For example, one host housed us in what felt like a derelict hotel/doshouse with all sorts of weird people staying and no working locks or fire alarm. On another occasion we booked a cottage, but it had a blocked chimney and was spewing fumes and smoke in to the living area. And for our tenth wedding anniversary we booked another cottage where the host insisted on staying with us despite the listing saying we would have the property to ourselves. He also insisted on singing to us against our will, this was actually quite creepy.
We did of course raise concerns with AirBnB about the first two and left a negative review for the third. AirBnB did not care and crucially it did not seem to have an effect on the ratings of these properties. That just does not seem right.
I no longer trust AirBnB. I don't trust the listings, I don't trust the reviews and I certainly don't trust AirBnB itself to filter out bad hosts.
This could be because AirBnB has grown so fast and it has struggled to cope, or it could be a conscious business decision. Either way, we don't use them anymore.
For the ridesharing, it depends. Maybe the driver has a route they know well, or has friendly connect. Maybe traffic for you was very bad and chaotic and there was no click.
For ridesharing I played tit-for-tat for a while, until I realized that I don't want to play this game (if my rating drops below a point where less drivers will pick me up, I will switch to Taxi's). For AirBnB: I never leave bad or lukewarm reviews, only good reviews. Getting a host that is actually there for check-in, really acts a host, is getting increasingly rare, so my good reviews are too.
However, as a host I've encountered situations where I probably should have given a lower rating but opted to not submit a review because the guest seemed nice other than some minor poor behavior (had to ask them to be quiet during quiet hours, ignored our house rules, left more mess than usual, etc). I didn't want to affect the guests' ratings because they weren't awful and had otherwise positive reviews, so maybe it was a one-off... I am sure there is some inflation on the guest reviews as well.
- Bad & contact support (thumbs down). Details should be given as to what is bad.
- Good enough (thumbs up), the default rating if you don't do anything
And then have a third tier of "compliments" like you do with uber drivers to denote something exceptional.
I don't feel obligated to leave a lengthy review, just either the default options and potentially a nice note.
In other words, you can't retaliate because of the other party's review: you don't get to see it until you post your own review.
I know AirBnB have an emergency number, but they themselves state on their website that all they will do in a situation like the above is to try and book you in to another AirBnB property or offer you a refund.
I think a lot of AirBnB customers have lower expectations of the service compared to what they would expect when booking into a hotel and AirBnB benefits greatly from this.
After all the AirB part of their name stands for air bed, the whole business was founded on the concept of customers accepting lower standards for a lower price. Now that AirBnB has grown into a quality property rental service it really needs to up it's game in terms of vetting it's hosts and dealing with questionable situations.
The fire marshal won't get you your money back, but they'll ruin a host's day if they're renting out a space without smoke detectors.
Basically every line of fire codes were written in response to people burning to death, so I have very little tolerance for landlords messing around.
DoubleGlazing said:
> > We did of course raise concerns with AirBnB about the first two and left a negative review for the third. AirBnB did not care and crucially it did not seem to have an effect on the ratings of these properties. That just does not seem right.
Of course you can say that DoubleGlazing should have insisted, but, from my own experience, I agree that, if AirBnb doesn't feel like doing anything, then they won't do anything; and that any remedies to force them into action will, at best, take effect only too late (e.g., it's no good getting a response in a week if the residence is uninhabitable today).
as if AirBnb has any means of phone access.
My friends and I were staying over at a 4-subroom Airbnb during the summer. The apartment looked great, and we really could not complain about the price either.
However, we started noticing that none of the furniture match; there we no more than two of the same chairs, the beds were all different, the cutlery was bent and visibly used, etc.
When two of my friends sat on the edge of a double-bed at once, the whole frame collapsed. Puzzled, we inspected further only to find custom fitted planks, badly mounted by too small screws, legs made of cheap wood, and so on.
Contacting the host, we were told that we had to reimburse him for a completely new bed, as well as the transport and installation costs. Meanwhile, we could just "sleep on the floor".
It became all to clear that the host picked up furniture from some kind of recycling station, and expected the guests to pay for it when it inevitably breaks. This way, he could continuously replace the furniture for new one, and having the guests pay for it!
