6 ms·

At this point the cleaning fees are just a scam to make the listing fee seem artificially lower. People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost f

by _yb2s 3y ago

At this point the cleaning fees are just a scam to make the listing fee seem artificially lower. People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface, e.g. by letting you sort by price + shipping and showing shipping fees before you click.

tentacleuno 3y ago
No, they've worked around that too -- now sellers typically include a [completely unrelated] 0.99p item as an option in the listing, which then moves them to the top of the price-sorted view.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Or on aliexpress, on items you’d usually buy multiples of, set the shipping to $cents for the first item, then it jumps to $$$ once you add a second to your cart. Sometimes I’ve just bought individual items from several sellers as a workaround.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    Usually when that happens, the shipping date jumps too, because it's chosen a faster shipping method. I'm not sure why but I'm not 100% convinced it's deliberate deception. However they also don't show shipping prices in the search view, and display the lowest-price configuration instead of the range.
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      Some of these would be tiny items. But yeah, on larger items, sometimes the shipping price changed dramatically once you add the 8th item to your cart. I wish users could order stuff by sea for a discount. Sometimes I’m buying camping or sports stuff for another season and don’t need it coming airmail. Arriving months later can actually be beneficial. But I understand, too many people will lose their minds.
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    I usually go through the checkout process multiple times, if it works out cheaper, since I don't pay credit card fees per transaction. The buy it now button and multiple browser tabs are very useful for this. I'm more annoyed by 90% of the search results disappearing when I sort by anything other than "best match".
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Cleaning fees aren't a "scam" - most property owners really do need to pay someone to clean the property at the end of a stay. But, as another commenter said, they can be used as a way to encourage longer stays, as with most places you only pay a single cleaning fee regardless of the length of your stay. But, again, it's just a fact that these rentals are usually just cleaned between guests (as opposed to a hotel when cleaning is done daily so it can be rolled into the nightly rate).
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  No, scam is the right word. It could pretty easily be rolled into the advertised nightly rate.
  - smith7018 3y ago
    OP is right that it's not necessarily a _scam_ but is more so deceptive advertising. You're also right that they should just show total cost of your stay rather than the nightly rate pre-fees. It's wild to me that Airbnb hasn't done this because it's one of the worst parts of their service that has pushed me (and others I've talked to) back to hotels.
    - LordAtlas 3y ago
      If you switch to the Australian AirBnB site, you can see an all-inclusive price because they are required by law to do so there.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I get an itemized bill from the grocery store, but that doesn't make it a scam.
    - greedo 3y ago
      It's like putting a bunch of bananas in your basket, thinking the display price ($10 of course) is the real price, only to find out at the checkout, that it's $10 per banana...
usaar333 3y ago
Cleaning fees exist to charge a fixed fee for a reservation, regardless of the number of days. There's more overhead for a reservation beyond just "cleaning". The most consumer friendly thing would be for AirBnB to just explicitly have a fixed "stay" fee and a per-day fee. That said, AirBnB's site shows the total cost for a stay when browsing, so I don't really see this as particularly deceptive. I don't care how the host itemizes the bill as long as I know what I'm paying when selecting a place.
- EasyMark 3y ago
  So put it in the price rather than "fees". That always feels highly dishonest to me.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    How would you make that work? I rent out our cabin. If you stay 1 day or 7 days, it's the same amount of work for me and same costs in cleaning. That's impossible to price fairly without having a flat fee. In my market the customer sees the total price up front. I think this is the best solution for all parties.
- septic-liqueur 3y ago
  I haven't checked the platform lately but from what I remember the first search view did not show the total (plus cleaning) fee and only when you advance to book you would see the final cost. While not a scam, it definitely feels like a dark pattern.
  - techcode 3y ago
    AFAIK everyone in e-commerce tries to have consistent pricing throughout the whole flow - otherwise people notice difference between pages and drop off. Stuff that you explained can happen because initially IP-to-Country isn't 100% precise (later in booking/checkout stage you provide country and then it knows for sure). Other case I've seen is that meta (comparison) website you came from showed you prices without including everything even though they should've. And then booking platform tries to transition you into correct pricing in between their pages.
Scoundreller 3y ago
> People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface There’s a longer story to this: eBay used to exempt shipping fees from its commissions. So sellers would be screwing eBay and, being an efficient market, as it often is on eBay, the savings would be passed onto the buyer. I’d sell games for 1 cent with $10 shipping (cost to me: ~$2) and put the shipping cost in the title for clarity. If you didn’t like it, fine, pay more to buy from someone else. Now they charge it on the whole purchase, which sucks when they take a ~15% commission on sales taxes and shipping and sellers can’t easily tack on a premium to these. So they get lower net proceeds when selling to someone that has high sales taxes or shipping fees. This really discourages sellers from shipping internationally where those costs are higher. Now that eBay charges percentage fees for “promoting” your item and getting visibility, bulk sellers will often post the exact same item, unpromoted, for less if you can be bothered to go through their “other items for sale”. Have seen some wild examples where a seller sold one item at very different prices. They must have had items with 50% promotion fees, 25%, 5% and 0% (evidently passed onto the customer through different pricing) to capture the whole market.
- _puk 3y ago
  As a user I always avoided those low cost, high postage listings as it just seemed a good way for a seller to avoid refunding the full amount. Refund would always be minus postage costs, so you'd get 1 cent back for your $10.01 purchase when returning (i.e. no point)
