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Comment by alexandec | Hacker News Reader

I've had bad experiences with multiple Airbnbs including:

  - showing up at night with the key not in the agreed location, and not being able to contact the owner until the next day
  - showing up and someone else was already in the unit
  - a webcam was plugged in and placed on the bedside table with no warning
  - conditions in the unit were significantly worse than those shown in the photos

All these listings had great reviews. Airbnb needs to make some real changes or they will lose further trust among customers.

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Airbnb cheats with bad reviews, so their properties look more attractive.

I came to a rental apartment which was trashed and uninhabitable and left it after a tiring few hours on the phone with Airbnb to convince them not to charge me and finding a place to stay (hotel) in the meantime (They also tried to find a 'suitable' replacement but nothing was comparable).

The host left me a negative review complaining 'I didn't want to vacate the apartment' (!). I was shocked that the host received invitation to write a review on a guest who hasn't stayed.

After numerous emails with Airbnb they confirmed that the host is able to leave reviews in all cases, as well as a guest, but they deliberately didn't e-mail me an invitation. They claimed they did, but after further investigations I found a proof this was deliberate omittance.

How did you find the proof? Its interesting

I had an experience where an Airbnb host canceled on me at the last minute because they "forgot" they had double-booked the apartment on a competing service. I was unable to leave a bad review because I had not stayed in the apartment. I contacted Airbnb and they confirmed that this is their policy. They claimed an automated message would appear on the listing indicating the host's cancellation -- but it never did.

A company that makes all its money on a regulatory loophole didn't care? I'm surprised!

I do see these “automated reviews” left all the time in properties I’m looking to stay at. In this part of the world it’s quite common for that sort of accident to happen.

Accident? More like deliberate fraud

Oh cool, I've:

- Had cockroaches and rats scurrying around one my places.

- Another place completely flooded and all the electrical sockets shorted out during a rain storm.

- My host threatened me over WhatsApp because I left a bad review. I showed AirBnB the chat logs and they said they would so something but didn't.

I've stopped using AirBnb.

This is, of course, the whole point of consumer protection.

The trend of all these "regulation arbitrage" startups seems to be to show consumers why the regulation existed in the first place.

The problem really seems to be in the nature of the platform. What a market needs to address issues like this is accurate reviews (i.e. informed consumers), but here we have a platform which both maintains the reviewing system and profits when listings are filled -- a clear conflict of interest.

This really stems from the regulations on payment processors. In theory there should be the digital equivalent of cash, where the buyer can easily and directly pay the seller without any third party middle man in between them imposing conditions and taking a cut.

But since regulatory requirements make processing payments, to use the technical term, a giant pain in the butt, it takes a sizeable bureaucracy to do it. Then you get a perverse incentive to have the company that handles listings and reviews also do the payment processing -- and get a cut of every transaction -- which is what creates this conflict of interest. The company whose business is reviews should not be turning a profit from filling listings, or they won't want bad reviews even when they're deserved, and then you don't have accurate reviews.

Well except Uber/Lyft were great examples of why taxi cabs absolutely shouldn’t have had any protection.

As a reminder, the code block formatting you used is only supposed to be used for code. It renders any text of moderate length extremely difficult to read on mobile.

Glad I wasn't the only one. I was an early adopter of AirBnB, but had multiple bad experiences in recent years. The fact AirBnB refused to do anything about it ensured I would never use the service again. Rather pay a little more for VRBO or get a hotel.

I always like to point people to this site whenever AirBnB gets discussed:

https://www.airbnbhell.com

I also had a couple bad experiences with AirBnb years ago and am much more cautious and lean towards a regular hotel more often - despite yearning for the old Bed-n-Breakfast concept.

AirBnB has been my de-facto landlord for about half of the last 18 months, all over the world. I've had two sub-par experiences (both in London fwiw) and one really-actually-bad one that nearly turned into a fistfight with the "host", who was illegally renting the place and furious that I, quite reasonably imho, contacted the condo desk to be let into the space.

AirBnB gave me a refund and a 10% off coupon for that last one. Overall I've been happy with it; must just be luck.

Nice to have my own apartment again though. The nomad life is fun, I just wanted a home after awhile.

> Airbnb needs to make some real changes or they will lose further trust among customers.

On the other hand I only stay at Airbnbs when I travel, and have been for as long as I can remember, and I've never had these issues.

My biggest issue is that they lie about the prices per night.

Same here - over time the positive surprises at Airbnb stays are becoming rarer.

More fool you for trying to save money in an unregulated sector.

Yup I'm utterly fed up with AirBnb and won't consider using them again.

And then you give a bad review and those places lose their listing?

Not sure what you want to do? Pay more so that Airbnb reviews them for you? Are you really up for paying old hotel prices again?

> And then you give a bad review and those places lose their listing?

1. AirBnB doesn't care about adjudicating these disputes, so the host won't actually lose their listing.

2. And if the stars align, and enough people get ripped off, and AirBnB actually takes action against the host, they'll just re-open under a new listing 5 minutes later.

Last few times I have gone on there, the prices have not been cheap like they used to be. There's always a $50-100 charge for cleaning, and some other bullshit fees in there too. Of course those fees don't show up when you're searching the listings.

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