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Comment by anon1m0us | Hacker News Reader

airbnb lost me forever at, "Oh, that'll be another 10%" and then again at "Yeah, that $89/night place is actually $264/night after all the fees and ridiculousness."

Fraud all the way down...

I don't care where they are. I will never stay at one of my own free will.

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Weird, my Airbnb experiences have almost all been awesome. So much better than hotels in my opinion

They are experimenting with fees paid totally by Hosts now, as in Booking.com.

At the end it's always the guest who puts the money on the table but it may be less painful as you don't see it.

Ultimately the problem is that the fees are too high considerig the service provided by the platforms.

Hidden fees like that are not legal in the EU, although enforcement differs per country.

They aren’t hidden. They show up right on the details page for a rental.

The frustrating part is that they aren’t incorporated into the nightly rate which is what the listings page shows.

Well, we could argue semantics, but that sounds like a hidden fee to me: advertise with one price, while there is a second "hidden" one later on. Can also call it "additional charges" or something.

Either way, it's not legal: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat... and https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4453_en.htm

I dealt with this issue a few years ago at a job I worked at for a similar service to AirBnB, the original design was list an accommodation for, say, €500, and then add-on €25 booking costs and insurance later on in the checkout process. We had to change it to list the full price up front.

Enforcement varies per country; in the Netherlands it's quite strong and you run a real risk of fines, but in UK it's very weak and it's common for there to be additional or hidden charges. It's interesting how the "sell an item" pages for ebay.co.uk and ebay.nl differ: on the .nl site it's very clear up-front what you will pay exactly, on the UK site it's not even clear you have to pay anything unless you follow 3 links.

You’re not following. It’s not that they change the total between screens, it’s that they advertise the nightly rate.

This is not illegal since this is how it works in Europe as well.

The full price (that is, the price that will get charged to your CC) should always be the price that is displayed/advertised.

So if you advertise with nightly rate in the listing and then add on cleaning costs, booking costs, or anything else in the details page for an accommodation, then that's not allowed.

It's not just me internet-lawyering that, I sourced it from the European commission press release (linked in previous comment), which seems pretty clear on it:

"Airbnb should: modify the way it presents information on pricing from the initial search on their website, in order to ensure that, whenever properties are offered, the consumer is provided with the total price inclusive of all the applicable mandatory charges and fees, such as service and cleaning charges, or, when it is not possible to calculate the final price in advance, clearly inform the consumer that additional fees might apply"

Have you been on the Airbnb site? It’s possible to browse properties without specific dates so it’s not possible to display the full price. The number of nights that one-time fees (or long stay discounts) will be amortized over is not known on the listings page.

So your “it’s not allowed” is just internet lawyering. Even the quote you have indicates that they are exempt if the calculation can’t be made for the listings page.

This isn’t some special case of Airbnb trying to screw people. It’s common across any industry where there are one time costs amortized over quantities.

I was just looking at Airbnb a few days ago, and at least in Canada, the search results displayed average price per night, which included all of the fees.

I’m guessing maybe you need to enter the dates before they can calculate that. And maybe without the dates Airbnb shows the price without fees.

I use a chrome extension which does include the fees on the listing page, it's a much better experience.

Booking does this as well. I almost paid an exorbitant cleaning fee in Portugal once. I noticed the tiny block of text informing me of "cleaning fee" that was two times the rate only after reading reviews

That'll be a $300 cleaning fee for 2 nights, oh and here's a snippy message about how you left hair in the drain and used an extra towel. Be a dear and don't use the toilet next time too, that's extra.

The cleaning fee isn't supposed to be higher than 10%. You can ask for a refund through Airbnb.

If you charge a high cleaning fee it's utter bullshit to expect guests to leave the place spotless. I am paying you to clean it. The hair in the drain thing actually happened. Any human in your house will leave hair, that is part of normal cleaning in an occupied place along with washing sheets and towels. This is why I've switched to hotels and hostels. The hospitality contract is far more explicit, I don't need to deal with asshole hosts on vacation.

In the roughly 10 times I've stayed in an Airbnb I've never had an issue with the condition I've left the place. Often times my family (and dog) have made a mess, but always do some clean-up before leaving. Cleaning fees are typically $20-60 for the stay which seems reasonable for cleaning an entire home. Normally the airbnb service fees are larger than the cleaning fee. There are certainly some hosts who are charging high cleaning fees to lower their nightly amount, however.

There's a rule it shouldn't be higher than 10%. In India, nobody I know charges a cleaning fee.

Where do you get that?

And 10% of what? If someone books a day, yes, the cleaning fee is more than 10% of that. Don’t like it? Go get a hotel where it’s baked into every night.

If this is true, then how do people get charged more than 10%? That's simple webform input validation on the listing process.

Oh you've gotten that too?

The last time I stayed in an Airbnb house I got a laundry list of accusations. I challenged them as well. (They even went as far as saying that I used too many rolls of toilet paper that weekend) It's a good thing I'm not easily embarrassed.

They lost me there as well. €200 per night, cleaning fee on top and yet they had the audacity to leave a handwritten note instructing to leave around €3,- per guest, per night, as pillow money. They tried justifying it as tourist tax, which was odd. Long story short, I did not end up paying and now I cannot book at any property this particular company lets out on airbnb. Next time I stayed in a hotel for €60,- per night and ended up getting exactly what I paid for - a room with a bed and shower, Mr. Coffee in the morning and no extra fees on top. Didn't get charged extra for the mess I made when I hurried out in the morning, leaving towels on the bathroom floor and everything.

edit: spelling and formatting

That's not true. For some of my properties, they charge about 25% more including taxes and service charge. For some properties, it's 31%. SYou won't end up paying three times as much, obviously.

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