For hosts, property damage, etc. is a matter of when, not if, and for those things you get insurance. But as far as I know that's not a standard thing for hosts. Pricing in hidden hosting costs would make hosting look less profitable up front, then AirBnB's market would shrink.

For guests, inconvenient cancellations, bad hosts, bad rentals, etc. AirBnB doesn't give you any real recourse like paying for you to stay elsewhere the way a hotel often does. That would be expensive and you'd have to either pass the cost onto the customers (raise fees/prices), or reduce your margins.

That's not counting societal externalities like permanent AirBnB setups in neighborhoods that are affecting community cohesion.

These days, I use AirBnB to save money by taking on some level of discomfort/risk. If I'm looking for a worry-free night with decent amenities where I want to minimize mental overhead, I just book a hotel.

My reasoning comes from the amount of cash investors pour money into startups, and startups having insane amount of deals at the very start in order to attract costumers like uber had and airbnb to an extend. After the 1st or 2nd round is where a strong cfo either joins or the VC's involved want to capitalize on what they got so they are trying to squeeze things in and butcher the level of service something provided so they can either IPO or sell for big $.

What am saying is not always the rule but it does apply to a lot of things.

- New currency exchange card coming out amazing rates etc, 3 years down drops down to whatever your bank was going to give you - uber is a cheap taxi alternative you can use by abusing its own staff and investor money, cool 5 years down the line it becomes the same as any other taxi out there and still manages to abuse their staff - airbnb has some nice quality for money accomodation cause they are taking care of the product? fine again few years down the line when it gets streamlined and is getting squeezed for its maximum value they drop their customer support standards etc.

So yes thats it for me, am not going to remain a loyal customer anymore, am going to use your startup and its initial investing deal you are giving me, and am going to jump ship to the 1st startup that is coming out to beat you. Sounds very egoistic, its not though, am just tired of getting treated like a sheep.

P.S not a startup but a company that I very much liked Blizzard is changing face and its getting squeezed out for money from Activision, I feel betrayed so am a bit biased on my views but as my father once said: 'I bought a miele washing machine 25 years ago and it still works like a charm. I bought a brand new Samsung washing machine as a 2nd and broke within 3 years and good luck with warranty, if companies are going to treat me like this from now on, then am going to treat them like that'.

Of course I bought jewelry from the Nazis - it was cheap while it lasted!

Lets be clear about that, using uber is not the same as buying jewelry from war criminals. (hit a vein cause my grandpa was executed by them).

Everyone used uber and keeps using uber no matter what comes into light. Certainty not many of us knew beforehand what uber was doing, and once it was out I think uber tried to cover it quickly by increasing benefits and whatnot for the drivers. So no its not the same and am not enabling any dodgy business or anything, don't misjudge my comment, uber is a multi-billion $ company of course its dodgy as any multi-billion $ company out there.

So no, everyone doesn't.

Uber is built on squeezing safety and security from the drivers of cars for hire and somewhat from the customers. By using Uber you are complicit in this.

The passenger can't pick what driver they get, so who are those reviews helping?

I have a worrying suspicion that it's only so Uber can put pressure on drivers in some way.

Drivers also tend to prefer high starred riders and might reject low star riders.

Frankly, and probably to the detriment of a few ultra libertarians in here; I prefer a government regulator with established processes, a mandate and enforcement for drivers to observe rest times and drive sober and a requirement by law to be properly insured and health - (let alone background-) checked if you drive people around on a commercial basis to a completely arbitrary review system, which is a joke to begin with.

I can't judge Uber, since I never used and never will use it. But just about any other review system is rather unreliable. That 4 1/2* restaurant on trip advisor, which is mediocre at best? All those 5* AirBnb reviews for places where you have to tip-toe around strangers and find a constantly occupied bathroom? This would get a 3 * rating - if you feel generous - if that would be a hotel room.

edit : spellos and slight clarification

In my city, I remember when the news came out that drivers also rate passengers. The quality of passenger behavior skyrocketed.

I think most of the bad views of Uber come from disgruntled drivers and passengers with poor people skills. I know many many drivers and passengers who are happy with the product.

Also, ever since Travis Kalanick left the quality of driver support has tanked badly. It's very difficult to get issues fixed. The level of crippling bureaucracy within Uber is clearly growing. Not sure if that's a coincidence or indicative of his leadership.

