I've had mostly very good experiences on AirBnB, but I've definitely seen the pattern of "you have to do exactly this to put the trash out, please wash the dishes exactly like this, please strip the beds and put the sheets here" and paid a $200+ cleaning fee.

To be fair, the things those hosts asked me to do weren't anywhere near a full cleaning of the place, but I can see people who are used to doing exactly nothing when leaving a hotel being peeved that they had to do 10% of the cleaning and still pay a cleaning fee for the other 90%.

If I’m paying a cleaning fee why can’t I just pay that extra 10% and do nothing? Where’s that option?

You know what, the next time I stay at an Airbnb, I’m going to just say I didn’t clean anything but I left an extra $20 on the counter to cover the work I didn’t do. Shouldn’t be a big deal right? That should be more than enough to cover the 15 minutes of labor I was asked to do, at a rate of like $80/hr.

> Where’s that option?

At the Marriott?

No, at the Marriot whether you leave things clean or dirty, it’s the same price…

You can't go to McDonalds and pay extra for table service, or less to cook the burger yourself. But you can pay more at a proper restaurant or less at the supermarket. Even if what you're offering is "fair", we can't have every business offering every service.

You also don't pay extra at McDonald's to use the table.

Which is probably a better comparison for the chore lists and cleaning fees than table service.

I haven't really used Airbnb, but it seems pretty ridiculous that people would continue to use them if there are different, annoying to understand conditions attached to each listing.

And then in some sense, a media article criticizing them is the free market.

I don't pay table or floor cleaning fees at mcdonalds

I just don’t understand, if they’re going to clean the apartment anyway, why should I clean anything at all?

It seems like a petty power move type thing, like a way to ensure guests don’t go too crazy or something because you make them feel like they will have to clean things up.

If the cleaners are going to be there 90 minutes, they won’t have time to load and run a full dishwasher cycle and put it away. But they’ll have enough time to put it away if you started it before you left. The other choice is they do everything, but you pay them for 2.5 hours instead of 1.5 hours. I’ve never seen a list of chores that was unreasonable, even if there was a non-null list of things for me to do, it was always reasonable.

The owner can pay them. It’s not my problem. If they don’t set the cleaning fee accordingly that’s their fault. $150 cleaning should be enough.

>I just don’t understand, if they’re going to clean the apartment anyway, why should I clean anything at all?

That's the problem. I suspect many amateur hosts have scaled operations to the point that they don't clean between stays and outsource that job to consumers as a shortcut, cost saving measure.

Despicable. Let these landlords get on their hands and knees and work to maintain these airbnbs.

I don't see why I should be charged a cleaning fee at all, or do any cleaning. Maintaining a clean spot is the "hosts" responsibility

I'm pretty sure I've been charged by airbnb for a cleaning fee when I never even stayed at the place.

Edit: yep, 40 bucks in cleaning fees without ever entering the place

Most Airbnbs I have seen have a "check-out list" that involve some sort of shenanigans like this. Host rate you back as well so if you get a poor rating then you may have difficulty getting bookings in the future.

Is there not also some way for the host to have you charged an additional fee for 'leaving the property dirty' or something like that? I'm thinking something along the lines of the Uber extra cleaning fees.

The problem is that the free market isn't solving such hosts away due to information asymmetry

It definitely is, people who don’t want to deal with the bill shit stay at a hotel.