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    I think it’s up to seller’s policy if it’s a buyer’s remorse return situation. I find it hard to believe eBay wouldn’t make the buyer whole in a damaged/not as described case. Been a while since it came up for me (always sold stuff as “final sale” and if I avoid buying fragile stuff). Once had a hard time repaying a buyer that returned an item where I didn’t describe it correctly (screw you apple for having nearly identical LCDs but with slightly different camera cable lengths)
- EasyMark 3y ago
biomcgary 3y ago
Airbnb is a marketplace with a much wider range of "products" than standard hotels. I have found stays that fit my needs far better than any hotel ever could. I am both a host on Airbnb and frequent guest. Airbnb's UI needs to guide prospective guests toward specifying what they are looking for so that prices (and price sorting) actually meets their expectations. If you search for a specific date range with # of guests, pets, etc., the sort order needs to be on all-in costs, not daily cost. Maybe they could offer pre-baked "personas" - e.g., I am looking for a hotel alternative vs I am looking for a unique experience.
- nox101 3y ago
  I've used Airbnb 25 times. 12 of those times had issues. Issues like "parking space included" - show up, no parking "wifi included" - show up, wifi is sitting next to window and stealing from neighbor listed on quiet road - after booking address is changed to unit on busy road heater is so loud it sounds like a vacuum cleaner making getting any sleep hard I no longer use AirBnB period. Hotels have extra rooms, reception, cleaning, etc. I'm not saying hotels are perfect but at least for me, the positive experience rate is 90% vs AirBnB which is 50% AirBnb also lost the price wars, at least as the places I've looked.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    It’s good for consumers this way I think. The hotels were forced to compete and I think overall are better than they were 20 years ago. For normal people, they are not aware of this different form of rented lodging and if you’re hosting a big family vacation or a retreat, Airbnb is not a bad option. It’s the bottom of the Airbnb market that is completely screwed up.
  - archagon 3y ago
    For what it’s worth, I’ve used Airbnb around 60 times and found it a much better experience than a hotel 9/10 times. Even putting aside amenities such as kitchen and washer/dryer access, hotels always feel like unnerving liminal spaces to me. Very few hotels I’ve stayed at have felt “homey,” which puts a significant psychological damper on my trip.
ModernMech 3y ago
And those were a twist on the old infomercial trick: Get a second one absolutely free! (just pay a "small" shipping and handling fee that is as much as a second one)
- kloch 3y ago
  The "But wait, there's more!" device predates infomercials. It goes at least as far back as the "Atlantic city boardwalk pitch" from the early 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-tel > K-tel was founded by Philip Kives,[4] a demonstration salesman from Oungre, Saskatchewan.[5][6] Kives had worked at a number of jobs as a young man, including selling cookware door-to-door and in a department store, and as a pitch-man on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.
pjerem 3y ago
eBay could have fixed this a long time ago. Most marketplaces (at least in my country) manage the shipping transparently (by taking the shipping fee and providing a pre paid label to the seller). Idk in the US but I know nobody who still use eBay for anything, I don’t know how they are still alive.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  eBay can now show the shipping cost tailored to your zip/postal code, and shows it up-front. eBay is an undertold story in failure (to innovate). For sure, still a going concern, but odd of such a large company taking the Craigslist approach of “let’s stay small and just do enough to keep it working comfortably for all of us” eBay practically invented online shopping at scale and had a huge head start but failed to maintain marketshare. It’s still the catch-all for products that don’t fit in other marketplaces. For me, it’s a place to buy a lot of Amazon items but at a lower price (at some convenience cost). Or niche/used items. Amazon has overly regionalized (sometimes I can get items in Canada from Amazon.com cheaper than amazon.ca for example), while eBay is still a generally global interface.
- EasyMark 3y ago
  I fix old electronics things like phonos, radios, and other sound related things as a hobby and resell(mostly 60s through 90s). Ebay is still great (well "good") for old parts and selling my warez. Although I do sell more locally as I've gotten some word of mouth, and it's more business than I can do with my day job. Anyway ebay still works for older products/parts for electronics and I reckon other fixable things.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    They're still sometimes useful for old parts and the like. But there was a period when I used them all the time--admittedly as something of a novelty. Now, it's maybe a once a year sort of thing. Global supply chains have made a lot of the used market pretty tough for things you can just buy new. (I admittedly work a lot harder to get rid of stuff than acquire it these days.)
mellutussa 3y ago
This is why I can't use AliExpress. Ordering by price+shipping is truly an awful experience. The people in charge of that feature take incompetence to a new level.
Perepiska 3y ago
I remember a wave of $1 iPhone charging cables on Amazon! (with expensive delivery cost :)
xnx 3y ago
I'm not a fan of how AirBnB has displayed pricing in the past, but don't lose sight of how bad hotel pricing is: taxes and fees not displayed until the checkout page, "resort" fees added at any time, etc. There are no good guys here.
- netsharc 3y ago
  Maybe that's the US hotel booking experience, I live in Europe and haven't encountered those dumb fees.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    There are occasionally local tax rates that differ depending on the type of traveller, e.g. no tax for business travellers, €2/night for tourists. I've mostly seen it in Germany. It's generally written somewhere, but on aggregation sites like hotels.com and booking.com it seems the hotel can't alter the advertised price directly. Example: https://www.hotels.com/ho119759/maritim-hotel-koln-cologne-germany/ https://www.hotels.com/ho119759/maritim-hotel-koln-cologne-g... > A city tax is imposed by the city of Cologne. Business travellers with proof of business-related travel are exempt from this tax. For more details, please contact the property using the information on the reservation confirmation received after booking. > An effective city/local tax rate of 5.00 per cent will be charged
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
This is also how airlines work these days. Separate airfare from fees and baggage, then trick travelers with low sticker prices.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Most of the many taxes and fees associated with air tickets are built in. Not checked luggage in particular in many cases although I don't pay that on my usual airline and rarely have it anyway. Otherwise, unless I want to upgrade, the price it gives me is what I pay.

