6 ms·

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

by avalys 4y ago

smsm42 4y ago
Probably just removes the temptation of using the shitty service again. Not a huge loss.
darknavi 4y ago
Not a huge issue probably because after loosing that much money I'd be surprised if they ever use AirBnb again.
Nextgrid 4y ago
I don't think this person will use Airbnb ever again anyway.
davidw 4y ago
See my other comment elsewhere, but they did not ban me even though I did a chargeback and won.
nixpulvis 4y ago
Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate. So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
  - tromp 4y ago
    He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.
    - vkou 4y ago
      Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        While a possibility given the weird nature of SV companies, it's also pretty much nonsense in general when company support systems break down. It's the sort of learned helplessness that some people promote relative to companies that seems pretty silly. I've certainly used chargebacks when something wasn't working and continued to deal with said companies, albeit rarely. Yes, sometimes you need to break relationships with certain companies as well. But that should be fine in general.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        > Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. I struggle to think that a person should bear literally any consequences if they weren't in the wrong, which AIUI in this case he isn't.
        vkou 4y ago
        Why do you think a non-monopoly business should be compelled to continue to serve a customer that does chargebacks against it? You can fire that business as a vendor, they can fire you as a customer.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Best Western hotels are individually owned and operated, and Best Western itself does not lose any money from chargebacks, the motel owner does. Best Western gets paid their 10% to 15% of gross revenue royalty either way from the hotel owner. Hotel owners, however, can and do ban individuals for chargebacks.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Hotel owners will in general not screw a potential customer for an honest mistake like this, so maybe the chargebacks actual hotels get actually do warrant a ban compared to VC-funded scammers.
- eli 4y ago
  Uh yeah that absolutely can happen. Car rental companies are known to ban people who do chargebacks. If you refuse to pay a business what they think you owe then there’s a decent chance they won’t want future business from you.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Isn't the charge-back lower stakes than actually suing them? Because that would be the only alternative left, the charge-back is the third-party arbitration.
- loeg 4y ago
  You should not be issuing chargebacks all the time. Most businesses will resolve without resorting to that. Airbnb absolutely failed here.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  Generally, companies of any size can choose not to do business with you. What's wrong with that? If you disagree, you need to change the definition of "utility" then; a utility such as an electricity company can't just cut you off for no reason.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    And almost all the companies in the US can choose to not do business with you. That doesn't make it fair or just.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account Reporting this back to your bank, better yet, with your state financial regulator and maybe a federal copied, usually gets this swiftly reversed.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I am curious how this would work. I have not heard of a US government forcing a business like AirBnb to do business with a customer unless there was a violation of discrimination against a protected class.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    I think it's less about forcing them to do business and more about the regulator/consumer protection agency getting wind of what is obviously malicious and potentially illegal behavior from the company - a lot of companies will fold when a case gets anywhere near litigation/consumer protection/arbitration just to not attract attention. In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Sure, but refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed. Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.
bboygravity 4y ago
I'm confused by the banning comments. Can't you just create a new account with a new payment method and different email address? Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    They use heuristics, but yes in general you can work around them if you're persistent enough.
  - baremetal 4y ago
    >It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      With the same name? I think the probability is low enough to accept the false positive.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - ncallaway 4y ago
        How fuzzy of a name check are you doing? If I get banned as Joe Smith and address X, what if I register my new account as Joseph Smith?
    - 4y ago
steveBK123 4y ago
So you use another email address next time if you must
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  And phone number, and fake name and address (you can do very creative things with billing addresses and have it still match - the matching is very fuzzy). But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.
AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
And nothing of value was lost.
burnte 4y ago
Yeah, but if I have to file a chargeback, I probably don't want to do business with them again anyway.
miohtama 4y ago
Uber, others, ban you on a chargeback immediately.
- fencepost 4y ago
  Heck, years ago Uber used to ban you for having an old credit card on the account and trying to book a ride - no warning that the payment method had a problem, just boom, banned. Procedure for resolving was apparently sending a picture with the physical card (showing just the last 4 digits) that was on the account, but since it'd been changed months before I didn't have it and didn't care enough to pursue unbanning. I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.
GiorgioG 4y ago
Firing your customers is not a good long term strategy.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  It very often is. Not firing certain ones can often be catastrophic.
bsg75 4y ago
I would be fine with that. The problem is both with the host and AirBnB, neither of which I would want to do business with again after this.
soul_grafitti 4y ago
Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address. And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.
- indymike 4y ago
  > here are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain. There's also the part where the merchant agreed to abide by chargeback rulings and not ban the cardholder.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  Isn't government ID upload a requirement for AirBNB? A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up. If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban. The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.
m-p-3 4y ago
Personally I'd never want to use AirBnB ever again if I lost 900$ and they didn't care at all about good customer service.
lost_tourist 4y ago
lol who cares if airbnb cancels your account? There are a million other ways to get a room . I mean it's convenient and I use it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they banned me.

