When you can replace "they're" with "they are", you are using it correctly. Otherwise you aren't, and you probably want "their".
I am skeptical you are from the US because of your grammar. How long have you lived there?
Have you seen the 45th president? Have you seen the average American?
Are you actually serious right now?
Your third line is entirely unnecessary.
See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history.
Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.
You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?
OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.
> Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews?
It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.
Edit: furthermore spam prevention takes all sorts of random signals in to account. Having no online presence other than a single stay in Airbnb certainly looks suspicious.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy, but there is also no evidence whatsoever that social media presence was in any way shape or form used to make the decision here. Airbnb at no point mentioned it, nor would it have been something that crossed your mind if original commenter didn't mention it as a fact about themselves.
I'm not arguing that Airbnb does use presence/lack of social to make a decision here. I just objected to you saying
> Since when is a social media account required to do online business?
I interpreted that as you being outraged that Airbnb requires some form of social presence to do business. I felt you were exaggerating and responded by saying its just about the review. I meant that even _if_ Airbnb is checking this, it's not a big deal cause this is just one of many signals that could feed into spam detection and we're only talking about the _review_ not the ability to use Airbnb at all.
You raised a valid point earlier, I doubt they're actually checking this, my point is just that even if they are, who cares. OP looks suspicious by having no online presence at all and only one stay on Airbnb. That combined with the language in their review probably tipped the spam filters to say "hey it's probably safer if we don't let this review through, doesn't seem legit"
Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time.
Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd.
My theory on this is the same as usual – Airbnb outsources or understaffs their customer service department as usual; some stressed out agent closed the case without even looking at it. Making some noise and opening a separate case will probably work if you're bothered enough.
It's possible there's something more mundane, like not having a browser cookie when the review was left or something like that.
After that, they’ve already made the fees on the stay. Most people won’t be losing 20% or whatever to farm good reviews.
Why would the final and optional review step be the part where they decide to verify if the stranger staying in someone else’s house is a real person.
Implying that a "bot" or "puppet" is paying to stay at AirBnB's just so they can write salty reviews?
It is not really a big cost because you only really need to pay the platform fee (you control both sides of the transaction do the only real cost is the middleman).
Reviews are super important and it is hard to get booking when you have 0 reviews so it is not surprising that some hosts would spend some dollars for 3-4 fake positive reviews to kickstart their property (many people will bounce off the ad without at least a couple positive reviews, so it changes your business radically)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34219765
> Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.
Many of them collect their data via third-party scripts so you should ensure those are blocked.
Effectively, you can't.
Reviews are an auxiliary cost to Airbnb. They need moderating and their Hosts complain and use up support time if bad reviews are let through. I suggest profiling users is a quick and cheap way they've done the sums on to weed out the easiest level of abuse (on both sides).
They're not going to lose any business until it affects you.
"We have a suspicion based on this data we don't have that you might not be a real customer so we're blocking your reviews" invites a whole lot more customer support time than "We're not accepting your reviews."
It is simply cheaper to be firm, however unfair it is when they get it wrong.
That’s how you’re supposed to know where is worth staying and where isn’t.
If those can’t be trusted, then it’s an inferior B&B platform with doctored reviews that you can’t trust.
My advice to those reading this is just to get a hotel unless there is no alternative.
AirBnB was fine for a bit when it was cheaper than alternatives, but, in my experience, it’s now as expensive (if not more) as the hotels they’re trying to replace.
There’s usually a massively inferior experience when compared to Hotels the majority of the time. At least, that’s been my experience.
Reviews that you can’t leave unless other party reviewed you which self censors whenever there’s a slightest disagreement
See reviews for same places on booking.com and they are consistently 1 star less
There could also be bad faith from Airbnb as some comments frame it but I believe most of the time it's just a tricky business. Check ebay and you see the same issues or even worse.
So just saying "regulate it like hotels" doesn't mean much. Unless you mean every host is regulated like a hotel?
Require Airbnb hosts to pay for a license, have regular inspections, etc.
And how does this help with reviews on airbnb.com?
These sorts of HN posts is often how change happens.
There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist.
Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.
That's not a realistic solution.
If all the reviews were fake 5 stars but it's just the property's friends always leaving reviews then when you got there, you feel there's no way it's 5 stars. But less obvious is property manager says, hey i'll give you a 5% discount for 5 stars, when really the place was a 3-star at best.
Those shifts in star ratings are material in your personal decision making process.
Airbnb is incentivized to have higher scores because lower ratings might not push people to other properties - it might discourage them from booking all together. They need them to not be totally worthless, but score inflation is definitively in their best interest.
I don’t trust sites like Airbnb and I understand how sites have problems with review fraud.
