaning schedule for house?. 1. What is the cleaning schedule for rest rooms?. 2. Who do we call if the shared rest room is soiled?. Location 1. Are there any loud sounds/noises from surroundings/roads at night?

archagon 11y ago
I quickly learned while traveling over the winter that my #1 question was: do you have heating?! Apparently some people get by in 0 degree weather without it somehow!

nikanj 11y ago

This July, I went on a weekend trip to Victoria with my parents who I see two or three times a year. About an hour before we should have arrived at the accommodation, our hosts calls me and tells us his son needs the place so he needs me to log on airbnb and cancel our reservation. He was _very_ persistent and kept calling me and leaving messages, despite me telling him he needs to tell airbnb himself. I guess he wanted us to take the heat for cancellation instead. I ended up spending most of my day communicating with airbnb, hotels and motels. Around 8pm I managed to score the last two hotel rooms in the city, and could finally join the rest of the family. Airbnb did pay the difference between the hotel and our original reservation, but I still lost an entire day with my family. Nowadays I only make airbnb reservations in big cities where coming up with on-the-spot backup is easy.

aianus 11y ago

You have completely the wrong expectation of how Airbnb works. The hosts are randoms and Airbnb has no way to deliver a consistent quality experience like a hotel. Airbnb is like eBay, not Amazon. You need to realize that when you get the last apartment in a city at conference-time (almost certainly not a superhost with good reviews), you're obviously taking a big gamble that it doesn't work out in order to save a few bucks. > so we had to shell out 9 nights of walk-in rate hotel fees So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river.

bachmeier 11y ago
> So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river. Worst case scenario for this story is that the driver takes them out of town, shoots them, and dumps their bodies into a river.
- aeze 11y ago
  Or they get abducted by aliens, if we're talking about things that didn't happen.
- dreamdu5t 11y ago
  Grow up.
- phaemon 11y ago
  This is Spain we're talking about. It has a homicide rate about one sixth of the USA. It's a safe western European country.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
No, if AirBNB didn't exist, they would have booked at a hotel in advance and saved money and hassle.
- ap3 11y ago
  Then why didn't they airbnb in advance? I just did airbnb for the first time - it's been great so far, but hotels were always plan B. I just wanted something different. I liked that I got to see reviews and logs of options for whole condos. Six people in a 3Bd/3ba condo in Cancun and I'm paying less than for a vanilla hilton hotel room with a queen bed.

xmlblog 11y ago

I will never use Airbnb again, either. Booked a flat in London that looked clean in the pictures, but was disgusting when we got there. Also wound up paying walk-in rates at a Holiday Inn (which were astronomical, but at least the room was immaculate and modern). Fortunately, I always book travel with my American Express card—and they sure know how to handle disputed charges.

davidhariri 11y ago

I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I've ever had. Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. Oh also, over the time you email their customer experience reps, they assign you a NEW customer rep each time so you have no relationship with whoever you talk to next during a conversation. Some people are understanding, others are aholes. Such a terrible experience, overall. It's a wonder they're as big as they are.

deveac 11y ago
>Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. You did not leave a rating or review of your unfit rental on airbnb?
- larrys 11y ago
  So that's great but then you are doing part of the work that airbnb should be doing.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    >airbnb should be doing According to you. Paying in to something with zero or negative ratings on a reputation-based market always carries risk; it should be priced accordingly.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deveac 11y ago
    Your opinion on who should be vetting what aside, there is very clearly material accountability built into the core of their system.

grishas 11y ago

Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco. We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big). As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts. We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately. Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind.

mindotus 11y ago
That really sucks...
jenno 11y ago
If you cancel on a guest as a host, Airbnb heavily penalizes your listings. They will be outranked by pretty much every other listing for at least a couple of months. (It happened to me and many other hosts I know.)

wehadfun 11y ago

Unless you are 21 and looking for an adventure use Hyatt, Hilton, ... when dealing with foreign countries especially if you don't speak the local language.

ghaff 11y ago
Eh. I'm no particular Airbnb enthusiast--indeed, I've never used it. However, I have stayed at any of a number of non-chain places around the world from the large to the tiny and I've rarely had a terrible experience. (And some of my worst hotel experience were at large chains.) Especially for business travel, I do like a degree of predictability but that doesn't mean I feel a desire to restrict my travel to where I can stay in business hotels.
- mfringel 11y ago
  I think it's more about "governed by local hotel regulations."
  - ghaff 11y ago
    That's not what the parent wrote though. He named a couple of large international chains. (Of course "local hotel regulations" may also not amount to much in some places I've stayed but that goes with traveling.)

suyash 11y ago

Airbnb has the worst customer service, no one to respond emails etc.

