7 ms·

Here is another scam that someone tried to pull on me. I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from

Here is another scam that someone tried to pull on me. I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from the host asking me to increase the price of stay by $20. That was small and I did not want the hassle of arguing but just decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I looked at it again on computer (as opposed to the phone) and saw something odd: the dates of stay we crossed and replaced by the exact same dates. Then I saw that weekdays were off. Then it dawned on me that the scammer changed the dates of stay to the next year and added $20 just to distract me. The scam is simple. The scammer lists the same property twice with ~30% difference in price using slightly different photos and descriptions. The cheaper one goes first. If he books it at the higher price he kicks out the first renters with the "next year booking" scam. Reading reviews made it quite clear. I reported the scammer to AirBnB, got a refund + $100 but they did not do anything other than $100 fine to the scammer. The crook makes more than that from a single scam. AirBnB just does not care. Pecunia non olet.

jancsika 7y ago
That is such an elegant scam. It's like a magic trick complete with misdirection. Is there market where HN-type people come up with these and sell them to people to implement?
- NilsIRL 7y ago
  I doubt it because people are ethical (I hope). But this is so true. I feel like I always come up with so many loopholes but because of their nature of being "scams" I obviously don't do them.
  - jorathexploruh1 7y ago
    You realize you just “hoped” people are ethical as a reply to a post describing a way in which at least one person was claimed to be unethical If you can use a pattern to grift off the system someone is using it. What’s most likely you’re not aware or emotionally predisposed to avoid connecting those dots
- segh 7y ago
  I hope not! Better put your efforts into creating value rather than winning zero-sum scams.
  - novok 7y ago
    Negative-sum TBH
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  You can't make a business of an honest marketplace based on selling services only to dishonest people. Eventually your own customers will ruin the business. This is the fundamental reason "Organized Crime" always fails in the end.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Organized Crime mostly fails because people get thrown in jail. Obviously not happening here.
    - warent 7y ago
      Usually because someone ends up betraying them, e.g. the Chicago Outfit. In other words, dishonesty ends up ruining them. So the comment still makes sense.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        Well, yeah, a faction ends in jail because someone rats them out—either inside or a competitor.
  - koolba 7y ago
    Isn’t that what all those credit card dump sites do?
    - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
      I'm not saying you can't make the business work in the short term. But ultimately the more successful it becomes the faster it will fail.
  - qazpot 7y ago
    I don't think it is true that Organized Crime fails in the end. OC organizations like Cosa Nostra , Yakuza, Triads and many others are not disappearing any time soon.
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  > That is such an elegant scam. [...] Is there market where HN-type people come up with these and sell them to people to implement? Seriously? What kind of fucking question is that?
  - 14 7y ago
    What type of question is that? I mean does adding fuck add something here? And honestly isn't there entire forums on the darkweb dedicated to scams and fraud and stolen goods? Those forums are full of ideas on how to rip people off are they not? Anyways I think you could get your point across without using fuck here on HN.
    - seibelj 7y ago
      Who fucking cares about swearing? Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck
    - dwaltrip 7y ago
      It does add something. It succinctly and viscerally indicates how I abhorrent I find the line of thinking behind that question. I don't normally use language like that on HN, but in this case I thought it was appropriate.
- elipsey 7y ago
  lol, you're here too. This sort of reminds me of people at bars complaining about the type of people they meet at bars. :) What does "HN-type people" mean to you?
- rhizome 7y ago
  0week vulnerabilities for sale on the dark web. /s
- missedthecue 7y ago
  Yes, it's called blackhatworld.com
ragle 7y ago
Interesting - makes me wonder if this scam is what was being pulled in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21410039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21410039 Though in this case, the difference in price is about 50%.
kitd 7y ago
In a similar vein, a good friend of mine (+ all his family, about 10 in all) was kicked out of an AirBnB at the last minute because it had been double-booked on Booking.com at a higher price, and had just been rented via that site. I've come across a few such stories.
- jzwinck 7y ago
  A family member of mine had something similar happen when using booking.com. She showed up at the hotel and they had sold her booked room to someone else. It was late and a bit of a nightmare to find another place to stay. Overbooking airplanes means someone might be stuck sitting in the terminal for hours. Overbooking.com means someone might be made to drive around late at night, tired, with nowhere to sleep.
  - pingec 7y ago
    When we accidentally took a double booking for the same place, booking.com demanded that we arrange and pay for equivalent accommodation for the booking.com guests. That is what we did, I do not know what would have happened had we refused to do so.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Wow that’s messy. I have trip this coming month through Expedia and the last leg of our bargain basement flight got cancelled. The rep told me there were no flights for days surrounding our original flight date. I had to sit on hold for a long time but I have to say they were great. United swept our transportation out from under our feet but the rep was able to wrangle a flight with fewer stops that arrives earlier without us having to pay the difference. We had those locked-in cheap tickets that charge you a couple hundred just to upgrade your ticket before the price difference is even considered. Needless to say we were greatly relieved...
      - aptwebapps 7y ago
        Expedia did that? That's great. I've always avoided them and their competitors and bought directly from the airlines because I was afraid if something went wrong I would get better service that way.
koyote 7y ago
I am not sure I completely understand: Is the host able to unilaterally change the dates of your booking on AirBnb? Did your agreement to the text (asking for $20 extra) allow him to make the changes?