If I posted with a unique signature then over time people could learn that mine aren’t fake.
Also would be nice to know that the Airbnb reviewer also rated a restaurant and some headphones, etc.
So you can basically collect people who review in ways that are useful to you and layer that over the web to rank search results, apartments, blenders, etc etc.
Compare reviews on Steam to reviews on Airbnb. You'll quickly notice something, Steam shows you far more information at a glance. You get to know whether someone bought the game themselves or if it was given free to them, how many hours they played before the review, how many hours they played in total, their rating, how other people feel about that review, how many other products the user has, if the review was edited, and of course review text.
Airbnb's reviews has a scoring system that was generalized, and review text, maybe a translation badge if the review was translated.
Reviews work best when you are given as much information as possible. Without it, you might as well be relying on an anonymous 5 star system.
True but also one they’ve created for profit. They choose to ignore complaints about hosts to avoid losing their fees, they choose not to audit reviews, etc. There’s an entire industry of people who get paid to do mystery shopping to review customer experiences, which is quite effective but not free since you can’t automate it at scale.
This seems like it’s basically a VC playbook now: focus on growth numbers and assume you’ll be able to convey the shiny tech imagine until you reach market dominance, and avoid spending money visibly on “menial” jobs to support the image that you are about to be unbelievably profitable.
I wonder if "tipping" could improve things.
A new platform like airbnb could have an expected tip built in to the platform. Hosts are expected to provide good service and get a tip.
Customers are encouraged to tip at the end of their stay (with a lower base price than airbnb to account for that).
Hosts can see the average, median, max, and min tips of potential customers (along with distribution, and percentage calculations) and use that to determine whether to accept them as a guest.
Customers can see the average tip a listing received, and use that to determine if they'd want to stay there. Of course, they would sometimes leave $0 or a low number as a tip, but they'd be incentivized to also provide good tips for good service, because a low tip average would reflect poorly on them and make them less likely to be hosted.
I suspect tying things to real value for the customer and host would lead to better service and a more honest indication of host/customer quality.
But perhaps it would just lead to hosts literally bribing customers for good tips.
Now I'm forced to expect my price to be 15-20% more expensive than the list...
If the industry moves to service included, then the prices will still be 15-20% higher, or more, than they are today. You will have removed the incentive for those that want to provide better service however.
Multiples of 5% calculations is pretty simple and keeps the brain sharp. It’d also be easy to show the price with tips, but dark patterns.
The incentive to provide better service for individual employees should be provided by their employer.
The incentive for the employer to provide better service to customers is competition with other service providers the client might choose.
Which is how it works in all the jobs that aren’t within the weird and arbitrary bounds of tipping culture.
Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure. People don’t like surprise fees, inflated prices, etc. They don’t mind tipping as it gives them some control back.
My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.
Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices.
> Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure.
It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.
> My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.
Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.
The market said no.
> It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.
That’s great, but it didn’t work in the US. Some of the larger corps ran the experiment for 4 years and when the waiters lost income they complained. You see, here tipping culture means they make more money.
> Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.
It’s exactly the same. It’s lay I would not have received otherwise.
> hasn’t been implemented
I’m not going to evangelize what a correct stance on this is, but IMHO tipping is a big, not a feature.
I’ve had so many bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s never like in the pictures. It’s always noisier, low quality mattress and furniture that looks good on pictures but isn’t functional or breaks if you touch it. I also feel like I’m living in ikea showrooms around the world. And given how expensive the cleaning is, it’s rarely passably clean. Moldy corners in the bathroom, dirt under the bed, chipped dishes…
And good luck trying to get Airbnb to help you. Best they can usually do (after you explain your case over from scratch because it’s always a new customer service person) is “alright we’ll check you out, you get a refund, and good luck finding a place for tonight out of pocket”
Never again. It’s hotels for me every time as well.
I like to search for newly built hotels as they usually offer the nicest accommodations.
Edit: top context is “That is against AirBnB rules” and “refunded” i.e. AirBnB has explicit rules against surprise fees or bonds, and it can enforce rules.
I am guessing you just responded quickly but it is always good to spend time to try to “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And no, not until recently could you see the actual total prior to sunken cost of Reviewing your booking. That too, Airbnb finally implemented once the Biden administration compelled them by law - that is, not before making much fanfare about it with the pretense of them "doing it for the customers"
The last 3 bedroom home I rented on AirBnb had a $500 cleaning fee. We were there 4 days. Its ridiculous, but it's becoming the standard on AirBnb.
People criticize all sorts of things they don't understand. Our cleaning service charges us $280 per turnover. Separating the cleaning fee from the nightly rate makes our property more appealing for longer stays, which we (and our neighbors) prefer. It's not like a hotel, where the cleaners come every day; why should guests pay every night for a cleaning which will only happen once, after they leave?