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

by avalys 4y ago

I have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account.

smsm42 4y ago

Probably just removes the temptation of using the shitty service again. Not a huge loss.

darknavi 4y ago

Not a huge issue probably because after loosing that much money I'd be surprised if they ever use AirBnb again.

Nextgrid 4y ago

I don't think this person will use Airbnb ever again anyway.

davidw 4y ago

See my other comment elsewhere, but they did not ban me even though I did a chargeback and won.

nixpulvis 4y ago

Imagine being banned from Best Western, for example, because you disputed a charge! Having a dispute, especially one which is so reasonable like this, being grounds for banning is insane to me. Companies as large as Airbnb cannot be just banning whoever they want. This whole notion of, we don't agree with you, so we'll just ban you thing has got to stop.

jeromegv 4y ago
Companies want you to file the dispute through their support system using their existing process. Once you file a dispute through the credit card company, the dispute process is moved to the credit card company and now the company has a LOT less power on what might be happening. They also get severely impacted from having a high amount of charge back and hurts them the next time they want to negotiate their credit card rate. So from a market perspective, it makes total sense for a company to ban you. You're causing them problems, refuse to follow procedure on how to handle the dispute, and hurt their bottom line in ways that could impact them at the rate of millions of dollar. They would rather not have you as a customer at all than deal with you again. Statistically, a customer that uses charge back is a lot likely to end up using it again, so they avoid themselves future trouble as well.
- tromp 4y ago
  He did follow BnB dispute procedure and gave them a chance to overrule the host's unreasonable stance. But BnB conspired with the host to screw him over and should bear the consequences.
  - vkou 4y ago
    Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. A chargeback is the burn-all-the-bridges, fuck-you-pay-me nuclear option, and you will be banned from any business that you use it against. You should not use it against any business you intend to patronize in the future.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      While a possibility given the weird nature of SV companies, it's also pretty much nonsense in general when company support systems break down. It's the sort of learned helplessness that some people promote relative to companies that seems pretty silly. I've certainly used chargebacks when something wasn't working and continued to deal with said companies, albeit rarely. Yes, sometimes you need to break relationships with certain companies as well. But that should be fine in general.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > Yes, and he should issue a chargeback, and then bear the consequences of AirBnB no longer doing any business with him in response. I struggle to think that a person should bear literally any consequences if they weren't in the wrong, which AIUI in this case he isn't.
      - vkou 4y ago
        Why do you think a non-monopoly business should be compelled to continue to serve a customer that does chargebacks against it? You can fire that business as a vendor, they can fire you as a customer.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Best Western hotels are individually owned and operated, and Best Western itself does not lose any money from chargebacks, the motel owner does. Best Western gets paid their 10% to 15% of gross revenue royalty either way from the hotel owner. Hotel owners, however, can and do ban individuals for chargebacks.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Hotel owners will in general not screw a potential customer for an honest mistake like this, so maybe the chargebacks actual hotels get actually do warrant a ban compared to VC-funded scammers.
eli 4y ago
Uh yeah that absolutely can happen. Car rental companies are known to ban people who do chargebacks. If you refuse to pay a business what they think you owe then there’s a decent chance they won’t want future business from you.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Isn't the charge-back lower stakes than actually suing them? Because that would be the only alternative left, the charge-back is the third-party arbitration.
loeg 4y ago
You should not be issuing chargebacks all the time. Most businesses will resolve without resorting to that. Airbnb absolutely failed here.
kccqzy 4y ago
Generally, companies of any size can choose not to do business with you. What's wrong with that? If you disagree, you need to change the definition of "utility" then; a utility such as an electricity company can't just cut you off for no reason.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  And almost all the companies in the US can choose to not do business with you. That doesn't make it fair or just.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> have heard of companies reacting to a chargeback in situations like this by banning your account Reporting this back to your bank, better yet, with your state financial regulator and maybe a federal copied, usually gets this swiftly reversed.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I am curious how this would work. I have not heard of a US government forcing a business like AirBnb to do business with a customer unless there was a violation of discrimination against a protected class.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I think it's less about forcing them to do business and more about the regulator/consumer protection agency getting wind of what is obviously malicious and potentially illegal behavior from the company - a lot of companies will fold when a case gets anywhere near litigation/consumer protection/arbitration just to not attract attention. In this case, the chargeback was just the last resort solution for the customer because they were stonewalled by customer "service", but they otherwise didn't want to chargeback and would rather just be able to cancel their booking properly and keep using the service.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Sure, but refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > refusing to do business with someone is legal in most cases Consumer protection law has limited anti-retaliation protection. Banks also want to know if unsavoury behaviour is being suppressed. Nobody must do business with anyone else. But banning after someone exercises a consumer right in respect of potential fraud you facilitated (and profited off) is not something one wants scrutinised.

