> but the biggest problem is that the reviews are always so artificial you honestly have zero idea of what you're getting into.

> I just add the problem by leaving positive reviews even when I'm unhappy with the place

So stop actively making the problem worse. Retaliatory reviews aren't a thing, because the host can't see your review until after they post theirs, and the only outcome from a potential host tracking down all of your past hosts' listings, digging through possibly dozens or hundreds of reviews to find yours, and finding out that you said that the listing wasn't as described is that you'll get suckered by fewer accommodations that aren't as described. There's no good reason to post a falsely positive review of a bad listing.

Future hosts will see your reviews and refuse to host. Since the reservation has to be confirmed by host, it can be a pain to go through a few hosts.

> Future hosts will see your reviews and refuse to host.

People keep saying this like it's a universal truth, but it's not actually true for any host worth renting from, and I say it as an honest reviewer who has spent years not being in the same city for more than a few weeks at a time and never has trouble getting a place. How? Because I leave honest feedback _and_ I'm an excellent guest.

You're basically saying that you think it's a good idea to get scammed so that you don't miss the next opportunity to be scammed. It's insane. There are so many good hosts out there. You don't need to be afraid of the bad ones.

For me. I don’t report minor things. If there’s a big problem I call it out in my review and rating. But I really round up for minor to mid stuff.

My biggest issue is hating all the weird host rules. I don't want to tip toe around and abide by your curfew when I'm on vacation. I also don't want to pay an outrageous $250 cleaning fee. At least with a hotel I know what I am getting and don't get any surprises.

They really need to fix the cleaning fee. It’s outrageous. At least they let you compare prices including fees.

But it reflects poorly on Airbnb when an apt is $200 with a $200 cleaning fee.

It’s like back when EBay let you charge $1 with $20 shipping.

Obviously you need to be able to compare fees, but I don’t see the issue with a large cleaning fee if that is what it costs. One friend has an Airbnb in a ski village and he pays the building cleaners $150 to clean his rather small unit because that’s what the resort mandates unless he gets an outside cleaner. Most people won’t want to pay that cleaning fee for a night or two but for a longer trip it doesn’t change the overall cost by much. It would be difficult for him to manage a third party cleaner so he uses the building cleaners and passes the cost on. Sometimes it works for people and sometimes it doesn’t.

I actually prefer this to bundling a cleaning fee into the nightly price. I don’t want the place cleaned every day and it would make Airbnbs unaffordable for longer stays to do so.

On EBay they would just lie and call it all shipping so they didn’t have to pay fees on the “shipping”. With Airbnb, hosts should actually prefer higher nightly prices as they’ll get those prices for every night of the reservation and not just once like on eBay. The comparison to eBay would be paying separate shipping costs when buying several of the same item when they could all fit in one envelope.

I’m sure there are many situations where there are high cleaning fees.

I have my entire house deep cleaned for $200 for 3 people over two hours. There’s no way that takes place for a two bedroom condo.

My last rental charged $140 and we talked to the owner who said she comes and changes the sheets, sweeps up and washes the dishes. The owner of the cabin.

I pay my turnover crew a living wage and it's $350. It's a 6 bedroom and takes nearly all day to do it right. Laundry is a big part of the fees. If it's bigger than an apt and you aren't paying much for cleaning they probably aren't doing it right. And you're likely sleeping in uncleaned sheets.

I don't think most hosts are gaming it to make money, it's just expensive in relation to the nightly. Usually when I explain the costs the guests understand.

Many see the actual cleaning fee, think it's ridiculous even though it's not and then decide to trash the place because they think they paid to do so. And then that causes you to have to go higher to cover the average turnover.

Yes sometimes the owner does it and they are free to value their time as they see fit. If it’s too much I simply won’t stay there especially for a short trip. I would be pissed if it wasn’t clean though.

If I had to do your dishes, I definitely wouldn’t charge a small cleaning fee either :)

The only thing wrong with the cleaning fee is the name. As as host i prefer longer stays rather than having to exchange keys every day because that's what cost me time/money. It's not like i need $200 to clean but i might have to take half day of work, drive a long distance, wait for delayed guests etc. Much easier to just deal with long staying guests.

"I don't really want to pollute my profile with candid feedback."

This is how I feel about most things. A lot of times I give everyone 5 stars (things on fiverr, reviews for customer support, airBnB reviews, etc) even if the service is mediocre, partially because I don't want to deal with the potential problems of giving poor reviews.