People are annoyed because these fees are often sneaky or not apparent at first sight which makes the UX annoying.
I think the point was 'No -surprise- fees.
Tourism taxes are per head, per night and generally Airbnbs are required to charge them as well (though they often don't).
A resort fee is a bogus surcharge added by hotels to "cover" advertised amenities, like if a cinema charged you a Dolby Surround fee after you showed your ticket at the entrance.
I tell them its a separate service because not everyone uses it. So if I am not using say the pool or the gym then I shouldn't have to pay it.
The single time I paid the fee was when it included Internet service which I needed. I wrote the CEO of the chain after my stay arguing that charging extra for Internet is like charging extra for electricity or water. Never received a reply.
Things are different on this side of earth, rest assured. I have paid extra every single time.
Further, there is always things like "parking available", but then either its not free of charge or always busy or its....public parkings.
Same with internet access. Available, if you pay and if its tourism months. And the internet you get comes from a router in the hallway and is shared and at times it seemed like it has the capacity for one concurrent user.
Airbnb enables hosts to publish such things in the name of revenue.
But if a host gets in trouble, they have a half arsed wannabe collection team which will drop them like a hot potato soon.
There are no reviews of truthfulness of the offers etc.
If you have had a good experience, then irs thanks to the host, not thanks to airbnb.
Online descriptions and reviews should be more regulated.
Google, for instance, keeps removing legitimate reviews from myself and others regarding a builder that rented / sold houses with horrible snagging problems, e.g. bursting pipes and leaky roofs.
They want to charge you for potential damages, done by you or not, as well as wear and tear.
Never, ever put a deposit for them, not even by credit card.
And if you pay for the stay, always , always use a credit card, not a debit card. That way, you can pull the chargeback trigger on them.
A chargeback is their worst nightmare, trust me, it can have so many implications and hurt airbnb so badly if they are subject to chargebacks.
You can chargeback with a debit card, I’ve done it a few times myself.
I can stay at a 5 star hotel for a $50 deposit on my credit card. I'll just do that instead. Like you said, its not even really about tying up the money either. I would put this on my AMEX which has no credit limit, so tying up $1,500 isn't really the problem, its the need to authorize a host that I don't personally trust to be able to make any claim they want to justify keeping part of that deposit. I have much more trust in Marriott or Hilton and they only need $50. In all the traveling I've done, I've never had them refuse to release a deposit in full. By contrast, I've met enough crazy AirBnb hosts, that i wouldn't trust them with $100, let along $2,500.
Cleaning fees are also ridiculous. I've seen a lot of $500+ cleaning fees. Come on! What kind of cleaning are you doing for $500?!
I don't really care. If people want to go to AirBnbs, then great. I've had some good experiences with them, but i've also had several bad ones. I don't like the risk I need to take each time with the host. I also am getting fed up with the calculating the "real cost" for each one when comparing them. I'd rather go to Marriott or Hilton where they treat me like a God. So I'm basically done with AirBnb at this point.
Honestly, there was not much else it could do in the long term.
Booking.com did that.
I do however always choose an apartment for corporate trips, but always via booking.com.
The number of travelers staying at an Airbnb versus a hotel is under 1%. This is clear by looking at overall inventory available. Even a decent market _might_ have 100 AirBnB listings, that same market will have several thousands (possible 10,000+) of hotel rooms.
Generally the opposite is true. AirBnb hosts will justify their nightly rate based on comparable hotels in the area. But the average Marriot for example isn't all that worried about the handful of AirBnbs nearby that they might be losing customers to.
Personally though I've come to appreciate hotels more and my experience is that you can usually find a decent hotel room for about what an AirBNB costs and I usually like going to a hotel better. (There was that one in Chinatown in NYC that the experience of finding it was somewhere between The Blade Runner and a James Bond movies, I'm not sure if that is a good review or not.)
They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested using it because it was cheaper.
It was awesome place, host was great, so left a fantastic review. It was taken down and I was called a liar. When I asked to speak with someone about why I'm accused of being a liar in my review customer support promised me many times I would get a call back. Never once did I receive a call back from anyone at Airbnb instead I would get an email that they had conducted a thorough review and their position still stands that I am a liar. I'm not sure what thorough means in their mind but since they asked me zero questions or confirmed no information with me directly it's impossible that they conducted any kind of thorough review.
Airbnb is a horrendous company along with all of these gig economy companies. They need to be regulated in the same manner as they're non-gig counterparts are. I can't imagine that any Airbnb executive actually stays at Airbnb places not with the kind of customer service that Airbnb offers.