Re:Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing
by personlurking on Thursday November 07, 2019 @02:05AM
(#21471086)
This also strikes me as odd. I've recently been seeing extremely short reviews for places. That is, 10+ reviews per place that are basically "was great, would recommend!" or "the host was responsive, I'll come back!".
I can't tell if this is a thing people do or if they are somehow fake 5 star reviews.
Re:Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing
by londons_explore on Thursday November 07, 2019 @05:42AM
(#21472050)
For a while AirBnB forced you to write a review before you could book another place.
During that time, I always just wrote expletives in the review box and gave everyone 1-star. I'm not going to be the unpaid QA person for AirBnB!
ISTR last time I used AirBnB there was some flow that really pushed you to leave a review, which obviously leads to those kinds of uninformative reviews.
Re:Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing
by thepangolino on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @06:28PM
(#21468719)
That doesn’t seem strange at all to me. A friend of mines regularly rents their place on Airbnb. Then in turn they rent a cheaper property and pocket the difference.
Re:Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing
by fierarul on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @06:50PM
(#21468899)
For every odd situation I see in HN comments there comes somebody like you saying: "why, I just did that yesterday!".
A location getting good ratings from other people in the same city that rent 2 other apartments is so odd it should be denied by default and require manual approval. The odds of collusion are quite high. Of course sellers would help each-other with good ratings! Even at the actual cost of paying for a night (in AirBnB fees) it might still be worth it if you want good ratings.
So, no, this is pretty strange.
Re:Airbnb Plans to Verify Every Listing
by londons_explore on Thursday November 07, 2019 @05:44AM
(#21472059)
You don't even have to pay many AirBnB fees - you can steeply discount a night, and then get your friend to book it.
Not sure why you're downvoted. At least one place I stayed at in Switzerland, it was pretty clear something like that was exactly what was happening: The family were living in the house normally, and when someone rented it, they just vacated it and went somewhere else. (I sort of suspect that there had been a recent divorce and the mother was trying to figure out how to be able to avoid having to move due to changed financial situation.) It seemed a bit weird to be taking over this family's house, but they decided it worked for them, and the house was as described, so... shrug
Don't know where they went, but a cheaper AirBNB place nearby would be an obvious candidate.
> Even some of the positive reviews of Becky and Andrew’s Chicago rentals seemed odd, especially those left by other pairs of hosts. Kelsey and Jean, for example, said Becky and Andrew were “awesome and communicative guests.” But they themselves were based in Chicago, where it seemed they had at least two properties of their own. Why would they need to rent from someone else there?