- erichocean 7y ago
  > Did your agreement to the text (asking for $20 extra) allow him to make the changes? It's this, because technically you are making the changes (by agreeing).
  - koyote 7y ago
    If I understood correctly, then that sounds a bit like a UI issue. The host should never be able to change the dates. I mean, why should they be able to? It's up to the traveller to decide when the stay should take place and the host can either accept or decline.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      Agreed. I made a change to the dates of a stay earlier this year (cottage booked on Isle of Skye in the UK). I needed to shift the dates forward by a day or two. This was easily accomplished in the website UI, no direct contact with the host was required. Not sure why the host would ever be able to change booking dates, or really make any changes to the booking after it's confirmed.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  Yes they usually are. There's a raft of AirBnB horror stories[1] about hosts pulling a confirmed booking at the last moment and AirBnb's "awesome" customer support leaving the guest high and dry if they were approachable at all. AirBnb may have been a great idea in 2010. Nowadays what you get is very oten a cheaply outfitted cooky cutter appartment managed by some faceless management company. You may also be asked to sneak to your appartment through the back door because the lease is actually illegal at your destination and other such fun shenanigens, while the price essesntially is no more cheaper than a comparable hotel room. [1] https://www.airbnbhell.com/ https://www.airbnbhell.com/
amiga_500 7y ago
A company that is based on a tax loophole doesn’t behave ethically?
- trentnix 7y ago
  There may be other reasons Airbnb is unethical, but minimizing one's taxes legally is not unethical.
  - amiga_500 7y ago
    I found a loophole that lets me sell kids organs. The best part? I can use the new American ethics system to absolve myself of any guilt by saying "it's not illegal"! What wouldn't you do if it became legal?
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      Are you comparing minimizing tax liabilities to murdering children to harvest their organs?
      - neotek 7y ago
        Are you unaware of how analogies work?
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Analogies don’t work for supporting arguments.
        trentnix 7y ago
        That was a straw man and an association fallacy. It was not a useful or instructive analogy.
      - root_axis 7y ago
        Seems like you're missing the point. They're not comparing the morality of minimizing tax liabilities to harvesting human organs, they're using an extreme example of an obviously immoral act to demonstrate that morality isn't a function of legality.
erichocean 7y ago
People don't understand the value of a high trust culture until it's gone.
- codekilla 7y ago
  Yeah, Couchsurfing was incredible.....oh well
  - bvandewalle 7y ago
    Couchsurfing was awesome and partially killed by Airbnb. It was an amazing concept that I used both as a an host and as a guest. Airbnb pushed for the commercialization of every single Square meter (Thanks to VC $$) and now this high trust community is gone forever.
    - not_a_cop75 7y ago
      This is simply not true. Couchsurfing was a great site that grew too fast. In doing so, it ended up taking in those people that don't believe in its core values, which ended up upending it's general concept in its entirety. Most sites, concepts, etc work great when the true devoted self sacrificial believers - the ones that really want things to work are the primary part of it. Once the people that only care enough to break the system to get what they want are part of it, the system is gone and no good. The problem is that nobody is going to take a reasonable stand against those folks. There are people that are worth blackballing, that are better off not being part of society. I'm not saying that you should make those decisions quickly, but you must be willing to make them. Any company that doesn't keep its culture dies. It might be a horrible long 20 year death, but it still dies.
    - glenneroo 7y ago
      I wouldn't attribute any of the downfall of Couchsurfing to AirBnB, rather the new owners. There are a ton of reasons which were laid out by multiple disgruntled ex-couchsurfers in a myriad of blog-posts. I went looking for some of them but the best I could find was on Quora[0]. For me it was apparent that they new owner only cared about the number of users and proceeded to advertise instead of relying primarily on word-of-mouth, ignoring critical feedback from core members/ambassadors, as well as destroy the usability of the site (e.g. search and the groups got progressively worse), among reasons. The site was rather quickly overwhelmed with people who just wanted a free hotel while they go out and party, while the core community abandoned the site, leaving a vacuum to be filled by people who didn't care about the original "spirit". I went from hosting people every week, making lots of spontaneous trips and organizing events to not being involved at all. This was also true of tens of CS friends, many of whom pleaded with the new management to stop breaking things and to listen to their feedback. I knew at least 15 ambassadors personally who deleted their profiles around the same time all these changes were happening, particularly because their feedback was being completely ignored. I kept my profile up in hopes that things would eventually return... and also out of curiosity about how bad it could really get. Only last month have I received the first "worthy" request, where somebody actually read my profile and seemed to have some of the original couchsurfing spirit. Perhaps things will change again? [0]: https://www.quora.com/Is-CouchSurfing-dead https://www.quora.com/Is-CouchSurfing-dead
telesilla 7y ago
I booked a hotel room in Paris earlier this year over AirBnB out of curiosity, as the room was cheaper than advertised on other platforms. The day before, I thought to call and verify it wasn't a scam and the hotel manager had no record of my stay. A scammer had just uploaded pictures of the hotel room to AirBnB. I got a full refund (and the hotel, in thanks for me letting them know they were scam targets gave me a discount) but the scammer account is still online. No clue why AirBnB didn't scrub this. And I don't get why the scammer thought it would work, as they don't get paid until at least one night stay with no complaints.
- sayhello 7y ago
  Because the scammer may be using this as a way to launder money or to extract money from stolen credit cards. They may not be scamming legitimate bookers, but rather, using the listing for other kinds of scams.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jancsika 7y ago