Luckily, we could prove to Airbnb that the furniture was not original, and that it was modified multiple times, badly. After the whole vacation spent worrying about the communication between the host and the Airbnb, we managed to avoid having to pay.
It scares me that the host was willing and able to ignore the safety of his guests, and he got away with it without any repercussions from Airbnb.
PS: While my bad review of the host did not even put a nudge in his almost perfect 4.5/5 score, mine fell so drastically that most decent hosts might now reconsider housing me.
A similar experience is what put me off to AirBnb. What was supposed to be a carefree weekend at the beach turned into managing the property manager. One thing after another. Starting with no key because the lockbox code was incorrect. Some other doozies include: twin not a full bed, patio door did not lock, no hand soap in bathroom, and the Internet didn’t work.
Hosting is difficult and Airbnb is still learning. Once day they may have it figured out, but I’d be surprised if when that day comes they don’t look a lot like the incucmbent players. In the mean time we are all paying for their training.
Still didn't get a towel.. should have listened to douglas adams.
I also stayed at the cheapest airbnb in miami beach, which was an unwalkable room full of children's-sized bunkbeds, and populated by fully grown humans with the consideration of children. There was so much chaos i couldn't sleep, and since i was there to compete in a tournament the next day, I literally walked around the streets of miami at 3am until i found a patch of grass where I could sleep. I couldn't bring myself to pay $200 for 3 hours of a hotel.
http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5165144
I don't want to dox whoever lives there now, but it was just north of the convention center on Pine Tree Drive
Is the direct result of people listening to your own own advice: "Don't rent out your home if you don't want the risk of people damaging it!"
I rented my home a handful of times when I knew I would be out of town on the weekend. The first renters were great, the next 2 caused a combined $1,200 in damage that Airbnb refused to cover. Refunding me the cost of dry cleaning my comforter that was left with blood stains(!) instead of the cost to replace it was bullshit but that was all they'd offer. There was also no real recourse for one of the guests having at least a dozen people over for a midnight afterparty. I was still finding cigarette butts and trash out of my backyard landscaping for months after that final rental. There's just not enough money in Airbnb rentals for people who only have their own property to rent and don't desparately need that extra income, this the noticeable decline in quality. You're not the only person I've heard say that Airbnbs are becoming more like cheap motels than nice hotels.
In my mid-to-late-twenties, I remember thinking "Damn, why are hotels so expensive? I'll just stay in this Airbnb, which is so much bigger anyway. This is the new way and it's disrupting hotels."
Now at the outset of my thirties and a more settled phase of life, I will gladly pay a premium to stay in a hotel.
In the same way, it's becoming more likely for me to flag a London black cab than book an Uber via the app.
There's a reason why some business models and establishment types 'just work' throughout history and it's not entirely because of well-funded lobbying and conservative lawmaking, as we were maybe led to believe in the early Airbnb/Uber days when anything disruptive was shiny.
Those guys know what they are doing and that's an incredibly hard job to get, the points of interest for example, if you spend that much time just trying to get licensed you're probably going to be more professional than random soccer mom trying to make money while the kids are at school. That's not the case with taxis in the US or many other countries though.
Indeed, the dedication required to acquire The Knowledge [1] is incredible, at least to me considering how the job of taxi driver is considered a fairly low-end, unskilled one here in the States.
"The London taxicab driver is required to be able to decide routes immediately in response to a passenger's request or traffic conditions, rather than stopping to look at a map, relying on satellite navigation or asking a controller by radio. Consequently, the "Knowledge of London" is the in-depth study of a number of pre-set London street routes and all places of interest that taxicab drivers in that city must complete to obtain a licence to operate a black cab. It was initiated in 1865, and has changed little since.
It is the world's most demanding training course for taxicab drivers, and applicants will usually need to pass at least twelve "appearances" (periodical one-on-one oral examinations undertaken throughout the qualification process), with the whole process usually averaging 34 months, to pass."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom...
For my own travel, I got so sick of the problems with key access. It's just too hard to coordinate with most hosts when you are in a foreign country and don't have cell service or wi-fi.
