Comment by DoubleGlazing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoubleGlazing | Hacker News Reader

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Same here. A few years ago all our AirBnB experiences were good, but over time they have progressively got worse.

For example, one host housed us in what felt like a derelict hotel/doshouse with all sorts of weird people staying and no working locks or fire alarm. On another occasion we booked a cottage, but it had a blocked chimney and was spewing fumes and smoke in to the living area. And for our tenth wedding anniversary we booked another cottage where the host insisted on staying with us despite the listing saying we would have the property to ourselves. He also insisted on singing to us against our will, this was actually quite creepy.

We did of course raise concerns with AirBnB about the first two and left a negative review for the third. AirBnB did not care and crucially it did not seem to have an effect on the ratings of these properties. That just does not seem right.

I no longer trust AirBnB. I don't trust the listings, I don't trust the reviews and I certainly don't trust AirBnB itself to filter out bad hosts.

This could be because AirBnB has grown so fast and it has struggled to cope, or it could be a conscious business decision. Either way, we don't use them anymore.

It's hard to trust reviews when it's engineered the way it is. You're almost forced to leave a good review or else you'll get a bad review in return. People also don't like feeling guilty and transactions have been made personal. People do the same damn thing with ridesharing, really bad drivers somehow get 5 star ratings.

Every time I've used Airbnb, the review process would prevent one party from seeing the other party's review until either the review period ended OR all parties would have posted a review.

In other words, you can't retaliate because of the other party's review: you don't get to see it until you post your own review.

The way it is actually engineered is that it is impossible to view a review, before leaving your own (or waiting until the review shows up, after which you can not leave a retaliatory review).

For the ridesharing, it depends. Maybe the driver has a route they know well, or has friendly connect. Maybe traffic for you was very bad and chaotic and there was no click.

For ridesharing I played tit-for-tat for a while, until I realized that I don't want to play this game (if my rating drops below a point where less drivers will pick me up, I will switch to Taxi's). For AirBnB: I never leave bad or lukewarm reviews, only good reviews. Getting a host that is actually there for check-in, really acts a host, is getting increasingly rare, so my good reviews are too.

As mentioned by the other responses, you are mistaken. Reviews can't be seen until both parties have submit their reviews or the review period expires.

However, as a host I've encountered situations where I probably should have given a lower rating but opted to not submit a review because the guest seemed nice other than some minor poor behavior (had to ask them to be quiet during quiet hours, ignored our house rules, left more mess than usual, etc). I didn't want to affect the guests' ratings because they weren't awful and had otherwise positive reviews, so maybe it was a one-off... I am sure there is some inflation on the guest reviews as well.

I feel like rating systems need to simplify to:

- Bad & contact support (thumbs down). Details should be given as to what is bad.

- Good enough (thumbs up), the default rating if you don't do anything

And then have a third tier of "compliments" like you do with uber drivers to denote something exceptional.

I like Uber's give compliments feature. There could be a variety of reasons why they were great. Professional and just let me be. Had an awesome conversation with them and learned something. Got some good tips in a new city.

I don't feel obligated to leave a lengthy review, just either the default options and potentially a nice note.

I would have called Airbnb as soon as I found there was an issue and made them book me in somewhere else. You are paying a service fee to them for a reason.

They should have called the fire marshal. Airbnb support is probably one step up from Google's in terms of reaching a satisfactory solution for customers.

The fire marshal won't get you your money back, but they'll ruin a host's day if they're renting out a space without smoke detectors.

Oh we did, and the owner of the building ended up in the press for a multitude of reasons a few weeks after we had our stay.

Glad to hear it, you may have saved someone from having a pretty bad time with that.

Basically every line of fire codes were written in response to people burning to death, so I have very little tolerance for landlords messing around.

The problem is that's when you arrive to your rented property late on a Friday night with two tired and cranky children, you just want to make the best of a bad situation.

I know AirBnB have an emergency number, but they themselves state on their website that all they will do in a situation like the above is to try and book you in to another AirBnB property or offer you a refund.

I think a lot of AirBnB customers have lower expectations of the service compared to what they would expect when booking into a hotel and AirBnB benefits greatly from this.

After all the AirB part of their name stands for air bed, the whole business was founded on the concept of customers accepting lower standards for a lower price. Now that AirBnB has grown into a quality property rental service it really needs to up it's game in terms of vetting it's hosts and dealing with questionable situations.

“called”

as if AirBnb has any means of phone access.

I second this. It's not easy to call Airbnb if you're international. Even if you end up finding the number and reaching them, you're placed on hold waiting for a representative.

> I would have called Airbnb as soon as I found there was an issue and made them book me in somewhere else. You are paying a service fee to them for a reason.

DoubleGlazing said:

> > We did of course raise concerns with AirBnB about the first two and left a negative review for the third. AirBnB did not care and crucially it did not seem to have an effect on the ratings of these properties. That just does not seem right.

Of course you can say that DoubleGlazing should have insisted, but, from my own experience, I agree that, if AirBnb doesn't feel like doing anything, then they won't do anything; and that any remedies to force them into action will, at best, take effect only too late (e.g., it's no good getting a response in a week if the residence is uninhabitable today).

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