That's not to defend Uber's predatory practices, but it's disingenuous to pretend that the service industry hasn't been at the mercy of those they serve. Also there are regulations, including background checks, for drivers? At least for Lyft.

I leave your comment 2 stars, would prefer not to read again.

The problem is that Airbnb stays are similar to airline flight delays - the cost of a problem can result in many times more costs than just the cost of the flight.

The EU has very strict laws - if you booked a flight in good faith, then the airline is responsible for getting you to your destination, paying for your needs (food/housing) until that happens, and pay cash compensation of up to 600 euros.

In my opinion, the government should provide the same type of legislation for short-term stays. If you make a booking, the platform should at least be responsible for housing you for the duration of your stay.

Why couldn't you get travel insurance that could cover accommodation costs and replacement costs due to theft?

If the parties to the transaction are bearing the cost, it's not an externality. It may be a hidden cost, but it's only an externality if it is born by someone outside the voluntary participants in the transaction.

Often enough, the neighbors also bear externalities: noise from guests dragging their heavy roller coffers up and down the stairs and smashing all doorbell buttons in the hope someone opens the door as they locked themselves out, rents rising because it's far more profitable to rent 100€/night/AirBnB than 1000€/month on the open market, ...

At the end of the day, it may still be a good thing for the temporary housing marketplace if people who want certainty (in general or just for the trip) stay in a hotel, and people who are willing to trade certainty for some savings stay in Airbnbs. This would lower demand for hotels, and therefore cost. But this is only an efficient outcome if Airbnb guests understand how the company will leave them high and dry if something goes wrong.

I'm convinced the majority of "unicorns" ignore (or actively dodge) externalities in favor of lucrative profits.

I think most companies develop convenient ethical blind spots where profit motive conflicts with the ethical problem from generating externalities.

AirBnB takes a strong moral stand on "inclusion" as a principle but has a clear blind spot when it comes to consumer, property, and residential externalities. Facebook takes a strong moral stand on free speech, but it has a clear blind spot for privacy and public discourse.

Other companies don't necessarily take moral stands, but they still develop convenient blind spots. Youtube (Google) and ideological polarization in its recommendations, Equifax and its lack of cybersecurity measures, and so on.

I think Facebook expressly does not take a stand for free speech, they've been pretty clear about banning offensive/hateful/sexual content from their platform (to the point of being prudish, e.g. with female nipples).

It does?

Some investors would not be dissuaded by (2), if they are purely looking for financial returns. In fact, if you could make a compelling argument that you're externalizing some of your costs, it could be attractive to financial investors because it would help prove that your business model can be profitable.

1. I rented a place and was told that I could check-in whenever. When I got there, the key wasn't available and I wasn't able to contact the host. I was essentially just standing around for three hours waiting for Airbnb to respond. Apparently, you can contact them, but it's extremely difficult to call them if you're international unless you want to pay for roaming, which I doubt they would compensate you for, so I had to wait for case managers to reply to my email.

After fiddling around with my phone for a while, I managed to install Skype, sign up for some credits, and call them. It was resolved within an hour after that, but the non-savvy tech user would probably have a lot more trouble.

2. The second incident was when I went to an Airbnb and the electricity wasn't working, the roads were closed off for 3 blocks to the apartment due to construction. I paid for a week's stay, but I immediately left since this wasn't disclosed in the listing.

By the evening, I was fed up with the problems, so I left to another Airbnb. I contacted Airbnb, again through email support, since that was all they offer and they told me I could not get a refund since I was past their 24-hour cancellation policy. After going through numerous emails and case managers, I never received my money back based off of a technicality. Their response was that I should have contacted them immediately... but they don't make it easy to contact them.

This. This happened to me one time and from there on, I will not bother with it again. My time and my travel logistics plus standing around with luggage or whatever else, is worth paying for a proper hotel to never have to deal with that ever again.

I've used Airbnb many times and have never had an issue. Make sure you only use hosts with good reviews.

Companies like this should be left to die.

here's hoping they IPO so I can short them! seriously, companies like this are not long for this world.

For these trips we stay exclusively in AirBnBs. They are much cheaper, much more comfortable, they have room for our kids to play, and we get access to a kitchen so we can have relatively cheap home cooked meals rather than eating out 3x a day.

