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> Try to get refund from AirBnb for misprepresentation or deliberate omissions of negative points. -I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to c

by lb1lf 7y ago

> Try to get refund from AirBnb for misprepresentation or deliberate omissions of negative points. -I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to country, but after using AirBnb 30+ times traveling with wife and three kids in Northern/Central Europe, I’ve only had two issues - once the place we were to stay was double-booked (and we arrived last!); the other it turned out what was described as a ‘bedroom’ in the listing was a storage room with no windows, hot water tank, a few shelves packed with all sorts of junk and barely room for a dirty mattress on the floor. In both cases AirBnb promptly decided I was due a refund, my only minor gripe being it took a couple of weeks before the money was actually refunded.

bluGill 7y ago
I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW. (good customer service says the replacement will be better, hotels try to reserve their best suites until last just to ensure that they have the better room around just in case). I'm some new city and I want to get my family to sleep...
- lb1lf 7y ago
  >I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW. -Don’t get me wrong; I’d much rather have no fuss at all - but when a bad experience occurred, AirBnb were better than I had feared with regards to setting things right. The double booking was after a ten-hour drive with kids aged 10, 5 and 3 in the back seat. I didn’t need that. Luckily, the host had friends nearby who shacked us up for the night, so disaster was averted - but this was way out in the Swedish boonies and I envisaged having to drive another couple of hours before finding a hotel.
- 205guy 7y ago
  To me it sounds as if you are saying "I want the charm\location\social experience of staying with a local resident AND I want the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of the hotel industry AND I don't want to pay for the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of a hotel." As with software, pick two.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Airbnb has functionally became where it is expected to get the latter two. When I've used Airbnb I have never expected nor cared about the "charm" or the "local resident", it's been a de-facto hotel. If there was a problem, of course I would expect Airbnb to do their job. Why wouldn't you?
    - 205guy 7y ago
      I'm not defending AirBnB, because they totally enable and profit from scams as documented in the original article. But it is just the user expecting to get hotel services (rebooking and room swaps) from a non-hotel (whether genuine homestay or micro-hotel-entrepreneur). AirBnB wont play down that expectation because again they profit more from it, but from the website and concept it is clear that you are dealing with random unprofessional strangers with a minimum of guarantees. Its kinda like the Uber contractor-vs-employee categorization for drivers. AirBnB should definitely do a better job, but I maintain the risks are inherent in the business model, and you and the other users want the benefits of the risk (lower prices), without accepting the consequences of the risk.
      - thw0rted 7y ago
        To be fair, I expect the major corporation to have the "resources of a hotel" and handle the rebooking/room swap. They get a big fee on every booking, right? Am I just paying tens-to-hundreds per booking for the privilege of using their search engine and (apparently worthless) rating system?
    - hispanic 7y ago
      I completely disagree. I never start an Airbnb search assuming that the hosts are hospitality professionals. I don't expect hotel-level standards. In fact, my spidey-sense goes into yellow-alert when I come across a listing that appears to be for a hotel.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    I don't want to stay with a local resident - in fact the only times I've stayed at an AirBnB (twice so not a significant sample) I never saw the owner, we just got the code to the lock box and used the house for a few days. This is a hotel. I'd stay with a hotel (and sometimes do) if they would offer me as many bedrooms and a kitchen to work with.
jschwartzi 7y ago
When my fiance and I stayed at a place in Paia on Maui, the place looked immaculate from the pictures. But when we got there it was full of cockroaches. We had literally just gotten in at like 4 pm, put groceries down on the counter, and the little buggers were on them almost immediately. We were exhausted and didn't have the energy to really do anything after our 6 hour plane flight. The hosts came in and tried to resolve things first by removing all the appliances and then by offering us a bribe. I had documented all of this on the AirBnB website via private messages, taken pictures of the cockroaches, and found a can of bug spray(the hosts knew they had an ongoing problem and still rented to us!) to spray the roaches with. They were falling out of every crevice that I sprayed in the kitchen. We ended up spending a very restless night there, and in the morning I found a single roach in the bathroom. We were going to move out the next day, but ended up scrambling to find a hotel room in Maui that afternoon after driving the road to Hana. When I called AirBnB to report the cockroaches the representative basically said he couldn't guarantee me any kind of refund, and moreover that I should be used to staying in "less than clean conditions" as a bachelor who has traveled for business. I was flabbergasted. They eventually got us a refund but I have never had such a terrible customer service experience from any company, period. I will never stay in AirBnB again. Evidently they don't enforce any standards of cleanliness and they take all hosts at their words as to the fitness of the property. The CSR that initially handled my case was a huge asshole and made me feel like he didn't care about me at all. The later CSRs were better. Staying in an AirBnB was the most stressful vacation experience I have ever had and I will never trust them again. As an aside, you should make it a point to call their support line during the hours of business in the EST or CST timezones. Their day shift CSRs actually seemed to care about the problem. But their night shift appears to be an overseas call center, and they treated me like shit.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  I had a similar experience in Honolulu. AirBnB with baby German cockroaches. I was not happy but at some point reality has to set in. Cockroaches are somewhat normal in tropical zones. I Googled around and found several tourists advising others that cockroaches are a reality in these locations. Even proper hotels had quite a few reviews involving cockroaches.
chachachoney 7y ago
It's amazing that a billion dollar digitally facilitated reservation system in 2019 allows for double bookings.
- lb1lf 7y ago
  Oh, the problem was the host, not AirBnb. She’d registered with more than one service and had forgot to update her AirBnb calendar with the booking from $SITE, whichever it was.
- treis 7y ago
  The problem is that a property is listed on multiple sites and the different sites have incentive to not play nicely with each other. It's up to the owner to manually black on dates as they are booked on the other services. Most of hte time it works fine but since it's humans involved things can slip through the cracks.
orting 7y ago
> -I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to country Would not be surprised if it did. I remember one rental in the Netherlands where the english text said free parking, but the dutch text said parking available. The problem was AirBnBs translation and they refunded my parking expenses.

