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The late cancellation by host without no specific penalties seems to be one of the most prevalent yet disturbing elements in this. The one who's travelling has
by yason 7y ago
The late cancellation by host without no specific penalties seems to be one of the most prevalent yet disturbing elements in this.
The one who's travelling has the weakest odds of all. The traveler will be in a foreign place with no place to stay. In contrast, the host has no losing cards except some income. The rules should, thus, have been written to protect the traveler at the expense of the host because the host can take more hits from bad luck than the traveler.
If the host really needs to cancel they should have to put the traveler in a real hotel as an upgrade to remove all doubt of the traveler getting into a place that could be worse. They have already received the money from the traveler so they only need to pay for the difference. Just cancelling late without any particular reason could be done but at a very high cost. And if the host's place did burn down for real then a few hundred extra to pay for the guest's hotel for a few nights will surely be a negligent cost.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI agree with a lot of what you say, but > And if the host's place did burn down for real then a few hundred extra to pay for the guest's hotel for a few nights will surely be a negligent cost. is a very narrow view of someone who just lost their house to a fire. Even assuming nothing irreplaceable was lost, I feel my upcoming AirBnB guest might not be my top priority.
- longerthoughts 7y agoAny idea what hotels typically do in this situation? It's not exactly apples to apples but if you're going to make money by the same methods it seems within reason to play by similar rules.
- perlgeek 7y ago> Any idea what hotels typically do in this situation? They pay other hotels to take you in, and have insurance for the worst case (house burning down).
- tialaramex 7y agoYeah, the first thing they'd do is upgrade guests. So now the hotel is giving you the $250 room for your $150 per night. Then they look at nearby hotels they have an arrangement with, and send you to one of those. If there are no nearby hotels with inventory they'll refund you. In many hundreds of hotel stays I've never seen this happen even to another guest. Also most hotels do a lot of corporate business. This mutual five star crap from the "sharing economy" doesn't fly in that world. Somebody's PA has a bad experience at your hotel? No more bookings from that whole company. So shady nonsense just becomes bad business anyway.
- marcosdumay 7y agoHotels fail empty, not overbooked. It is very rare that they can't take someone.
- ghaff 7y agoRare, yes. I’ve had it happen and had it happen to colleagues but it’s been a while. And that’s on a pretty large sample size. Anecdotally better than it used to be.
- paulgb 7y agoMy suggestion is in these rare cases, it should be on AirBnB to relocate you. You already paid them plenty in the booking fee, some basic assurance that you will have a room to sleep in when you arrive should be part of that. Scammers will scam, but they will at least scam a victim (AirBnB) with the resources and incentives to root out the scam. In the current system, renters are stuck with such information asymmetry that they don't even know if they're being scammed or a pipe really did burst.
- jzwinck 7y agoOne of the reasons Airbnb is cheaper than hotels is that fraud and safety costs are passed on to guests and hosts. This is part of the business model. Once you build all the protections people want, you may find yourself at the same prices hotels were charging, and that's not very unicorn.
- onemoresoop 7y agoAlso, like all new unicorn companies, they are doing business in an unregulated market. The wild west won’t last thats why they’re in the make as much money as fast as you can mode.
- paulgb 7y agoThey're also cheaper than hotels because they allow people to exploit inventory that was otherwise sitting vacant. I agree that it's basically a form of regulatory arbitrage, but I'd argue that adding protections (as they already do for the property owners) is part of their competitive moat.
- briandear 7y agoBut a lot of people are ok with slightly increased risk for lower prices overall. When you need a sure thing, book a hotel.
- thw0rted 7y agoI've used them maybe 3 times since they launched, but I always assumed that I did have this protection with AirBnB. I have had hosts ask me to avoid booking through the site and arrange payment outside the system, but I hesitated to do that because I figured the AirBnB fee paid for some "peace of mind" that I wasn't going to get shafted. If I wasn't buying that... what was the fee supposed to pay for?
- tasssko 7y agoI wouldn’t want anyone picking a hotel for me. I might appreciate if the host calls a few hotels to see which ones have space but I want the final say. My perspective has been that “when I use Airbnb I always have a plan b”. I do. I don’t negotiate, if the listing has issues or was miss-sold I walk out and activate my plan b. Airbnb will always refund if you do it like that.
- kieckerjan 7y agoSo what kind of plan B are you talking about?
- Fomite 7y agoI often have a cancelable hotel reservation on hand.
- ghaff 7y agoFewer and fewer hotel reservations let you cancel until 6pm day of though like they used to. More and more cancelable reservations want 24, 48, or even 72 hours these days.
- bvandewalle 7y agoand they removed the 6PM same day cancellation because they realized they became increasingly the "plan B" for a lot of Airbnbs.
- Ayesh 7y agoSpeaking from a hotel owner perspective, this is hurting the business for them. Hotels are expensive to run, and with the booking sites pushing for cancelable bookings, hotels have to make them cancelable as well. When you cancel a room at 5:55PM, the room stays empty pretty much 100% of the time.