That's not to say we haven't had bad experiences. Once we had a combination of thin walls/floors, a downstairs neighbor who was very sensitive to noise, and a one year old who didn't yet know how to tiptoe (we did our best and didn't get any more complaints after the first, but it was a fairly uncomfortable thing to have to worry about). We've stayed in not-great neighborhoods. One kitchen looked fine in pictures but didn't have knives or cutting boards or a single unbroken pot, which made the "cooking at home" options less appealing. The variance of quality in AirBNBs is much higher than that of hotels.

But even with these negative experiences, we're still staying in AirBNBs because it's still much, much better than the alternatives. Declaring that no value is produced by AirBNB or similar companies might be emotionally satisfying, but it's not true.

Of course, when the hotel rate is within $50-$100 of the AirBNB room, I'll happily pay the additional upcharge for the convenience and consistency of a hotel. And if I'm traveling in particularly unfamiliar terrain, I'll pay even more just so I can talk to the concierge and enjoy the security that the hotel offers.

AirBNB and competitors like Vacasa are a good thing. AirBNB's practice of making it impossible to ask an open-ended question, however, is braindead, and unless they fix those kinds of issues, the business will be deservedly overtaken by better followers.

Always call the man that controls the money.

The last time I encountered this was with Air Transat. I had to submit my twitter and email correspondence to my Visa provider. I was never issued tickets but I spent nearly $3k on my card, then had to do it AGAIN so I'd get tickets in time for my trip. So I went on my trip missing pretty much all of my spending money, and Transat and Visa were both just playing a waiting game for the entire two weeks. Thankfully my accommodations were paid for in advance and food in Puerto Vallarta is delicious and cheap. I didn't get my money until about 3 months after they took it from me.

I've heard Mastercard will do chargebacks with no questions asked, but I've never actually done it.

That's why try to always pay with credit card (preferably Amex).

> If the guest cancels less than 7 days in advance or decides to leave early after check-in, the nights not spent are not refunded.

^ I basically got hit with that rule.

----

Edit: Wanted to add that I'm pretty sure AMEX has a partnership with Airbnb since I always notice the promotional deals pop up. Spend $200, get $50 back.

Their pictures are notoriously decieving with the wide angle HDR shots.

It’s just really hard to find a quality place on Airbnb amongst all the noise. They come nowhere close to the customer obsession Amazon has.

> this wasn't disclosed in the listing

Isn't that basically "false advertising" or "bought something and got a different item"? I thought credit cards/AMEX would cover that... anyhow, very disappointing.

Airbnb sounds good in theory - like when the founders described how they came up with the idea after they started making side money letting travelers crash at their pad and jovially cooking breakfast with their guests. There's other people out there that could share their homes with nice strangers and enjoy these fun bonding experiences with guests too, right?

However, this theory goes out the window once the platform is opened up to the world for all kinds of good, bad, and in-between actors to use.

Now we have guests/hosts stealing from each other, scamming each other, pulling nefarious acts, and destroying the housing markets of various communities. And Airbnb throws up their hands from the sidelines and apathetically wonders "What could we do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Some things are no longer valuable when you intend to extract that value as money. That's why the poor king doesn't hire cheap mercenaries to protect his kingdom. Sentiment has nontransferable value.

0. https://youtu.be/RJHScbdp15s

Also good to clarify that I paid premium money for a serviced apartment offered in Airbnb, was sold as luxury etc etc. And having no previous experience with Airbnb could not see any potential problem in the add, once there the place was filthy, weird red stains on the walls... Disgusting

yeah, rookie mistake, my first Airbnb, but probably the last too :)

> Hotels in India would be quite cheap with the American dollar

A good hotel (or BnB) in India is not particularly cheaper than in any other country, they tend to have more staff than needed and the service is crazily good when it's good. I've had to bounce back from supposedly good quality hotels, and expensive in relation to the average, to a hotel that would be considered expensive in London a couple of times before this incident. Obviously all depends on your hygiene and quality standards. But if you think that flashing some dollar will make a red carpet appear in front of you... probably is a good idea that you try for yourself to have the exposure that you might be lacking

It is true that you can find very cheap hotels, but let me assure you that you don't want to sleep in those.

they stopped paying the host so he was up in my shit about not being paid, (he said he couldnt afford to get the place treated) and I was already out of all my money paid out to airbnb. it was a very awkward situation

I've been lucky and never had a truly bad experience with Airbnb, but I've had some lousy ones and never a top notch or even good one. Conversely hotels usually provide at least decent service and usually are great in my experience.