by _yb2s 3y ago

tentacleuno 3y ago

No, they've worked around that too -- now sellers typically include a [completely unrelated] 0.99p item as an option in the listing, which then moves them to the top of the price-sorted view.

Scoundreller 3y ago
Or on aliexpress, on items you’d usually buy multiples of, set the shipping to $cents for the first item, then it jumps to $$$ once you add a second to your cart. Sometimes I’ve just bought individual items from several sellers as a workaround.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Usually when that happens, the shipping date jumps too, because it's chosen a faster shipping method. I'm not sure why but I'm not 100% convinced it's deliberate deception. However they also don't show shipping prices in the search view, and display the lowest-price configuration instead of the range.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Some of these would be tiny items. But yeah, on larger items, sometimes the shipping price changed dramatically once you add the 8th item to your cart. I wish users could order stuff by sea for a discount. Sometimes I’m buying camping or sports stuff for another season and don’t need it coming airmail. Arriving months later can actually be beneficial. But I understand, too many people will lose their minds.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  I usually go through the checkout process multiple times, if it works out cheaper, since I don't pay credit card fees per transaction. The buy it now button and multiple browser tabs are very useful for this. I'm more annoyed by 90% of the search results disappearing when I sort by anything other than "best match".

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Cleaning fees aren't a "scam" - most property owners really do need to pay someone to clean the property at the end of a stay. But, as another commenter said, they can be used as a way to encourage longer stays, as with most places you only pay a single cleaning fee regardless of the length of your stay. But, again, it's just a fact that these rentals are usually just cleaned between guests (as opposed to a hotel when cleaning is done daily so it can be rolled into the nightly rate).

idiotsecant 3y ago
No, scam is the right word. It could pretty easily be rolled into the advertised nightly rate.
- smith7018 3y ago
  OP is right that it's not necessarily a _scam_ but is more so deceptive advertising. You're also right that they should just show total cost of your stay rather than the nightly rate pre-fees. It's wild to me that Airbnb hasn't done this because it's one of the worst parts of their service that has pushed me (and others I've talked to) back to hotels.
  - LordAtlas 3y ago
    If you switch to the Australian AirBnB site, you can see an all-inclusive price because they are required by law to do so there.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I get an itemized bill from the grocery store, but that doesn't make it a scam.
  - greedo 3y ago
    It's like putting a bunch of bananas in your basket, thinking the display price ($10 of course) is the real price, only to find out at the checkout, that it's $10 per banana...

usaar333 3y ago

Cleaning fees exist to charge a fixed fee for a reservation, regardless of the number of days. There's more overhead for a reservation beyond just "cleaning". The most consumer friendly thing would be for AirBnB to just explicitly have a fixed "stay" fee and a per-day fee. That said, AirBnB's site shows the total cost for a stay when browsing, so I don't really see this as particularly deceptive. I don't care how the host itemizes the bill as long as I know what I'm paying when selecting a place.