That is such an elegant scam. It's like a magic trick complete with misdirection. Is there market where HN-type people come up with these and sell them to people to implement?

NilsIRL 7y ago
I doubt it because people are ethical (I hope). But this is so true. I feel like I always come up with so many loopholes but because of their nature of being "scams" I obviously don't do them.
- jorathexploruh1 7y ago
  You realize you just “hoped” people are ethical as a reply to a post describing a way in which at least one person was claimed to be unethical If you can use a pattern to grift off the system someone is using it. What’s most likely you’re not aware or emotionally predisposed to avoid connecting those dots
segh 7y ago
I hope not! Better put your efforts into creating value rather than winning zero-sum scams.
- novok 7y ago
  Negative-sum TBH
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
You can't make a business of an honest marketplace based on selling services only to dishonest people. Eventually your own customers will ruin the business. This is the fundamental reason "Organized Crime" always fails in the end.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Organized Crime mostly fails because people get thrown in jail. Obviously not happening here.
  - warent 7y ago
    Usually because someone ends up betraying them, e.g. the Chicago Outfit. In other words, dishonesty ends up ruining them. So the comment still makes sense.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Well, yeah, a faction ends in jail because someone rats them out—either inside or a competitor.
- koolba 7y ago
  Isn’t that what all those credit card dump sites do?
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    I'm not saying you can't make the business work in the short term. But ultimately the more successful it becomes the faster it will fail.
- qazpot 7y ago
  I don't think it is true that Organized Crime fails in the end. OC organizations like Cosa Nostra , Yakuza, Triads and many others are not disappearing any time soon.
dwaltrip 7y ago
> That is such an elegant scam. [...] Is there market where HN-type people come up with these and sell them to people to implement? Seriously? What kind of fucking question is that?
- 14 7y ago
  What type of question is that? I mean does adding fuck add something here? And honestly isn't there entire forums on the darkweb dedicated to scams and fraud and stolen goods? Those forums are full of ideas on how to rip people off are they not? Anyways I think you could get your point across without using fuck here on HN.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    Who fucking cares about swearing? Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck
  - dwaltrip 7y ago
    It does add something. It succinctly and viscerally indicates how I abhorrent I find the line of thinking behind that question. I don't normally use language like that on HN, but in this case I thought it was appropriate.
elipsey 7y ago
lol, you're here too. This sort of reminds me of people at bars complaining about the type of people they meet at bars. :) What does "HN-type people" mean to you?
rhizome 7y ago
0week vulnerabilities for sale on the dark web. /s
missedthecue 7y ago
Yes, it's called blackhatworld.com