by lb1lf 7y ago

bluGill 7y ago

I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW. (good customer service says the replacement will be better, hotels try to reserve their best suites until last just to ensure that they have the better room around just in case). I'm some new city and I want to get my family to sleep...

lb1lf 7y ago
>I don't want a refund in either of those cases so much as a place to stay that matches my requirements NOW. -Don’t get me wrong; I’d much rather have no fuss at all - but when a bad experience occurred, AirBnb were better than I had feared with regards to setting things right. The double booking was after a ten-hour drive with kids aged 10, 5 and 3 in the back seat. I didn’t need that. Luckily, the host had friends nearby who shacked us up for the night, so disaster was averted - but this was way out in the Swedish boonies and I envisaged having to drive another couple of hours before finding a hotel.
205guy 7y ago
To me it sounds as if you are saying "I want the charm\location\social experience of staying with a local resident AND I want the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of the hotel industry AND I don't want to pay for the convenience/professionalism/capital resources of a hotel." As with software, pick two.
- eropple 7y ago
  Airbnb has functionally became where it is expected to get the latter two. When I've used Airbnb I have never expected nor cared about the "charm" or the "local resident", it's been a de-facto hotel. If there was a problem, of course I would expect Airbnb to do their job. Why wouldn't you?
  - 205guy 7y ago
    I'm not defending AirBnB, because they totally enable and profit from scams as documented in the original article. But it is just the user expecting to get hotel services (rebooking and room swaps) from a non-hotel (whether genuine homestay or micro-hotel-entrepreneur). AirBnB wont play down that expectation because again they profit more from it, but from the website and concept it is clear that you are dealing with random unprofessional strangers with a minimum of guarantees. Its kinda like the Uber contractor-vs-employee categorization for drivers. AirBnB should definitely do a better job, but I maintain the risks are inherent in the business model, and you and the other users want the benefits of the risk (lower prices), without accepting the consequences of the risk.
    - thw0rted 7y ago
      To be fair, I expect the major corporation to have the "resources of a hotel" and handle the rebooking/room swap. They get a big fee on every booking, right? Am I just paying tens-to-hundreds per booking for the privilege of using their search engine and (apparently worthless) rating system?
  - hispanic 7y ago
    I completely disagree. I never start an Airbnb search assuming that the hosts are hospitality professionals. I don't expect hotel-level standards. In fact, my spidey-sense goes into yellow-alert when I come across a listing that appears to be for a hotel.
- bluGill 7y ago
  I don't want to stay with a local resident - in fact the only times I've stayed at an AirBnB (twice so not a significant sample) I never saw the owner, we just got the code to the lock box and used the house for a few days. This is a hotel. I'd stay with a hotel (and sometimes do) if they would offer me as many bedrooms and a kitchen to work with.

jschwartzi 7y ago

When my fiance and I stayed at a place in Paia on Maui, the place looked immaculate from the pictures. But when we got there it was full of cockroaches. We had literally just gotten in at like 4 pm, put groceries down on the counter, and the little buggers were on them almost immediately. We were exhausted and didn't have the energy to really do anything after our 6 hour plane flight. The hosts came in and tried to resolve things first by removing all the appliances and then by offering us a bribe. I had documented all of this on the AirBnB website via private messages, taken pictures of the cockroaches, and found a can of bug spray(the hosts knew they had an ongoing problem and still rented to us!) to spray the roaches with. They were falling out of every crevice that I sprayed in the kitchen. We ended up spending a very restless night there, and in the morning I found a single roach in the bathroom. We were going to move out the next day, but ended up scrambling to find a hotel room in Maui that afternoon after driving the road to Hana. When I called AirBnB to report the cockroaches the representative basically said he couldn't guarantee me any kind of refund, and moreover that I should be used to staying in "less than clean conditions" as a bachelor who has traveled for business. I was flabbergasted. They eventually got us a refund but I have never had such a terrible customer service experience from any company, period. I will never stay in AirBnB again. Evidently they don't enforce any standards of cleanliness and they take all hosts at their words as to the fitness of the property. The CSR that initially handled my case was a huge asshole and made me feel like he didn't care about me at all. The later CSRs were better. Staying in an AirBnB was the most stressful vacation experience I have ever had and I will never trust them again. As an aside, you should make it a point to call their support line during the hours of business in the EST or CST timezones. Their day shift CSRs actually seemed to care about the problem. But their night shift appears to be an overseas call center, and they treated me like shit.

BeetleB 7y ago
I had a similar experience in Honolulu. AirBnB with baby German cockroaches. I was not happy but at some point reality has to set in. Cockroaches are somewhat normal in tropical zones. I Googled around and found several tourists advising others that cockroaches are a reality in these locations. Even proper hotels had quite a few reviews involving cockroaches.

chachachoney 7y ago

It's amazing that a billion dollar digitally facilitated reservation system in 2019 allows for double bookings.

lb1lf 7y ago
Oh, the problem was the host, not AirBnb. She’d registered with more than one service and had forgot to update her AirBnb calendar with the booking from $SITE, whichever it was.
treis 7y ago
The problem is that a property is listed on multiple sites and the different sites have incentive to not play nicely with each other. It's up to the owner to manually black on dates as they are booked on the other services. Most of hte time it works fine but since it's humans involved things can slip through the cracks.

orting 7y ago

> -I don’t know whether their policy differs from country to country Would not be surprised if it did. I remember one rental in the Netherlands where the english text said free parking, but the dutch text said parking available. The problem was AirBnBs translation and they refunded my parking expenses.