EasyMark 3y ago
So put it in the price rather than "fees". That always feels highly dishonest to me.
- matsemann 3y ago
  How would you make that work? I rent out our cabin. If you stay 1 day or 7 days, it's the same amount of work for me and same costs in cleaning. That's impossible to price fairly without having a flat fee. In my market the customer sees the total price up front. I think this is the best solution for all parties.
septic-liqueur 3y ago
I haven't checked the platform lately but from what I remember the first search view did not show the total (plus cleaning) fee and only when you advance to book you would see the final cost. While not a scam, it definitely feels like a dark pattern.
- techcode 3y ago
  AFAIK everyone in e-commerce tries to have consistent pricing throughout the whole flow - otherwise people notice difference between pages and drop off. Stuff that you explained can happen because initially IP-to-Country isn't 100% precise (later in booking/checkout stage you provide country and then it knows for sure). Other case I've seen is that meta (comparison) website you came from showed you prices without including everything even though they should've. And then booking platform tries to transition you into correct pricing in between their pages.

Scoundreller 3y ago

> People did the same thing on eBay by making the items almost free but the shipping expensive, until they fixed the eBay interface There’s a longer story to this: eBay used to exempt shipping fees from its commissions. So sellers would be screwing eBay and, being an efficient market, as it often is on eBay, the savings would be passed onto the buyer. I’d sell games for 1 cent with $10 shipping (cost to me: ~$2) and put the shipping cost in the title for clarity. If you didn’t like it, fine, pay more to buy from someone else. Now they charge it on the whole purchase, which sucks when they take a ~15% commission on sales taxes and shipping and sellers can’t easily tack on a premium to these. So they get lower net proceeds when selling to someone that has high sales taxes or shipping fees. This really discourages sellers from shipping internationally where those costs are higher. Now that eBay charges percentage fees for “promoting” your item and getting visibility, bulk sellers will often post the exact same item, unpromoted, for less if you can be bothered to go through their “other items for sale”. Have seen some wild examples where a seller sold one item at very different prices. They must have had items with 50% promotion fees, 25%, 5% and 0% (evidently passed onto the customer through different pricing) to capture the whole market.

_puk 3y ago
As a user I always avoided those low cost, high postage listings as it just seemed a good way for a seller to avoid refunding the full amount. Refund would always be minus postage costs, so you'd get 1 cent back for your $10.01 purchase when returning (i.e. no point)
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  I think it’s up to seller’s policy if it’s a buyer’s remorse return situation. I find it hard to believe eBay wouldn’t make the buyer whole in a damaged/not as described case. Been a while since it came up for me (always sold stuff as “final sale” and if I avoid buying fragile stuff). Once had a hard time repaying a buyer that returned an item where I didn’t describe it correctly (screw you apple for having nearly identical LCDs but with slightly different camera cable lengths)
EasyMark 3y ago

biomcgary 3y ago

Airbnb is a marketplace with a much wider range of "products" than standard hotels. I have found stays that fit my needs far better than any hotel ever could. I am both a host on Airbnb and frequent guest. Airbnb's UI needs to guide prospective guests toward specifying what they are looking for so that prices (and price sorting) actually meets their expectations. If you search for a specific date range with # of guests, pets, etc., the sort order needs to be on all-in costs, not daily cost. Maybe they could offer pre-baked "personas" - e.g., I am looking for a hotel alternative vs I am looking for a unique experience.

nox101 3y ago
I've used Airbnb 25 times. 12 of those times had issues. Issues like "parking space included" - show up, no parking "wifi included" - show up, wifi is sitting next to window and stealing from neighbor listed on quiet road - after booking address is changed to unit on busy road heater is so loud it sounds like a vacuum cleaner making getting any sleep hard I no longer use AirBnB period. Hotels have extra rooms, reception, cleaning, etc. I'm not saying hotels are perfect but at least for me, the positive experience rate is 90% vs AirBnB which is 50% AirBnb also lost the price wars, at least as the places I've looked.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  It’s good for consumers this way I think. The hotels were forced to compete and I think overall are better than they were 20 years ago. For normal people, they are not aware of this different form of rented lodging and if you’re hosting a big family vacation or a retreat, Airbnb is not a bad option. It’s the bottom of the Airbnb market that is completely screwed up.
- archagon 3y ago
  For what it’s worth, I’ve used Airbnb around 60 times and found it a much better experience than a hotel 9/10 times. Even putting aside amenities such as kitchen and washer/dryer access, hotels always feel like unnerving liminal spaces to me. Very few hotels I’ve stayed at have felt “homey,” which puts a significant psychological damper on my trip.

