Hacker News Reader

This seems like a theme with pretty much all internet companies, big and small - undercut the competition by cutting corners on things that "don't matter", until they matter.

Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You.

Ditto Uber/Lyft/other cab companies, where there seems to be no end of people who were put in seriously unsafe situations and were unable to get any attention to their issues until they blogged about it. Who knows how many cases we haven't heard of because they weren't able to get their concerns to the top of Reddit/HN/wherever.

This sort of thing happens in any low-margin business. Not only is there not enough money to hire good customer service, but what little customer service exists is not empowered to make things right for the customer, because thin margins and $$$.

It turns out that keeping spare rooms on standby, generous rescheduling/rebooking policies, and all the niceties we associate with hotels are powered by the fatter margins they enjoy. The big innovation we've made in the last few years is making low-margin low-rent business models seem boutique and high-end.

(Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with Uber or Lyft)

It's nice to say that for me and my family, Uber and Lyft has been so professional. We moved from Latin America to Miami a year and 2 months ago and the whole time we've been using Uber / Lyft for our needs. We faced about 4 or 5 crazy moment where Uber / Lyft has solve our problems putting themselves in our side rather than in the driver's side. One instance a driver accepted our ride, reached our apartment and then start driving away. We did not understood at first until he called us and say "I'm going to be delayed to get you guys, so please hang tight". I told him it could be fine if he didn't started the ride already like we were already with him on his car. He said "it is the standard procedure". Bullshit. We cancelled the ride and contacted Uber support. They removed the driver from the service (allegedly, it has happened before) and they refunded us close to 12 USD. Similar situation happened with Lyft.

> Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You.

That's not entirely true, I think it depends on the product.

I've had to contact them about two different Nexus devices and got someone on the phone in minutes. The support was unbelievable and the matters resolved in record time.

Google Apps also has 24/7 phone support for paying customers.

IME non-internet, big corporations, are no better than google. Try reaching someone at your health insurance provider, or almost any other 'customer support" / complaint line.

In my experience this isn't so. While most companies are reliably bad, I have never had a customer service experience as cartoonishly awful as the one I got from Google. And that was for a paid service.

The older I get the more cynical I get, and the further I drift leftward politically in favor of more government regulation, the underlying reason I think being that generally speaking, most cultures (and especially "high achievers" within) are fundamentally dishonest - like teenagers, they often cannot be trusted with serious responsibility. They have highly potent skills, but they don't have the corresponding maturity or morality to safely wield those skills.

And this goes not only for small startups, it is applicable across huge blue chip companies as well, the latest being VW (and now it appears other auto manufacturers).

A guy from post communist country here: how is more government regulation going to solve anything?

You can hit a sweet spot between 2015 USA and Cold-War China and USSR.

ps. Upholding claims of private property with a state-monopoly on violent means of coercion is "government regulation". So you just build upwards from there.

Well, unlike teenagers, the government is known for its honesty

Sarcasm, right?

By restricting what companies can and cannot do and forcing them to prove certain risks are genuinely covered before coming in and "disrupting" (aka destroying) industries that have generally done a somewhat decent job of things for decades.

I'm just getting tired of people advocating free market principles and proclaiming that industries will police themselves, and then turning around and lying and cheating, with next to no consequences. I'm saying this as a pretty extreme economic right wing person - today's conservatives bear little resemblance to traditional ones.

> to prove certain risks are genuinely covered

Why? I'm well aware of the risks of using AirBnB (or being a contractor instead of an employee or whatever) and choose to take them on because I believe I come out ahead overall. Not everyone wants the nanny state watching out for them at every opportunity.

And not everyone wants neighbors who destroy their quality of life because of their perceptions of a "nanny state."

Not even reads Hacker News - feel free to link the location on AirBNB's website that informs regular people about the nature of things that can go wrong, and details on how they will handle that (or not, as the case may be).

*Typo: Not everyone reads Hacker News...

