News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb. Parent comment

Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by jkoudys on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:20AM (#20460402)
Yeah those cleaning fees are bullshit. I don't want to see the prices of only one item on a list shown on the map, I want to see how much it actually costs to stay there.

tbf you'll see this on a lot of hotel bookings too. We just got back from a week in NYC, and most booking systems (either hotels or airbnbs) were a massive slog. Try to airbnb an okay place in the Bronx for $110/night? Click through and see an $80 cleaning fee. Try to book a hotel in Manhattan? Bam, $100 tourism tax.

Really not loving all these systems that go out of there way to confuse me into paying more money.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by ryandrake on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @02:39PM (#20462692)
Reminds me of those “resort fees” in Vegas, which are not disclosed as part of the room rate when you search/comparison shop, but can actually add up to being more than the room rate [1]. Totally evil. Why can’t we at least agree to regulate hidden fees to extinction? How does hiding the true price of something ever benefit the public?

1: http://killresortfees.com/vegas

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by dec0dedab0de on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @12:25PM (#20461205)
Really not loving all these systems that go out of there way to confuse me into paying more money.

When you think about it the cleaning fee really does need to be separate because it's a one time fee. So with your scheme it's $190 for one night, but but $121 a night for a week.

That said I used AirBnB for the first time last month, and I was very confused by the different pricing on different pages. The UI did seem to be purposely confusing. It should have been listed as total price for the dates I am searching for.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by Symbiote on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:29AM (#20460510)
In at least some cases the tourist tax is only for tourists. Business visitors don't need to pay the tax, if they show some evidence that it's a business trip.

An example is Cologne's "Culture tax": https://www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-verwaltung/steuern-ge...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by jkoudys on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:32AM (#20460552)
Interesting -- I'll look into that for NYC. I'm CTO at a startup based in Toronto, but we have a tiny space in Manhattan so it's pretty easy for me to schedule some business there and have my family tag along.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by mrguyorama on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @12:45PM (#20461414)
>business there and have my family tag along

So you think you should be able to violate the spirit of the law? Why shouldn't you pay that tax as a tourist?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by jkoudys on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @02:23PM (#20462535)
Because I'd be there on business? You seem weirdly upset that I'd want to see my family after work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb by ghaff on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @01:17PM (#20461798)
I've certainly never heard of hotel taxes only being for tourists in NYC. NYC is worse than most with all the taxes and fees they add. The worst was that for a number of years they had some Javits convention center enhancement fee. This was during a period when it wasn't even clear if the project was going ahead--though it eventually did.
[ Parent | on HN ]