- vkou 7y ago
- saghm 7y ago> If the host really needs to cancel they should have to put the traveler in a real hotel as an upgrade to remove all doubt of the traveler getting into a place that could be worse. They have already received the money from the traveler so they only need to pay for the difference. New scam: post a listing for a very high-end place you don't own, cancel the booking once you've been paid and book the client a cheap hotel, and pocket the difference
- CamperBob2 7y agoOh, and receive kickbacks from the hotel. Don't forget that part.
- yason 7y agoDoesn't sound like an "upgrade" to me, and indeed I wasn't thinking of a downgrade to a cheap motel. There are obviously several schemes/incentives that can be set up to make sure the traveler will get "similar or better". For example, if the traveler doesn't agree with the suggested alternative accommodation the host will pay back the original sum + X which will amount to a stay in a decent business-grade hotel in the area, or something similar. Some schemes will probably leak one way or another but they should all favour the traveler and make the host responsible since the cancellation did originate at host end after all.
- ric2b 7y agoObviously you'd have to issue a full refund, which solves the loophole.
- tomp 7y agoStill better than Uber where if the driver cancels more than 5 minutes after accepting the ride, the rider gets charged (as if the rider had cancelled). They're very fast to issue refunds, but only if requested... I wonder how many people just never notice the fraudulent charge! One reason I minimally trust Uber and keep checking all their charges...
- mullingitover 7y agoA person close to me had a driver fail to end the ride, and drove around several miles racking up charges. When she noticed this and complained to Uber, they rejected her claim. When she disputed Uber's fraudulent charge on her credit card, they blacklisted her account.
- DenisM 7y agoDid she just create a new account?
- reustle 7y agoIt's tied to your phone number and they don't support virtual numbers
- hassancf 7y agoActually they do. I currently use a number that was transferred to Fongo 3 years ago and have not had any issue with UBER since then.
- reustle 7y agoI've never gotten uber or uber eats to successfully validate through my google voice number. Support chalks it up to being a virtual number.
- mullingitover 7y agoNope, she just doesn't use Uber anymore.
- koyote 7y agoThe traveller is penalised the full price of the stay if they cancel late. Why is the host not penalised the same amount (which would then be credited to the traveller as compensation)?
- rhizome 7y agoBecause they're playing the bagman for AirBnB.
- mancerayder 7y agoWithout the hosts, there's no product, less product, less fees, or pretty listings to flout in marketing. The availability of affordable and decent listings in Paris is testament how badly they need the existing hosts. Who, by the way, are limited by regulations that limit the number of days a host can list per year, as well as tax registration requirements. None of which I'm complaining about; it's just another factor that makes me predict the situation with quality and honest listings will go down.
- briandear 7y agoHosts are punished. I have had it happen to me when I had an unintentional overbooking on a property I owned.
- alistairSH 7y agoHow does the overbooking occur? Are you using multiple services and then managing across services manually?
- SiVal 7y agoThe one who's travelling has the weakest odds of all. The traveler will be in a foreign place with no place to stay. In contrast, the host has no losing cards except some income. No, the one being scammed has the weakest odds. The "traveler" could in fact be a local scammer who sabotages a property and then has various ways (which I won't detail) for turning a profit on it if the rules favor the "poor traveler". I'm not saying the rules shouldn't favor the traveler, I'm cautioning against assuming that the traveler would always be the victim in case of a scam. This assumption is often the result of projection by an honest observer who can easily picture himself as the traveler but not as the property owner. Better than biasing the outcome, in my opinion, would be for AirBnB to require all communication about "changes" to go through the corporate system. If both parties agree "it's fine", the event is noted but not investigated until it happens repeatedly. Top N% of repeats plus others at random get investigated. But if either party says it's "not fine", there will be no reviews allowed (so no threat of bad review), and AirBnB will investigate and do the "reviewing" themselves, with the investigation escalating in vigor with repeats. They will also make it clear that any evidence of intentional fraud they uncover will be promptly taken to law enforcement. Of course this would raise costs for AirBnB, which would be passed on as fees, reducing the cost advantage of AirBnB vs traditional hotels. But if raising the trust level to hotel level eliminated the cost advantage over hotels, the cost advantage would be an illusion.
- kickopotomus 7y agoDo changes to reservations not have to go through AirBnB already? I feel like they should already be able to audit accounts that change reservation details often. Disclaimer: I have never used AirBnb so I have no clue how it all works.
- alistairSH 7y agoChanges can be made through the Airbnb website. But, apparently that's not required. FWIW, the only contact I've ever had from hosts outside the system is emails (which I believe were actually relayed from Airbnb, not sure) and actual in-person contact upon arrival (75% of the time, the host has met me for check-in to hand-off keys, answer questions, and show me any oddities in the home).