Potential problems include being unable to get files after a project (fiverr → giving someone a bad review), staying at a previous airBnB (giving them anything less than 5 stars), potential harassment (giving anything in general a low review), someone getting fired for anything less than 5 stars (Customer support), potential tampered food (not tipping even if poor service or leaving a bad yelp/google review).

Its kind of silly that the public standard (for 5 star reviews) is 3 stars is bad, 4 stars is ok, and 5 stars is good in general. 1 star is just biased, 2 stars are worse than 1 stars in my opinion just because it shows you put enough consideration to give them a 2.

This applies to reviews on airBnB, uber, amazon, ebay, etc.

Why leave a review at all if you're not going to be honest?

Some sites practically force / really encourage you to leave a review (e.g. spam you with email reminders until you do, have seriously annoying UI that won't go away until you review). Apps will constantly ask you to review it, but this can be circumvented by clicking the link and ignoring it.

But if a review can be tied back to your account (e.g. the review is not private, rather public) this could hurt you long term. A good example of this is airBnB. If you have written less than stellar reviews to some hosts, some superhosts (those that require initial contact, e.g. not the ones with lightning bolts) might potentially ignore you because you are a liability of poor reviews.

This ends up limiting the overall options you have with airBnB when you need to stay at a city. Not only that, some hosts would rather see you left a good review if you only used airBnB a few times.

Another example is writing an honest review about your employer, whether its on reddit, glassdoor etc, and that review happens to be bad. If these things end up being traced back to you publically, you might be burning bridges / not having recommendations down the road.

It is selfish that I write good reviews because it gives me less problems down the road, thereby making ratings not as honest for everyone else. At the same time it can be incredibly selfish writing a poor honest review, because not everyone rates things equally (what is average rating, is it 3 or 4 stars?). What if that was a first time airBnB host with no ratings (having a poor first review is like a death sentence)? What if your stay as poor and it wasn't entirely their fault (e.g. outside noise was bad, washer broke, your sleep was awful, cockroach infestation next door, etc).

My point is, sometimes you need to write a review, and its hard to define what an honest rating is, and how detrimental it can be to you and the other party, especially if its on a personal level. I prefer to leave the honest part on just the text portion of the review, not on the 3 out of 5 stars part.

Sometimes people just need a helping hand and a good review goes a long way even if the service was mediocre. As long as they showed good faith and did their best I give them a 5. I know how hard it is to run a business from personal experience, and I know what its like to be on the consumer getting shafted at the end. I try to be as fair as possible

> spam you with email reminders until you do

I figure I'm reviewing the experience, not just the product. Amazon reviewers love it when I give their product one or two stars for an otherwise great product, and leave a review that says, "Product was fine, but vendor spams for reviews."

Because people are willing to externalize costs for short term personal benefit at the expense of making everything worse for everyone. The rationale in the moment goes something like "I've already stayed there, so leaving an honest review won't help me." And they just don't think about the logical consequences of that kind of behavior.

AirBNB UI really emphasizes this - it's nigh impossible to book again without having left feedback of the previous place.

I don’t leave reviews or rate customer service or take corporate surveys. If some wildly profitable company wants my help with thier employee evaluation process or as secret shopper they can compensate me for my time. I see no reason to volunteer for the likes of Amazon, AirBnB, or Verizon.

Hosts (or anyone) can look at your profile to see the reviews about you, but not the reviews you've written. They would have to know the places you've stayed and then search through those reviews to find yours. So I don't think you should be worried about leaving honest reviews.

I think the worry is retaliatory reviews. I've been in a situation where if I left my host an honest review, I expected to get a nasty review in return.

It's honestly a problem with all of these bi-directional rating systems. As long as they make it at all possible for the ratings to leak before both parties have rated, there's a strong disincentive for any party to leave an honest rating.

Airbnb switched to a "double blind" review system several years go, so you only see the other person's review after you've written your own. If you don't leave a review within two weeks, the other review becomes public and you no longer have the option to leave a review. I did a search to see if there was any press about this, couldn't find much but there's a bit about it here: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/building-for-trust-503... "The result was a 7% increase in review rates and a 2% increase in negative reviews."

My reason for not writing a negative review is because before staying at their place we exchanged phone numbers and other things, and now I don't feel comfortable writing a negative review and possibly having a confrontation. YMMV but I avoid writing negative reviews despite the 'double blind' review system.

Always contact them through AirBnB. You should be treating it just like contacting random strangers for sex on Craigslist, potentially dangerous. There's no reason to give a random stranger your personal contact details.