LePetitDev 11y ago

On a related note, Drupal is dead to me.

RomanPushkin 11y ago

For me it's the same as hotels, but with less service. I've relocated to SFBA a year ago, and it was cheaper to rent Extended Stay America rather than AirBnB with weird rules. We had a kid, and one guy was mentioning "no dogs or kids" in his AD. That's ridiculous! DOGS OR KIDS! O-k-a-y. Will never never never use AirBnB again.

anoonmoose 11y ago
"No dogs or kids" in the ad is going to sound pretty fair to a lot of people on HN.
ghaff 11y ago
Any number of bed & breakfasts and other small properties that aren't Airbnb are "no kids." And, of course, the majority of hotels are no dogs.
- lotsofcows 11y ago
  I think he's complaining about the manner of writing. It's very reminiscent of "No dogs, blacks or mexicans".

malyk 11y ago

Just because this thread is filled with negativity... My wife and I have stayed in a bunch of airbnb's (Aptos CA, Oregon House CA, Portland OR, Palo Alto, CA, San Diego CA, Princeville & Kapa'a HI, Seville & Barcelona (Las Ramblas) Spain, Venice & Florence & Rome Italy, and maybe another one or two that I'm forgetting) and the experience has been well above average every single time and every one of them were cheaper than the hotel alternatives. No idea what we're doing differently, but we meticulously look through reviews and make sure we exchange a few messages with each host before we book.

iamleppert 11y ago

Serves you right for owning a Drupal IT Consultancy.

ampersandy 11y ago

The root of these bad host stories seem to be that the guests arrive and don't immediately contact Airbnb about issues with the rental. Because of this, Airbnb just denies any liability and puts the blame on the renters instead of the host. This seems trivial to solve -- Airbnb should make check-ins a mandatory part of all stays, and any issues with the accommodations would obviously be included in this initial check-in. There would be no chance for a host to move you across Barcelona before realizing you've been totally screwed or before Airbnb starts denying any and all responsibility for the problem.

dbot 11y ago
Excellent idea (I would even add GPS confirmation), but no way Airbnb would do it. From their perspective, you are creating a new channel to lodge a complaint for every single transaction. Often, those complaints would be resolved privately between the renter and owner (or wouldn't be raised at all).
patd 11y ago
I've had an issue with Airbnb this summer. I contacted them within the first 24 hours (as it's the rule to get a refund) and contacted the host exclusively through Airbnb so there would be a trace. They told me that I should have left more chance to the host to fix the issue (I left the place after 20 hours and tried to get ahold of the host multiple times). They never fully refunded me even after countless mails and calls where I quoted their own terms and conditions to prove that they needed to refund me. In the end, the customer service told me that "refund" does not mean "a total refund" but whatever they're willing to give. The customer service lady was very nice but it seemed like her hands were tied and she was not allowed to just fully refund me. I'll never use them in the future.

brador 11y ago

This is the Groupon/Kickstarter/Ebay problem. Everything is awesome until something goes wrong. Then the user leaves forever, and tells their friends. Trust is broken. Eventually the loses mount and the company crumbles from bad press. Amazon fixes this with 10/10 customer service. The only known solution.

jprince 11y ago
I once had a terrible experience with their kindles. They shipped me one that was a dud, and when the screen went haywire in the first few days I called and they admitted that this batch had issues. Unfortunately, they told me, I would have to shell out 100$ for a new one, even though it was their fault. Even Amazon screws up royally, too. I bought a Nook and never looked back, and haven't bought a book from Amazon since.