ragle 7y ago

Interesting - makes me wonder if this scam is what was being pulled in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21410039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21410039 Though in this case, the difference in price is about 50%.

kitd 7y ago

In a similar vein, a good friend of mine (+ all his family, about 10 in all) was kicked out of an AirBnB at the last minute because it had been double-booked on Booking.com at a higher price, and had just been rented via that site. I've come across a few such stories.

jzwinck 7y ago
A family member of mine had something similar happen when using booking.com. She showed up at the hotel and they had sold her booked room to someone else. It was late and a bit of a nightmare to find another place to stay. Overbooking airplanes means someone might be stuck sitting in the terminal for hours. Overbooking.com means someone might be made to drive around late at night, tired, with nowhere to sleep.
- pingec 7y ago
  When we accidentally took a double booking for the same place, booking.com demanded that we arrange and pay for equivalent accommodation for the booking.com guests. That is what we did, I do not know what would have happened had we refused to do so.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Wow that’s messy. I have trip this coming month through Expedia and the last leg of our bargain basement flight got cancelled. The rep told me there were no flights for days surrounding our original flight date. I had to sit on hold for a long time but I have to say they were great. United swept our transportation out from under our feet but the rep was able to wrangle a flight with fewer stops that arrives earlier without us having to pay the difference. We had those locked-in cheap tickets that charge you a couple hundred just to upgrade your ticket before the price difference is even considered. Needless to say we were greatly relieved...
    - aptwebapps 7y ago
      Expedia did that? That's great. I've always avoided them and their competitors and bought directly from the airlines because I was afraid if something went wrong I would get better service that way.

koyote 7y ago

I am not sure I completely understand: Is the host able to unilaterally change the dates of your booking on AirBnb? Did your agreement to the text (asking for $20 extra) allow him to make the changes?

erichocean 7y ago
> Did your agreement to the text (asking for $20 extra) allow him to make the changes? It's this, because technically you are making the changes (by agreeing).
- koyote 7y ago
  If I understood correctly, then that sounds a bit like a UI issue. The host should never be able to change the dates. I mean, why should they be able to? It's up to the traveller to decide when the stay should take place and the host can either accept or decline.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    Agreed. I made a change to the dates of a stay earlier this year (cottage booked on Isle of Skye in the UK). I needed to shift the dates forward by a day or two. This was easily accomplished in the website UI, no direct contact with the host was required. Not sure why the host would ever be able to change booking dates, or really make any changes to the booking after it's confirmed.
CaptainZapp 7y ago
Yes they usually are. There's a raft of AirBnB horror stories[1] about hosts pulling a confirmed booking at the last moment and AirBnb's "awesome" customer support leaving the guest high and dry if they were approachable at all. AirBnb may have been a great idea in 2010. Nowadays what you get is very oten a cheaply outfitted cooky cutter appartment managed by some faceless management company. You may also be asked to sneak to your appartment through the back door because the lease is actually illegal at your destination and other such fun shenanigens, while the price essesntially is no more cheaper than a comparable hotel room. [1] https://www.airbnbhell.com/ https://www.airbnbhell.com/

amiga_500 7y ago

A company that is based on a tax loophole doesn’t behave ethically?

