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Comment by stef25 | Hacker News Reader

What's amazing at Airbnb is their ability to make places look so much nicer in the pictures than what they look like in reality.

After staying in a crack house in Barcelona, a dirty dark hole in Manhattan, a "private" villa in France where the owner was screwing an endless stream of boyfriends behind the flimsy kitchen door at 10AM, a thermite infested apartment in Sicily with horrid beds, I still feel like a total asshole when leaving a negative review. I'm not sure why I keep going back to it.

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I can't stand the review inflation. You're totally disincentivized from leaving an honest review because of the counter review or because you somehow feel like the dick, and I'm sure AirBnB loves it.

A place that turns out to be right on the noisy highway won't have a single review that points this out. Only "great for early risers!"

I tried leaving a negative review once. It was a disaster. I stopped using Airbnb. I started using HotelTonight. Soon it looks like I might have to consider something else.

I left a review that pointed out the host had lied in their listing. They had been warned twice before by Airbnb and had their superhost status removed. The hosts review of me said that I was okay but a little picky.

The customer service agent refused to remove the review.

The host and guest reviews are withheld from the opposite party until both have been submitted. Therefore the review of you by the host was not influenced by your negative review of them.

I don’t think your review can be seen until after the host has also reviewed you — so they couldn’t respond to a negative review in the counter review. But I do agree that there is still pressure to give positive reviews - both the pressure of not wanting to be a dick and the pressure that comes from knowing that future hosts are incentivized to avoid guests with a history of giving negative reviews.

My strategy is to just not review if my review wouldn’t be positive.

Been using Airbnb quite a lot in Europe the last few months though and I have generally found some very high quality and accurately advertised listings — only had 1 that really fell below expectations.

I share my apartment on Airbnb. Counter review is not a thing since (as you said) it’s not possible to see the customer’s review until you post your own (or after the 7-day review window expires, at which point you can’t review the guest anymore). I’d also add that there is not an easy way to know how a guest reviews the hosts. The guest info you see only includes past host reviews. I’m sure it’s possible, but Airbnb does make it very difficult.

I encourage anyone to post real honest, negative reviews if the experience is indeed bad. Airbnb seems to do a good job building the system, and I feel guests are protected quite well, from a host’s perspective. Honest reviews help good hosts, and I would think I’m one of them :)

+++ that, stayed in airbnb 70+ times, a light sleeper myself... how many times I hated apartments for being noisy and reviewers for hiding this fact.

It really seems to depend on the city. For about $100/night in Zurich I stayed once in a huge top floor flat and once in a bedroom with private bath in a giant palace with plenty of room to entertain dozens, which I did. My company's negotiated hotel rate was $425/night and I pocketed the balance.

In NYC all of the Airbnb inventory is bedbug-ridden hovels. Perhaps this simply reflects the housing stock of the region.

people who can afford a nice place in NYC probably dont want to rent out their place to strangers.

Illegally to boot.

Reading through these comments I'm proud to say I knew airbnb was the kind of thing I'd never want to participate in and I never did and never will.

Like Facebook. Some things are rotten to the core.

It definitely varies. In NYC, I stayed in a 4000sqft Chelsea apartment, with a private bathroom, grand piano and incredible art, for $125 a night.

It does depend on more than just the city.

There’s no chance this is true. Please share the listing

There's every chance this is true. Except I just checked the listing, and it's now $181.

What kind of company pays YOU 425USD regardless of the price of the accomodation where you stay? Genuinely curious. All I’ve ever seen is (in your case) “you can expense per night up to 425USD”

I haven't seen that high, but some companies pay the government per diem rate, which depends on the city. Some cities are $200/day for food alone.

At that particular company at that time you could bank the difference between actual spending and allowance and either spend it on travel in a different way (such as airfare upgrades), donate 100% it to designated charities, or cash out a fraction of it at the end of the year.

That might be because it's against the law now to rent a full apartment for less than 30 days. It's actually been illegal but they started cracking down moreso lately.

Uh, maybe you’re just complacent.... not to get into a war of anecdotes, but I live out of Air Bnbs and have lived in 100+ around the world. Very rarely is the place not as it seems, if ever.

Maybe it's because I always go for the cheaper end of the spectrum? It's not that I'm squeamish or a clean freak. For years I'd travel to SE Asia and stay in 5$ beach huts with no hot water. Some Airbnbs I've stayed in were pretty great.

what do you do to afford living out of air bnbs?

I lived in AirBnBs for a couple of years, travelling around Europe. The way I afforded it was (1) to have a decent remote job (not a developer) and (2) to have given up my home in the UK, so no rent or bills to pay for that, and (3) to take advantage of long-term deals -- if you reserve for a month or more you can get a significant reduction on the daily or weekly rate. For example, I stayed for two months in a beach-side appartment in Crete for about £600 ($780) per month, all bills and a cleaner included, which is considerably less than I'm paying now for rent on a small house in the UK.

I haven't tried Airbnb in the US, but I stayed at a lot of places in Europe and Israel and once in Australia.

It really depends on the country. Israeli Airbnbs are usually not fantastic because people don't really know how to this stuff properly even if they are generally nice and want you to have a pleasant stay (and the prices are crazy). A well-chosen* airbnb in Ireland, on the other hand, is usually superb.

*Which entails trawling through several pages of reviews and looking for small details.

> a thermite infested apartment in Sicily

Thermite can't really infest things.

You probably mean “Thermian”.

(Ok, more likely: “termite”.)

A thermite infested apartment would be pretty awesome, though.

There are extreme hobbies, and then there are extreme hobbies.

It's all fun and games till someone lights the magnesium strip.

Can’t “really”?

>Thermite infested

I hope you meant termite [0] and not thermite [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

I agree and had a similar experience my very first time. It ended up being a space in a dusty basement with pet hair everywhere. However I've had many good experiences since then and some mediocre ones. It could be a case of "you get what you pay for" if you are trying to cut costs on lodging.

"a thermite infested apartment in Sicily"

I sometimes wish I could use thermite against some infestations... wouldn't be surprised if cockroaches evolved to survive that too.

> What's amazing at Airbnb is their ability to make places look so much nicer in the pictures than what they look like in reality.

But hotels do the exact same thing. I don't see how that's super incredible?

The experience from hotel to hotel is pretty variable I've found.

Thermite infested sounds awfully dangerous

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