Beltiras 11y ago

I just booked at AirBnB for the third time for an upcoming conference. The two previous times were a very good experience for me. All three times I'm getting prices way below alternative lodgings. I do take care to research the places and make sure to only use well reviewed hosts. I think that rather than make a dodgy AirBnB booking I'd pay more. I've booked hotel rooms that turned out to be rather shitty. This is a horror story to be sure. I think AirBnB dropped the ball but I can see their options narrow since the customer didn't complain immediately. They should kick the host regardless.

mschuster91 11y ago

This, my friends, is why regulation does make sense. Unregulated markets end up fucking people over.

josefresco 11y ago
No too much! just enough.

renderfox 11y ago

Not sure a bad Yelp review is really HN worthy...

debacle 11y ago

We had good luck with Airbnb in the past, but only because of good (great) hosts. I have a feeling therein lies the rub - Airbnb's business model assumes a good host and a good guest, and when that falls short everything falls apart.

kazinator 11y ago

Regarding the comments below the blog post, what is the point of countering him with anecdotes of good Airbnb experiences? Good experiences don't reveal anything about Airbnb itself, because the dispute mechanism isn't invoked; they are simply the result of a good host transacting with good guests (incidentally, by way of Airbnb). That's like saying, "I've had only good experiences with ABC Insurance; their premiums are low, the coverage is great and their friendly staff answered all my questions." (Wonderful; but did you ever try to collect on a claim?) Only reports of experiences of invoking the critical use-case are meaningful and relevant. A black spot in that area obliterates a thousand glowing reports about anything else.

pbreit 11y ago

Sounds like a horrific experience but unfortunately, it's hard to assign much credibility to the OP. Sounds very difficult to deal with. Like, no, a random photo from a balcony in no way proves that you weren't staying somewhere else.

josefresco 11y ago
That fact that they were even asked to provide "proof" is insane on so many levels.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Yeah, it's comically insane that a company like that would not bend over backwards to appease its customers. First, make sure travelers have a place to stay. Second, treat all parties as innocent (unless it's chronic). Third, try to sort out what happened in an empathetic manner.

spikels 11y ago

This is an attempt to get a refund from AirBnB, right? Has HN become a back channel customer service platform for YC companies? Unfortunately since it seems to work so well. I expect we will see more of this.

greg_harvey 11y ago
Nope, it isn't. I didn't post it on HN. I didn't even have a HN account until I decided to reply to a few comments (including this one). This is simply someone so annoyed and frustrated with Airbnb's apparent indifference to bad hosts they decided to blog it and tweet the blog post. Everything else was beyond my control. And actually, the money is a side point. It was company account, meh, who cares? The REAL point is there's someone gaming Airbnb, they know this, but they're not removing this person from their listings. That's what really pees me off.

whiddershins 11y ago

I must say, anecdotally, I have friends who have had similar, very scary, air bnb experiences, even in California. I stayed in an Air BNB in Baltimore with a dog that genuinely tried to bite me. I'm great with dogs, this one was crazy. And my girlfriend and I had a similar very uncomfortable experience in Rome, being moved from place to place and having our rooms double-booked ... I can't remember whether that particular reservation was booked through Air BNB or not, but the feeling is very unsettling not to mention a time and money drain. I think the blog post is spot on, in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. Of course property damage to the host is a concern, but it can be seriously scary to be stuck somewhere strange feeling unsafe and with nowhere to go. Compare to Uber. With Uber, if a driver gets many negative ratings, they are booted. Yet there are still many many drivers available here in NYC. I've talked with drivers, and they expressed a lot of concern about their ratings and how they are perceived. Air BNB is failing to create a culture of accountability, and failing to step in quickly to make things better for people who use their marketplace. If at all possible, I think they should at least do more to address the edge cases. Unhappy, scared, customers are not going to use the service. I love Air BNB, they are not dead to me, but if they don't address this well I am afraid competition or regulation might.

cwilkes 11y ago
in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. I tend to think of the people that have to live next to this modern day flophouse. They didn't buy a space in a hotel, they didn't expect random people to come in at all times of the day.

1024core 11y ago

AirBnB's customer service is undergoing growing pains. We rented a place via AirBnB that seemed to have good reviews. Upon checking in, as soon as the lights were turned off, cockroaches came out and were crawling over us! So at 3AM I called AirBnB and wanted to get out. They helped me find another place, but I could not leave a review of the previous place! No wonder they had such good reviews! It defeats the purpose of a review if you can't leave really bad ones.

randyrand 11y ago

He instant booked without reading the reviews? Reviews are so important on transactions like these. Basic interneting rules.

greg_harvey 11y ago
Nope. "He" (me) read the reviews. They were OK. I can only assume the user has only recently started using (gaming?) the Instant Book feature, because we're the apparently the first to report a "bait and switch", but I doubt we'll be the last.