A guy from a never communist country: privatization is not all that it seems to be when you've had to live under a "really existing socialism". Neither capitalism, for that matter.

>but they don't have the corresponding maturity or morality to safely wield those skills.

Or their morals differ from your own. They may lack your morality, but that does not mean they lack morals.

If actual outcome is different than that which is implied, it isn't a difference of morals, it is misrepresentation or fraud, or at least dishonesty, lack of full disclosure.

Barcelona's hospitality industry is heavily regulated. Renting away private rooms via Airbnb is actually illegal there. Clearly, there needs to be a debate about the right kind of regulation, not just about more or less regulation.

Weird, in my experience Uber customer service is very responsive. Never used Lyft CS but friends report the same for them.

Can you share some examples of the "no end of people" you refer to?

I've had GREAT responses from Uber customer support when I rate a driver lower than 3 stars and add a comment. I usually get a follow-up within an hour or so.

"Ultimately I ended up emailing the CEO after I found some blog post where he said he wanted to personally hear from everyone and anyone. He never replied but the problem magically got fixed soon thereafter."

This is more damning than the parent article.

That's the problem with the on-demand companies' business model, you often have to put complete trust in complete strangers. This is generally dangerously. But this won't get the coverage it deserves until an "important" host is seriously injured or even killed by a guest.

I think this is more the eBay/PayPal problem: if you are soliciting both sellers and buyers on your service, you are going to have various moments of ethical crisis when it makes absolute business sense to screw over one or the other (the two not always being in balance or not providing you the same amount of revenue).

So what do you do?

AirBnB without listings is like eBay without listings. (Though I've generally heard that eBay tends to come down on the pro-buyer side)

Even without the ethical crisis, there are simply going to be situations where the true facts are simply unknowable to a customer service rep. So, do you screw over the person providing the property (who may in fact be a lying scumbag)? Or do you screw over the other person renting the property (who may be the lying scumbag)? (Or may simply have utterly unreasonable expectations.)

And, yes, my understanding is that eBay evolved to simply default to the buyer being right.

Generally dangerous seems disingenuous. I think it's generally practical to assume most people are decent human beings. It's worked very well for me over time (and clearly has worked for services like uber, lyft, ebay, craigslist, airbnb, etc), but it when bad actors appear (as they always do once you hit a certain number of persons involved), it's what happens then that counts the most.

I think E-bay has tended to handle things very well, I haven't heard many horror stories about them (if ever), and they've been around for quite some time (as software companies go) and quite successful. Uber and AirBnB on the other hand I've heard plenty of horror stories from. It may (or may not be) the reason I've not used Uber in months and months and have only ever booked a room once on AirBnB (which I cancelled last minute and still paid for).

That's true under so many circumstances. If you book a chain hotel, you are really just trusting that the chain has reasonably tight control over the quality of the branch. There are plenty of 'nightmare' hotels out there, and the main guard are reviews, which isn't too far off from airbnb (a hotel will have a higher volume of guests to leave reviews, and the social incentives are different, which is why I didn't call them the same).

"Looking forward to trying housetrip, there really need to be a solid alternative to AirBnb."

I'm just passing though this thread and have almost zero experience with airbnb, but I have used VRBO several times per year since 2005 and it's been wonderful.

I've used it in several countries, in many states of the US, for studio apartments up to 5BR houses. It's great.

It's like the craigslist of this category - sort of ugly and old fashioned looking, but it works.

Never heard of housetrip. Just tried it now for a holiday I have coming up looks like it's got some serious issues - was finding me houses miles away from where I wanted to go and indicating that they were far closer.

A bit off-topic but curious if you usee AirBnB only or if you tried HomeAway/VRBO as well?

It's a fair point. I've tried them, but the AirBnb product is just so superior. Easier to use with better options. Also I hate that I have to pre-pay on VRBO

Airbnb is much better than homeaway.

Have you tried HomeAway?