It's also super annoying when any number of other issues show up: spotty wi-fi, no cable TV, no soap or shampoo, poor quality mattress, etc.
And then hosts often expect you to wash your dishes and put laundry in the washer. Why do I need to do this when I am paying >$100 for a "cleaning fee"???
Yeah, in Spring two years ago a friend an I did a Europe trip, with 4 Airbnbs bookings in total. On three of them we had issues getting in, where we had to contact the host, who was hard to reach or unavailable. And none would give us separate keys.
>And then hosts often expect you to wash your dishes and put laundry in the washer. Why do I need to do this when I am paying >$100 for a "cleaning fee"???
In fairness, cleaning involves a lot more than that step. But there does seem to be an arms race in how much of the cost they can cram into a hidden "cleaning" fee.
An industry can only be disruptive for so long. Eventually, it will either fail, or be successful and become the new status quo.
The book "Animal Farm" is so prescient, it's scary. I know it was written about governments but it applies to a lot of different organizations and industries:
"The creatures outside looked from <new> to <old>, and from <old> to <new>, and from <new> to <old> again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Just swap out <new> and <old> with:
Uber/taxis
online streaming/cable
AirBnb/hotels
Not saying all of these will come to pass, but generally as the disruptive <new> are encumbered with ever increasing regulation over time they eventually become <old> again
The Hilton App is easier to use than their actual website. I am able to check-in and check-out without talking to anyone. I can use a digital key on my phone. They send me receipts automagically.
And thanks to consistent corporate standards, I know what to expect in a Hampton Inn vs. Homewood Suites vs. Conrad.
Getting a hotel has become less of a hassle, has less friction, and is more convenient. Oh, and the technology helps the chain as well.
If you disrupt an industry, you better hope your moat is big enough to ward off the entrenched business. Ridesharing might indeed kill the taxi, but there's no way AirBnb is going to defeat the hotel industry.
However, I've never quite grokked AirBnB. I'm not a big fan of traveling in general, and when I do travel I prefer (and don't mind paying for) predictability and good customer service. Crashing in some random person's house doesn't seem very predictable, as threads like this tend to suggest, and responsive customer service is obviously out of the question.
I think another thing people tend to forget: regulations are often there for a real reason. Especially in the US there's a vocal majority who thinks that regulations are the problem. It's true sometimes. The reasons for the regulation were either bad in the first place, or have "aged out." But a lot of times: the regulation in the way of some business is there to protect consumers.
The problem is most "bodies of laws" are so complex and have so many competing stakeholders that it's a lot like a method that everyone's afraid to touch so they just comment "#DO NOT TOUCH!!"
The other problem is the "policy people" who create regulations are rarely the subject matter experts. They are good at managing the process to the successful conclusion: a new published regulation. They are not good at deciding what a good regulation is.
a) pretty much every case where a "may issue" permit is required to engage in business (these mostly happen on the state and local level and incentivize corruption).
b) Regulatory capture (e.g. the current FCC).
c) The war on drugs (I can come up with other examples of unnecessarily criminalizing things if needed).
And on the other side, the movies/music/video games/tv rating system sure isn't perfect but it's a great example of an industry coming up with a solution that doesn't involve regulation. Various other professional organizations (ones that are not given special protection via legislation, i.e. not doctors and lawyers) are also good examples. The AWS comes to mind as a pretty good one.
Legislation is hard to get right and harder to change and I'd rather only use it when other options have been exhausted (e.g. I support making ISPs utilities and a public option for healthcare).
Personally I find the knee jerk reaction to legislate whenever anything bad happens quite dogmatic.
Knee jerk legislation is not a straw man. It happens all the time. The CFAA is a knee-jerk law. Here[1] is a more recent example.
[1]https://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-gov-andrew-cuomo-bans-stretch-l...
And the last paragraph of the article mentions banning long vehicles, which itself is a knee jerk response to when a drunk t-boned a limo on Long Island awhile back.
I agree about regulating incentives though.
You're conflating actual criminal law with regulations in order to make your argument.
I think that's intelectually dishonest.
edit : spello
Hotels were often cheaper, in better locations, had a better service (longer reception hours, etc.), often breakfast included, room service, other guests which we could connect with and most importantly, no creepy cameras!