dmitrygr 11y ago

One word: chargeback Let AirBnB explain their idiotic policies to Amex/Visa/MC

warfangle 11y ago

Hotel regulations are awful!

pavornyoh 11y ago

What a story. A bit scary especially in a foreign country.

cirenehc 11y ago

I've had some horrible experience with Airbnb in LA. One place has close to perfect reviews (the lowest scored category is 8/10 in cleanliness), but the place is dirtier than a gas station's bathroom (smelly sheets, moldy showers, dirty old floor and squeaky bed). I've never met the host in person and he ran this thing like a refugee camp; there are about 50 people living in that (fairly large) complex and no one seemed happy. I went back to hotels/hostels after that experience.

unKlever 11y ago

A sample size of n=1 is an anecdote not data. Totally horrible experience but seemed to hinge on a particularly bad actor with knowledge of how best to exploit customers and airbnb. It is pretty shitty, I hope they make it right because it sounds like you acted in good faith, but this seems like a really complicated edge case. I had a similar experience this week with Dashlane (a password mgnt app) where i installed it and it corrupted >70 passwords locking me out of vital accounts. This is why my HN UN is green for instance. Customer support was totally shit for a while but I tweeted them and they responded and actually read my responses. I ended up losing all the data but they[0] eventually provided some time to look into the issue deeper as well as a free 12 month account. Should they have helped me better up front, when the data may still have been recoverable? I think NO, but want to say yes. I had a free account and didnt had non-traditional settings. So while i would gladly trade the free account for my credentials back I bear some responsibility. I AM NOT INDICATING YOU(or the writer) ARE RESPONSIBLE. My point is that some situations are really shitty and are not indicative of the experience/views of an organization. If this occurs only very rarely, conpanies can still have a great business and unfortunately some people will be casualties to circumstance [0]xavier, if you are reading this. Thanks for the account credit and making things right, Cheers!

greg_harvey 11y ago
Right, but an organisation is only as good as its response when something goes wrong, no? And Airbnb's response was... well...

jbverschoor 11y ago

Had a very bad experience with airbb support too.. Appartment was digusting and not as advertised. airbnb refused to help. 1500 euro gone, as we moved to something else. I've had a bit too many bad experiences with the offerings of hosts and service of airbnb. I hope this unicorn will die, and will be replaced by something proper

bouyoul420 11y ago

This happens with registered hotels and Expedia too. I had to be in Paris for a few days a couple of years ago so I chose a nice hotel on Expedia, and not very expensive as well. However, when I showed up, the hotel had no trace of the reservation. The manager didn't want to call Expedia because it would not change anything (no space left, he claimed). Instead, he very nicely called another hotel to find space for me. I even thanked him... However, the other hotel was the shittiest hotel I have ever stayed at and would probably not have survived a listing on the Internet. The manager there was crazy and the hotel was so bad they couldn't even manage to track which rooms were occupied by guests. And since it was a walk-in, I paid super high rates. While staying at that hotel, I heard multiple guests with the same story as me so it was not an isolated technical problem on the part of the local hotels (seems more than one hotel was in on it). When I complained to Expedia, it turned out the first hotel had cancelled the reservation right before I showed up so no foul for them (despite my never being told about it before showing up at the hotel). Expedia gave me a voucher in the end but the listing for that hotel stayed on the site.

greg_harvey 11y ago
Yup, Expedia are also terrible. I blacklisted them some years ago when they had a hotel listed as 100m from the centre of Santiago De Compostela (also in Spain) when it was actually 10km from the centre! Bit of a difference. I don't mind a mistake, but Expedia basically tried to deny all responsibility and blame the hotel. Had a real scrap to get a refund.

freedombeer 11y ago

> Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. That clearly is the business model employed by these glorified Forms, fancy photos and legal agreements companies. No silver bullet, you get what you pay for, etc, unfortunately. Little has changed, clearly. For the unfortunate visitors, I'd recommend one of the regulated accommodations in Barcelona.

damian2000 11y ago

My opinion is that when you're using something like AirBnB, you can't expect hotel level service when things go wrong... instead of making last minute decisions, research the place a bit - look through the comments, start up a thread of conversation with the host to make sure they can communicate in your language...