trentnix 7y ago
There may be other reasons Airbnb is unethical, but minimizing one's taxes legally is not unethical.
- amiga_500 7y ago
  I found a loophole that lets me sell kids organs. The best part? I can use the new American ethics system to absolve myself of any guilt by saying "it's not illegal"! What wouldn't you do if it became legal?
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Are you comparing minimizing tax liabilities to murdering children to harvest their organs?
    - neotek 7y ago
      Are you unaware of how analogies work?
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Analogies don’t work for supporting arguments.
      - trentnix 7y ago
        That was a straw man and an association fallacy. It was not a useful or instructive analogy.
    - root_axis 7y ago
      Seems like you're missing the point. They're not comparing the morality of minimizing tax liabilities to harvesting human organs, they're using an extreme example of an obviously immoral act to demonstrate that morality isn't a function of legality.

erichocean 7y ago

People don't understand the value of a high trust culture until it's gone.

codekilla 7y ago
Yeah, Couchsurfing was incredible.....oh well
- bvandewalle 7y ago
  Couchsurfing was awesome and partially killed by Airbnb. It was an amazing concept that I used both as a an host and as a guest. Airbnb pushed for the commercialization of every single Square meter (Thanks to VC $$) and now this high trust community is gone forever.
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    This is simply not true. Couchsurfing was a great site that grew too fast. In doing so, it ended up taking in those people that don't believe in its core values, which ended up upending it's general concept in its entirety. Most sites, concepts, etc work great when the true devoted self sacrificial believers - the ones that really want things to work are the primary part of it. Once the people that only care enough to break the system to get what they want are part of it, the system is gone and no good. The problem is that nobody is going to take a reasonable stand against those folks. There are people that are worth blackballing, that are better off not being part of society. I'm not saying that you should make those decisions quickly, but you must be willing to make them. Any company that doesn't keep its culture dies. It might be a horrible long 20 year death, but it still dies.
  - glenneroo 7y ago
    I wouldn't attribute any of the downfall of Couchsurfing to AirBnB, rather the new owners. There are a ton of reasons which were laid out by multiple disgruntled ex-couchsurfers in a myriad of blog-posts. I went looking for some of them but the best I could find was on Quora[0]. For me it was apparent that they new owner only cared about the number of users and proceeded to advertise instead of relying primarily on word-of-mouth, ignoring critical feedback from core members/ambassadors, as well as destroy the usability of the site (e.g. search and the groups got progressively worse), among reasons. The site was rather quickly overwhelmed with people who just wanted a free hotel while they go out and party, while the core community abandoned the site, leaving a vacuum to be filled by people who didn't care about the original "spirit". I went from hosting people every week, making lots of spontaneous trips and organizing events to not being involved at all. This was also true of tens of CS friends, many of whom pleaded with the new management to stop breaking things and to listen to their feedback. I knew at least 15 ambassadors personally who deleted their profiles around the same time all these changes were happening, particularly because their feedback was being completely ignored. I kept my profile up in hopes that things would eventually return... and also out of curiosity about how bad it could really get. Only last month have I received the first "worthy" request, where somebody actually read my profile and seemed to have some of the original couchsurfing spirit. Perhaps things will change again? [0]: https://www.quora.com/Is-CouchSurfing-dead https://www.quora.com/Is-CouchSurfing-dead

telesilla 7y ago

I booked a hotel room in Paris earlier this year over AirBnB out of curiosity, as the room was cheaper than advertised on other platforms. The day before, I thought to call and verify it wasn't a scam and the hotel manager had no record of my stay. A scammer had just uploaded pictures of the hotel room to AirBnB. I got a full refund (and the hotel, in thanks for me letting them know they were scam targets gave me a discount) but the scammer account is still online. No clue why AirBnB didn't scrub this. And I don't get why the scammer thought it would work, as they don't get paid until at least one night stay with no complaints.

sayhello 7y ago
Because the scammer may be using this as a way to launder money or to extract money from stolen credit cards. They may not be scamming legitimate bookers, but rather, using the listing for other kinds of scams.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]