I thought that you couldn't see what a host or guest wrote about you until you already wrote your review. That's the way it's been for me, anyway.

TBH I haven't used AirBNB in a long time (too many small hassles + one big bad experience), so it's hard for me to say at this point.

I do know that similar systems (Uber, at least) have had issues with leaky reviews leading to retaliation. It's hard to implement a system like that, especially when your users have safety, money, and comfort on the line.

Works great with the double blind system Airbnb uses

As a host I use a chrome plug-in that shows me every review a guest has written for their stays

As a guest, though, if a host is actively weeding out people because they speak out about being scammed by shitty not-as-described slumlord empty-ikea-box listings, then I probably don't want to give that host money anyway.

I totally agree. To clarify I'm a very active guest as well, so I'm well aware of mis-represented listings. I simply use this as another data point when evaluating a guest.

But how do you know if they have been?

I don't need to know, because I automatically benefit from not having my trip ruined by staying there. A lot of people don't seem to get that you can be honest about a booking without sounding like a complete asshole (despite how much I like to complain on HN, I promise that I don't write reviews the same way ^^).

You can say a lot of honest things like "if you expect to cook, be aware that you'll need to provide your own X/Y/Z" or "The wifi didn't work for me" or "I found the bed to be uncomfortably soft" or "It's obvious that nobody has ever lived here because so many basic things are lacking". And if any host would choose to deny you based on those, then I wouldn't want to give them money.

Possible reasons for a host to deny a booking:

1) The apartment is actually unavailable. It happens sometimes. I'm not going to cry about it.

2) The host is scared that I'm going to call them out for lying in their listing. If the listing is a lie, then I don't want to stay there. If the listing isn't a lie, then a good host won't be scared by honest reviews about misleading listings.

3) The host doesn't like my face. It's unlikely but possible. Again, I don't want to give money to a person who makes judgements like that.

I've never had any difficulty finding places while staying honest. Honesty doesn't reduce the number of good hosts available. Dishonesty does increase the number of bad hosts available. I do sometimes suffer because other people were dishonest in their reviews, and it upsets me.

Does a host (where you've stayed) get to see your review of their place before they post their review of you? If so, I think the fear would be a traveler leaving a negative review, the host seeing it, and then leaving a negative review of the traveler in retaliation.

Airbnb employee here: both parties have to leave a review before you can both see the review posted to prevent retaliatory reviews. Also, you can leave public feedback, private feedback, and feedback to Airbnb if you have specific issues with the guest/host that you want us to address.

Quoting myself from other place:

> My reason for not writing a negative review is because before staying at their place we exchanged phone numbers and other things, and now I don't feel comfortable writing a negative review and possibly having a confrontation. YMMV but I avoid writing negative reviews despite the 'double blind' review system.

Despite the double blind system, AirBnb's review system still requires you to have a certain personality. It is still quite adversarial.

Take for instance we stayed at a place recently, where we were quite upset at the ameneties of the place (and we were very certain to give them negative reviews), but during the last day, the host made a huge favor to us by keeping our luggage with them. This meant a lot for us, so we can't really leave negative reviews, however, this does not fix the problem with Host's place.

I would suggest some sort of constructive feedback system, based on different metrics, separate from the textual comment system.

Like something which allows me to say:

Amenities: 3/5 What can be improved: Stack up the toilet paper, fix the broken shower handle (Uber style feedback from multiple choice) Cleanliness: 2/5 What can be improved: Toilet wasn't clean enough Hostmanship: 4/5 What can be improved: Communication

Etc.

Ok, that's completely different. If you don't feel physically safe about leaving a bad review, then you absolutely did the right thing. (Ignoring for a moment that it's pretty bad that you ended up in that position.)

The rest of what you're describing is definitely tricky. The host made you guys whole by offering an extra, unexpected benefit that was worth a great deal to you. I think you're absolutely justified in giving them points for that; it's maybe even a tacit admission that they might have known they let you down on amenities and offered to go above and beyond in a different dimension to make up for it.

However (assuming for a minute that you weren't worried about a confrontation), wouldn't it make sense to just give a high star rating that reflected your overall experience (sure, you might dock a star for the missing amenities, but then add it back for helping you out with luggage storage at the end), and then in the free-form text, describe both those negatives, and the positives as well? The host would hopefully be able to take the criticism constructively as intended, and future potential guests would also note that the host can be incredibly accommodating in the face of extraordinary needs.