I had a massive rat infestation in my Airbnb in Paris. I arrived at the place at night and I didn't see at first the forced temporary leave notice on the building door for all inhabitants. It took Airbnb 12h to respond to my emergency call. They didn't reimburse my first night, considering that I stayed and didn't allow me to review if I accepted the reimbursement of the rest of my booking. The wording was memorable "We contacted Thomas your host and he has agreed to ... ").
That requires people. Airbnb and its SV brethren aren't interested in using people to solve problems. They believe all problems can be solved with an algorithm.
Except when it comes to faking AI.
I am definitely going to do comparison shopping again, it was an awesome experience.
Every startup is banking on consumers forgetting this. "Hey, X is far too inefficient/expensive, you deserve Y".
If the startup becomes a unicorn, it's never going to be long before they start following the same rules as the incumbents they toppled.
To a point. I find it a bit silly to regulate a single person renting out their house occasionally for short stretches (read: most users of AirBnB) to a corporation with multiple purpose built, million dollar facilities on expensive commercial property with their own staff and so forth.
This generally would not work for areas where there is monopolization or where the benefits would be less visible to the consumer in the normal case. what I mean by 'the normal case' is that even a shoddy building won't usually fall down, so abiding and non-abiding entities would seem more or less identical until the 0.01% scenario hits with resultant catastrophe. But things like BnBs are perfect for this model since there is major competition for consumers and transgressions against obviously desirable rules (like no cameras in the house) are not particularly uncommon.
---
As an aside, the reason I mention this as a desirable option is obviously not because I think there should be any hotels that have e.g. cameras in rooms. But rather because these things never just end at a handful of very critical points. Take food safety as an example. Obviously there are a good number of basic ideas everybody would agree on such as ensuring your hands are cleaned/gloved, that food is reasonably fresh, and so on. But as regularly organizations feel obligated to continue to expand, you start ending up with ever more esoteric rules. For instance in California if your dish cleaning sink for a food stall is 9 inches deep, you're in violation of regulations. They arbitrarily require that a dish cleaning sink must be at least 10 inches deep.
This gradual creep of rules poses an issue to people who are just starting a business. So obviously we all want hotels without cameras and food stalls where servers wash their hands, but on the other hand being forced to read literally hundreds of pages of legalese with countless 'gotchas' that can catch even perfectly safe and desirable products is something that can really hamper entrepreneurship, while simultaneously artificially entrenching older entities. Neither of which I think many people would think is a good thing.
You tend to get much better results with using a third party company (such as the BBB) since the company's action towards the company stands to have much more weight than a single consumer's. It's similar to governmental regulation, except it tends to scale more appropriately with size. E.g. 'Ma and Pop BnB' are generally not going to end up facing BBB complaints since they can resolve things 'locally.' Whereas with governmental regulatory systems 'Ma and Pop BnB' is treated in many ways the same as multibillion dollar multinational "BnB" and inadvertent noncompliance can be devastating, even when such inadvertent noncompliance in no way negatively affected anybody as you invariably end up with some rules that make sense for multinationals, but not necessarily e.g. a couple of retirees renting out a spare room.
[1] - https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/rental-listi...
https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/news/better-business-bureau...
Beyond that, the advent of modern communication has taken a huge bite out of whatever relevancy they might've had. Why complain to the BBB when you can complain via Yelp/Google Reviews/Facebook, etc. and have a bigger impact.
What you say also describes governments pretty well. They just tend to base membership on physical location. For your example of sink depth, if a business doesn’t like California’s rules, they can resign their membership and join a different government by moving there.
(As a minor aside, I've also noticed the quality of the places I've found on AirBnB has gone down. The homes I stayed at before I quit using it were not very clean (despite the fee!), things were broken, key retrieval was a pain etc. Hotels used to be much more expensive, but price/quality of experience is starting to get more competitive)
It's funny to me, because AirBnB runs in to all the same problems we had with hotels a hundred years ago. We have dozens of taxes, rules, regulations, building codes etc now for hotels. I imagine at some point it will be the same for AirBnBs. What's old is new.