What I really dislike about Airbnb is the feeling of being an invader in a neighborhood. Doing something I shouldn't be doing, because, well I am. No one wants the house next door to them to become an Airbnb, so why do we support its practice by using them?

(I no longer use Airbnb btw)

Well, my next door neighbor in my building rents his apartment on Airbnb about 8 months a year (he travels a lot for business so is not often there). Honestly, I don't really mind. There's been a few noisy guests but those are few and far between and apart from that I've talked to and met some nice guests of his.

That said, his apartment is a great apartment since he actually lives there part of the year. It's totally different from apartments that were built for airbnb and tend to be really bad with crappy furniture. And, since the guests are happy, they are more likely to be respectful I think.

Didnt Airbnb start because the founder could not get a hotel because of some conference in the city and so all the rooms were booked.

This is basically the Etsy playbook. Have a good model that doesn't scale. Back yourself into a corner by taking VC money and end up having to do the opposite of what made your service good in the first place to keep growing your platform.

Just like there are only so many people making actual handmade goods, there are only so many homeowners looking to host guests.

Fortunately, there is a never ending stream of Chinese-made trinkets and garbage just as there is a never ending stream of slumlords (oops, property investors) looking to make a quick buck.

It is partially my fault for not getting evidence, but you’d think they would do more for somebody who, like you, has spent an awful lot of money on Airbnb.

Unfortunately they often have the best apartments available in a city. I do still use them, but I’ll search alternate sites first.

For your case where they wanted evidence - what would have happened if you had no evidence, and ended up issuing a chargeback for "Services not provided? You would have been in the right, but probably would have been banned for life from Airbnb's system. The lack of competition and monopolistic nature makes this seem hostile to consumers.

Could you elaborate a bit on this? I've not used airbnb but have a trip coming up and am reading this thread with great interest.

If I’m at the point in a dispute with a company where I’m invoking a credit card chargeback, I’m NEVER wanting to do business with them again, for any reason. I’ve always assumed chargeback == bridge burned.

Why would you continue doing business with a company behaving badly?

Having experienced their horrendous support in the past (bounced from agent to agent over a 72-hr period, as you describe), I can attest that this fee is worth nowhere near that. The support is a joke, and when dealing with something as critical as housing, this is not acceptable.

Regulations can be burdensome, they can entrench existing players, etc -- the disadvantages are frequently discussed. But also they can be too light. AirBnB was how inns basically used to work, and then iteratively an infrastructure built up.

I like the idea of Airbnb and many of the apartments can be great, but boy do I wish Airbnb would die a cold, harsh death.

My understanding was Airbnb started as renting out sofas or spare rooms, but is now basically the same as cottages.com, but with more hype, and apparently far worse property owners.

I've never got this at all. Why should you pay 5x price for AirBnb's risk?

If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. Airbnb just seems to say, "well, that's not our problem".

It makes me wish that there was a tenant bill of rights similar to EU Regulation 261/2004 about canceled flights.

Don't be so sure about that. I had a Marriott reservation but apparently they overbooked a whole bunch of us and tried to rebook us at Motel 8 without refunding any of our money. Luckily I had booked through Priceline.com and called their support and they rebooked us at the nearest hotel that's comparable to or better than Marriott, which ended up being a five start boutique hotel. I've been pretty loyal to Priceline every since.

The construction issue was pretty valid and shitty of them.

Why they have gotten away with these behaviours for so long is likely due to forced arbitration.

Their business plan is likely to show as much profit as possible, IPO/get on stock market, exit early investors and founders, and leave the mess and risk associated with their unconscionable protocols to the public markets - offloading it to society as what will inevitably be a loss, as they're not going to realize these nuances.

The forced arbitration is going to stop sooner or later, and cities are going to start to crack down heavily - going through the counter appeals of landlords and commercial hosts with many properties.

I believe this is rolled up in hotel pricing, and why Airbnb's are still overall cheaper.

Why should AirBnb have to not only waive their free but pay several times what they would have earned off the transaction to another party? It is wholly unreasonable for them to put you up in a place that costs 5x(+) as much.