Thanks for the clarification. In this case, I don't see why anyone would ever hesitate to leave a negative review or feedback if they've had a bad time. The parent who claimed he always leaves a positive review regardless of the experience is just admitting to being part of the problem.

I think review inflation is a problem in general across any service where there might be a more human/personal interaction element where you might feel compelled to be nicer or more generous. It's very different than buying a product from a retailer or rating a product from a company you've never had a direct personal interaction with. I think for most of us, it's in our human nature to be more generous unless there's an egregious violation of standards/quality.

I think it depends on what the bad experience has cost you, and about the dynamics about the particular platform/system.

If I have a bad Lyft ride, I usually won't rate any lower than 4 stars, because of exactly what you're talking about, and because I know that an average rating of below something in the mid-4s can get a driver "fired". The ride may have been sub-par, but its purpose (getting me from A to B) has been fulfilled, and that's that. It's also probably on the order of single- or low-double-digit dollars, so I didn't spend too much on the bad experience. And again, the actual purpose of spending that money has been fulfilled. (Now, if a driver is actually driving unsafely, they get 1 star, plus an email to Lyft customer service, no matter what.)

If I've planned a vacation, however, and the Airbnb ended up being a bad experience, I'm absolutely going to write a bad review. I've likely spent a decent chunk of change on it, and I'm specifically spending that money (plus the money spent for transportation to get to this place) to have a good time. If the accommodations aren't as promised, and it impacts my ability to have a good time, then I'll leave an honest negative review because I haven't gotten the value I expected for that money.

I rented a place in Tahoe for New Years this year that ended up having some significant negatives. My friends and I still had a good time overall, but having to deal with the issues was frustrating and definitely detracted from our fun. It wasn't through Airbnb, so I left a detailed negative review of the management company on Yelp. I didn't feel bad about this; the people from the company I interacted with were friendly and attempted to be helpful (but fell a bit short in execution), but the cleanliness and condition of the property was below what I expected, so... bad review.

No. You get something like 10 days to complete the review and the host does not see it and you don’t see their review until either the time period expires or you both leave reviews. After the time period expires you can no longer leave a review

You complain about the problem but then add to it yourself. Post honest reviews. Host can't see it until they already wrote your review. There's also star ratings. I write honest reviews and also have "profile that shows me as an exceptional guest".

Sounds like you’re exactly the guest this was made for. Now someone can certify the washer and dryer exist and are functional before you arrive.

If it’s not a lot more, I’ll definitely consider using it to ensure a smooth check in and accurate amenities when I need them.

And they are only doing this in the big cities where there is plenty of competition. When I've stayed at sketchy AirBnBs, it was not a surprise. The real problem is in the boonies where there might only be a couple places available in an area and there is a shortage of experienced hosts. I recently left a 3* review (only one 4* out of 24 stays) for a place 30 miles outside Cleveland. Place was a dump with an absent host who had me call the cable company to fix the WiFi and then gave me a runaround for weeks when I asked for a discount. Three butter knives in the silverware drawer, bedroom door that had no key so God help you if you locked it. But it had great reviews!

Wait, I'm confused. Airbnb is part of the "sharing" economy, right? So mostly people renting out their home whilst briefly away.

And they don't have a drying rack? Something doesn't fit.

Anecdotally, having stayed at dozens of AirBnBs, a large percentage of listings are not people renting out their homes while briefly away. Many listings are from large-scale property owners who take several apartments off the rental market, put the least possible investment in them, and then list them on AirBnB, often using multiple host accounts to make it look like they aren't doing this, while living somewhere else.

Forget about drying racks. Many listings don't have a trash bin or toilet paper or soap or a knife suitable for chopping vegetables or a cutting board or pans that aren't half-rusted mangled garbage or blankets. Many listings are for private rooms but don't tell you that the "private" room is in a crumbling 10 bedroom house occupied entirely by other transient AirBnB guests and that there are no locks on any of the doors.

I know, it was tongue in cheek

Let's tax these parasites, get them out of residential areas.

What is Airbnb providing? Their premium "service" is their previously claimed bare-minimum if you exclude the slumlord part.

Tech innovation? Pah.

Yeah — I mean all of the hosts that don't fit into this mold will be looking for a new home.

A lot of people don't do the distinction between a washing machine and a drying machine. I'd be surprised if the places you visit did not have a washing machine at all.

Yeah I think this may be partly an issue of what people are used to. In most countries the dryers are terrible anyway so everyone hangs their clothes to dry.