ModernMech 3y ago

And those were a twist on the old infomercial trick: Get a second one absolutely free! (just pay a "small" shipping and handling fee that is as much as a second one)

kloch 3y ago
The "But wait, there's more!" device predates infomercials. It goes at least as far back as the "Atlantic city boardwalk pitch" from the early 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-tel > K-tel was founded by Philip Kives,[4] a demonstration salesman from Oungre, Saskatchewan.[5][6] Kives had worked at a number of jobs as a young man, including selling cookware door-to-door and in a department store, and as a pitch-man on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.

pjerem 3y ago

eBay could have fixed this a long time ago. Most marketplaces (at least in my country) manage the shipping transparently (by taking the shipping fee and providing a pre paid label to the seller). Idk in the US but I know nobody who still use eBay for anything, I don’t know how they are still alive.

Scoundreller 3y ago
eBay can now show the shipping cost tailored to your zip/postal code, and shows it up-front. eBay is an undertold story in failure (to innovate). For sure, still a going concern, but odd of such a large company taking the Craigslist approach of “let’s stay small and just do enough to keep it working comfortably for all of us” eBay practically invented online shopping at scale and had a huge head start but failed to maintain marketshare. It’s still the catch-all for products that don’t fit in other marketplaces. For me, it’s a place to buy a lot of Amazon items but at a lower price (at some convenience cost). Or niche/used items. Amazon has overly regionalized (sometimes I can get items in Canada from Amazon.com cheaper than amazon.ca for example), while eBay is still a generally global interface.
EasyMark 3y ago
I fix old electronics things like phonos, radios, and other sound related things as a hobby and resell(mostly 60s through 90s). Ebay is still great (well "good") for old parts and selling my warez. Although I do sell more locally as I've gotten some word of mouth, and it's more business than I can do with my day job. Anyway ebay still works for older products/parts for electronics and I reckon other fixable things.
- ghaff 3y ago
  They're still sometimes useful for old parts and the like. But there was a period when I used them all the time--admittedly as something of a novelty. Now, it's maybe a once a year sort of thing. Global supply chains have made a lot of the used market pretty tough for things you can just buy new. (I admittedly work a lot harder to get rid of stuff than acquire it these days.)

mellutussa 3y ago

This is why I can't use AliExpress. Ordering by price+shipping is truly an awful experience. The people in charge of that feature take incompetence to a new level.

Perepiska 3y ago

I remember a wave of $1 iPhone charging cables on Amazon! (with expensive delivery cost :)

xnx 3y ago

I'm not a fan of how AirBnB has displayed pricing in the past, but don't lose sight of how bad hotel pricing is: taxes and fees not displayed until the checkout page, "resort" fees added at any time, etc. There are no good guys here.

netsharc 3y ago
Maybe that's the US hotel booking experience, I live in Europe and haven't encountered those dumb fees.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  There are occasionally local tax rates that differ depending on the type of traveller, e.g. no tax for business travellers, €2/night for tourists. I've mostly seen it in Germany. It's generally written somewhere, but on aggregation sites like hotels.com and booking.com it seems the hotel can't alter the advertised price directly. Example: https://www.hotels.com/ho119759/maritim-hotel-koln-cologne-germany/ https://www.hotels.com/ho119759/maritim-hotel-koln-cologne-g... > A city tax is imposed by the city of Cologne. Business travellers with proof of business-related travel are exempt from this tax. For more details, please contact the property using the information on the reservation confirmation received after booking. > An effective city/local tax rate of 5.00 per cent will be charged

BeFlatXIII 3y ago

This is also how airlines work these days. Separate airfare from fees and baggage, then trick travelers with low sticker prices.

ghaff 3y ago
Most of the many taxes and fees associated with air tickets are built in. Not checked luggage in particular in many cases although I don't pay that on my usual airline and rarely have it anyway. Otherwise, unless I want to upgrade, the price it gives me is what I pay.