They aren't a hotel chain, they are a booking agent. They don't own the properties, the connect a party that has a space and a party that wants a space. It's not like when you're at a hotel and a pipe bursts and they just put you in another unit that they already own. If the rental was 500 unitofcurrency and the only thing available in their system is 2500 unitofcurrency, they're now hemorrhaging money where a hotel would have virtually no extra expense moving you to another room.

If they made a practice of putting people in considerably more expensive places than they have agreed to pay for it would be absurdly easy to abuse the system from both ends. You could relatively easy manufacture a situation in which what you were renting was unusable getting you a free upgrade or property owners could potentially game the system during high peak times by listing a cheap space, having someone in on it get it, manufacture unusable conditions and then dump one or more properties into the system just under the price of the next cheapest unit and now they have 2 empty locations and are getting paid for the expensive one and can then dump both on vrbo/booking.com/flipkey etc.

At best they should refund your entire stay (unless you've already been there a considerable amount of time then prorate accordingly) and help you find a hotel.

I have to believe that with better curation it would have been possible to maintain quality. For example, Lyft still has a great UX with awesome drivers like they did at the beginning, even after they have scaled up to MegaCorp status. It seems Airbnb has made a conscious decision to pursue growth at all costs, including what made them great in the beginning. Time will tell if that was a smart play.

Well the day we were getting ready to go check-in, he cancels saying we were a "no show" with no refund despite multiple written records of his confirmation that we'd be there the second week.

I asked AirBnb to refund us for half, and over and over they'd transfer between agents who had no f*cking clue about the case and just kept regurgitating some cancellation policy and ignoring my obvious evidence.

Finally I took to the social airwaves and kept calling over the course of a week and they eventually relented and refunded something.. and the best part, they never apologized once, in fact they made some absurd 6-year old passive aggressive comment about still being right but they'd refund me anyways -- and the refund was less than half.

I get that two-sided markets are tough, but even having the slightest decency and empathy during the matter would have made a world of difference to me.

I have had similar experiences to yours (as, obviously, have many other repliers in this thread).

I have mostly switched to booking.com, which also has some homeshare type listings (or maybe that's only in Europe?).

I prefer to stay away from any company that doesn’t offer a human to talk to when things go awry.

What can they do then? Build new apartments for you?

> We had an Airbnb burglarized

Once again, what can they do?

They are not a hotel. You accept that when you book somewhere. It is not magic, there are going to be horrible places, there are going to be shitty owners who rob you.

You want all the benefits but none of the compromises. Too bad.

Do the same thing an airline does. If a flight is cancelled, they don't just refund the original price you paid for the ticket. They have to get you to the destination. If the only available option is a first class seat, it's their problem, not yours. They don't ask you to either pay $1000 for the price difference and get on the next flight or get your $100 back and try to get to the destination on your own.

So in this case, the alternative was not building apartments. It was to eat the price difference and house OP in another listing or even a hotel.

My two hosts were very friendly, and I got on great with them.

My first host would throw weekly dinner parties, cooking fresh organic food with vegetables she grew in her garden. When I was sick she would bring me breakfast in bed. Indeed, this woman was a wonderful human being.

My second host I would hang out with on an almost daily basis, we became really good friends. Hockey games, getting smashed on the weekdays, and other such fun times. I’ve kept in touch with both.

Chances are much bigger that you wind up in some cooky cutter appartment of dubious quality and design managed by some management company that manages dozens, if not hundreds of such appartments and gives exactly zero fucks about your well being.

Experiences as you describe them certainly exist. My girlfriend had a great experience in San Francisco, but that was in 2014.

My expreiences are very mixed and the reviews are rather useless in my opinion. Since I had a couple of youngster neighbors turning their temporary (and illegal) sub lease into an illegal hotel I will not use AirBnb again. It's just too damn painful for the people actually living in a multi party dwelling.

I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like hotels have been lowering prices and raising their quality as a result of Airbnb. Lots of "boutique" hotels offering great rooms for less. I was an early adapter to Airbnb and sung their praises for years, but for all the above reasons I too prefer hotels now.

At the same price point I would take a hotel, they have employees whose job is to help you and instead of the "hey we're sharing a space and growing together and learning about each other" horseshit Airbnb is trying to peddle.