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Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

AirBNB seems to be combating itself just as much, frankly.

Take this idea that an AirBNB host can set pretty much any service/cleaning fee, which is not factored in to search-by-price and not even displayed until you click a property. This basically makes the entire concept of a “price” meaningless in search results, and I quickly grew tired of having to click into every single property just to figure out the “real” price before returning to the search results page.

And price is far from the only way that a property can be misleading.

I don’t think the hotel industry has much to worry about.

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I recently booked on airbnb in SF for a few days. The actual nightly price I paid was 40% higher than the list price (service fee, airbnb fee, sf occupancy taxes) which was towards the top of my price range filter. I still booked, so I guess it worked in favor of airbnb his time. But left a stale taste for future endeavors.

That one baffles me. It clearly incentivizes hosts to get you to click with a misleading low price, damaging the AirBnB experience, without giving AirBnB an edge over anyone else. (The results aren't appearing alongside normal hotels.)

EBAY had to take action against sellers who were increasing shipping costs to set a minimum value on their items. Originally I don't think any of the shipping cost was factored into the fees paid to EBAY.

So I would hope that AirBnb does something similar to include presenting the full cost of rental at all times. There should be no fees other than those AirBnb specifies.

That's what this situation reminded me of too. eBay sellers will say a $12 item is 1.99 plus a shipping cost inflated by $10, which makes the price look cheap in search, and also avoids fees on eBay and PayPal.

That has not been my experience. Per-person and cleaning fees are incorporated into the grid listings. AirBNB and Local taxes are not, but they are a regular percentage of the price, they apply to all listings, and not including them in the displayed price when comparing properties is standard in the industry.

"is standard in the industry."

Airbnb doesn't seem to follow the industry so it sounds to me like there is a deeper reasoning

I don't get AirBnB at all. The concept is just downright creepy and has always been to me. It feels like you're flipping a coin when staying somewhere with respect to neighbours, cleanliness, and the area.

I much rather pay for a hotel where everything is 100% taken care of, and usually the prices are on par with AirBnB. There's no mental overhead with hotels. If it worked like Uber where the slightest hiccup gives you a full refund, then sure I'd put up with the hassle.

Agreed. I don't use airbnb anymore like i don't use United. While I haven't been beaten, Airbnb does very little to ensure a good experience. It's as safe and trust worthy as a Craigslist listing.

Their customer service is abysmal and will not refund bad experiences. I see Airbnb as having a high churn rate business.

Airbnb's and any other types of vacation rentals are not for everyone. There are many different types of properties that you can filter for and you may want to focus on listings that are listed by "Superhosts" who have shown a consistent record of high quality service and ratings.

In terms of being as trustworthy as Craigslist, the main advantage is that hosts have to go through verification just like guests and they have bank accounts linked and many hosts have reviews from previous guests which gives you more confident of how good of a host they are.

Refunds are available if the listing is not as described or there's any personal safety or cleanliness issues. What was your experience that you felt warranted a refund?

AirBnb is not great with refunds.

My experience: rented a room in South San Jose for a week. After coming back from dinner, the apartment building was surrounded by police and I wasnt able to get back in so I had to get a hotel instead. After going through support, I ended up getting $150 in credits on a $600+ stay.

I still use airbnb often as I'm fairly risk tolerant. I'd say it's about 1 out of 10 times I end up in an unlivable place that I have to leave (losing my booking money).

Agreed, not for everyone.

usually the prices are on par with AirBnB

This varies a lot from city to city. In Austin, AirBNB easily wins (last time I checked) on location and niceness for the price. Hotel prices are exorbitant. Recently I traveled to Houston, though, and was shocked to find that hotels were price-competitive with AirBNB. My girlfriend and I expected to rent an AirBNB but ended up staying in a pretty nice hotel for less than $150 a night. AirBNB prices in Houston were similar to Austin with much less selection and not the greatest locations, so the convenience and predictability of a hotel won out. (Friends staying in Austin have had almost all positive AirBNB experiences, but there have been a couple of unexpectedly poor experiences as well.)

I think that as with ride-sharing versus taxis, the greatest disruption happens in cities where the traditional services are very poor or very expensive. Houston has plenty of cheap hotels and seems like it would be fine without AirBNB. If I lived in New York City and was used to hailing cabs, I might never have tried Uber. In Austin with our unforgivably shitty taxi service, and now our exorbitant hotel prices, AirBNB and ride-sharing services are fundamentally new, different, and better than the traditional offerings.

I wouldn't say you're flipping a coin - if you only stay at 5-star rated places with many reviewers, your odds are definitely better than 50/50 on having a terrible/great experience. Even without reading reviews - just using the heuristic "only book five star average from over 15 people" has gotten me a 18 out of 20 or so fantastic experiences (the two being key problems, or cleanliness, and unless I'm paying $150+ a night in a hotel, my batting average on that has been about the same).

I will agree with all the other posters that the consistency and reliability of your average AirBnB is definitely less than that of a hotel, but I find the advantages to more than makeup for it.

In my experience, I've found most AirBnB hosts' pricing on other fees has been reasonable.

Other services out there though, like HomeAway, are much more deceptive. I've had to actually email the hosts on HomeAway to get the full price, which turned out to be double what the stated cost was.

I've stayed at AirBNBs before but I guess they're previously always been booked by someone else, because when I tried to find a condo in Whistler a few months ago, I ran into the same problem.

AirBNB had some nice UI elements, made it easy to visualize property locations relative to each other, etc, but in the end VRBO just worked out a lot better and seemed less sketchy.

The hotel industry has been adding "resort fees", parking fees, enhanced wi-fi fees and other charges that also don't appear in search results.

Hotel parking fees are the worst. Very sneaky. Hidden from view, sometimes it says in the list "secure parking - yes (fees apply)" but doesn't say the fee. That means it's a per day charge and a rip-off.

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