bboygravity 4y ago

I'm confused by the banning comments. Can't you just create a new account with a new payment method and different email address? Maybe I still have too much of that 90's internet mentality, dunno.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, plus a lot of companies require SMS 2FA now, and most people do not have multiple phone numbers to burn. Besides that, I think AirBnb might require you to upload government issued photo identification too, but I am not sure.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  They use heuristics, but yes in general you can work around them if you're persistent enough.
- baremetal 4y ago
  >It should be trivial to ban a certain billing address, Everything is trivial when you aren't the one who actually has to implement it. If you ban a billing address: what if someone else moves to that address?
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    With the same name? I think the probability is low enough to accept the false positive.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      How fuzzy of a name check are you doing? If I get banned as Joe Smith and address X, what if I register my new account as Joseph Smith?
  - 4y ago

steveBK123 4y ago

So you use another email address next time if you must

Nextgrid 4y ago
And phone number, and fake name and address (you can do very creative things with billing addresses and have it still match - the matching is very fuzzy). But yes, these companies will lie and break the law when it suits them, no reason to feel bad about giving them a taste of their own medicine.

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago

And nothing of value was lost.

burnte 4y ago

Yeah, but if I have to file a chargeback, I probably don't want to do business with them again anyway.

miohtama 4y ago

Uber, others, ban you on a chargeback immediately.

fencepost 4y ago
Heck, years ago Uber used to ban you for having an old credit card on the account and trying to book a ride - no warning that the payment method had a problem, just boom, banned. Procedure for resolving was apparently sending a picture with the physical card (showing just the last 4 digits) that was on the account, but since it'd been changed months before I didn't have it and didn't care enough to pursue unbanning. I think the card was replaced after a Home Depot breach, but not sure. Was definitely in or prior to 2015.

GiorgioG 4y ago

Firing your customers is not a good long term strategy.

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
It very often is. Not firing certain ones can often be catastrophic.

bsg75 4y ago

I would be fine with that. The problem is both with the host and AirBnB, neither of which I would want to do business with again after this.

soul_grafitti 4y ago

Accomplishing such a ban would be hard very to do. I'm taking here as an engineer working with a big company and a big data system. Conceptually the idea you could have a 'blacklist' of numbers you will refuse to serve seems easy enough. In practice it would cost a lot to put such a thing in place. First, how are you going to identify the blacklisters? Can't use credit card numbers. Revoke their membership card? You can do that. Going to use their name? Hah! An email address would be pretty good but, darn - it's really easy to get an email address. And to what end? To be a dick? To piss off the false-positive customers your system inevitably flags incorrectly? There are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain.

indymike 4y ago
> here are reasons it's hard to have an accurate, effective no-fly list and that list costs a lot to maintain. There's also the part where the merchant agreed to abide by chargeback rulings and not ban the cardholder.
TheHappyOddish 4y ago
Isn't government ID upload a requirement for AirBNB? A ban is very easy to do, what you're describing is a ban unable to be circumvented. Most customers will give up with a small amount of effort - ban their email address and phone number and they'll give up. If you're a company that collects and collates govenment IDs and their associated addresses, names, etc (which AirBNB are), then you can build something much closer to an uncircumventable ban. The purpose for such a list is generally to remove low value, high cost customers who rate too high on your risk meter.

m-p-3 4y ago

Personally I'd never want to use AirBnB ever again if I lost 900$ and they didn't care at all about good customer service.

lost_tourist 4y ago

lol who cares if airbnb cancels your account? There are a million other ways to get a room . I mean it's convenient and I use it but it wouldn't be the end of the world if they banned me.