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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

I'm upset, after using the platform for a decade, that they remove negative reviews of properties. I learned this recently. That included some of my very tame and reasonable reviews.

Makes me want to short the stock when it IPOs, after its initial run-up out of vengeance.

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Another dark pattern is hiding the price until you are nearly booking the place. Most people want a cheap stay close to where they need to be, so they look on the prices on the map, which fail to include fees which can be all over the place depending on the host.

And the fees can be extreme. I recently tried to book a place before covid and the cleaning fees etc ended up being $400. I feel like this is a scheme landlords on airbnb are perpetrating which are similar to what used to go down on ebay years ago.

For ebay they did not take a cut of the shipping cost(typically their cut was around 10% of the final sale of an item) so sellers would list items at rock bottom prices but with shipping like 5x of what it should be so they could receive a maximum amount of money. I assume airbnb does not take a cut of cleaning costs?

Some Ebay sellers still engage in this type of behavior and it's infuriating. Also sellers who use USPS but still won't ship to a PO BOX. I don't get it.

This was outlawed in Germany / the EU. So the price you see on the map includes cleaning and platform fees.

I'm not even sure if that is a dark pattern rather than just poor design. In the end, you're just going to frustrate users who think they are paying $50/night over 7 nights but when they divide their final price by 7 it is $100/night.

This hasn't been the case for years. If you choose the dates, the full price (including any fees) is included in the total.

It’s not included in the list/map view for your search, so you can’t really compare the actual price without individually visiting each listing

I just checked and it absolutely is included as long as you add dates. Of course it can't give you exact prices if they don't know when you'll be staying, prices change based on demand.

You’re right. They must have added it between the last time I used Airbnb. BUT I just checked it and the total price they display doesn’t include occupancy taxes and fees (so I saw an example listing go $420->$501). They still don’t let you filter by total price, only exposing nightly rate for that filter. It’s definitely better than it was but still not ideal. In fairness it’s been so long since I booked a non-expenses hotel I don’t even remember if it’s customary to exclude occupancy taxes+fees from the sticker price there

The cancellation policies are nuts too.

What’s nuts about the cancellation policies? Genuinely curious as I lead that team.

As a user it’s just frustrating to find a place you like and then see that you need to give them say two months notice. Or you can’t cancel at all.

It’s made me go back to hotels where you can usually cancel pretty freely.

There’s probably nothing you can do about that.

There’s a range of flexibility offered including many homes that have free cancellation until 5 or 1 day before check-in. Some are on Stricter policies that are more strict than what you would find with hotels but homeowners also have different risk profiles and the policies help balance that risk out.

In my experience flexible cancellation policies are extremely rare. At least hotels have that one advantage.

I used to never care much but in 2020 it’s been a big deal. Will the main attraction in the area I’m visiting decide to close down or impose unreasonable restrictions? Will the entire state close down or make me quarantine?

There’s so much uncertainty with traveling these days.

Chesky mentioned at one point he would look into this. I don’t see what’s so hard about computing the average price per day in the aggregate view though...

The market can remain irrational far longer than one's ability to remain liquid :-)

You know, the moment the pandemic hit, the layoffs at Uber and Lyft came and the recent disappointing earnings and the worker classification ruling, it was just screaming "short me".

Lyft in particular offered some deranged predictions thinking this sort of market is sustainable and reaching "profitablity in 2021". This was them last year [0], this was them four months ago [1], and this is them now [2]. They seem to have used a malfunctioned crystal ball for that prediction.

Airbnb seems like they are now escaping for an IPO, but I'd rather short the stock until it reaches below its IPO price. This virus is not going away any time soon.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21328871

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23020812

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24114206

I don't really like Airbnb as a company but they are the only one out of the marketplace based unicorns who's unit economics seem really solid to me. I personally would not be against them.

Even in the world of COVID and restricted air travel?

I mean there are lots of city people escaping .. but how likely will that continue as cabins and beachhomes become too cold.

Arguably AirBnB becomes the only safe travel option when compared to hotels.

Though neither survive a complete travel collapse.

Do you expect this to last for years/decades? I think it’s fair to say that the current climate is priced in.

Priced into what? Stock prices?

Branson had to dig into his purses to bail out Virgin recently. Layoffs are periodically occurring in the air travel world. No one knows precisely when it ends.

What does "priced in" mean? Some sort of perfect market pricing thesis manifesting or am I reading into it?

This thread is about Airbnb in particular. Yes I mean their stock price, from the perspective of whether or not Airbnb is a good investment.

What stock price, the IPO one? I don't know if you follow IPO price points, but they fluctuate wildly in the day of the IPO. Downvote or no, the idea that something like the pandemic is priced in doesn't even make sense given the volatility.

The world isn't going to shut down forever and no one is going to let a viable company die over a temporary circumstance.

Short the company -- not the stock. 1. Don't buy the stock. 2. Don't use the platform. 3. Tell others to do the same.

Also, for places you do like, alot of them can be booked without airbnb and they will charge you less as they are not being gouged 30% by airbnb. I always grab business cards/contact info for places I stay at that I really like on airbnb and if I plan on going back I skirt airbnb and deal directly with the houses owner/manager. More money to the owner, less to airbnb and cheaper for you, win all the way around.

This is super common for Uber in places where drivers/cars are rare and hard to find, and probably recommended in poor countries where people could use the income.

That's bad, because your life can be in the hands of your AirBnb host. https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d6... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-death-at-an-airbnb-rental-p...

There are going to be legitimate reasons for removing a review like bad writing, personal information, or foul language, but the net effect is making the listing appear better than it is, and that doesn't sit well with me.

There's a subreddit where the hosts tell each other how to remove reviews (the main airbnb one). One hint is any mention of location. Other than that, anything you can prove inaccurate is grounds for Airbnb to support the host and do that for them.

I used to have 5 star experiences and my last few were pretty negative, ranging from disgusting, to bad locations (not allowed to criticize location in reviews so you'll never know), to a toilet which required pushing things with brush. And more expensive than hotels.

You shouldn't short a stock on the basis of you not liking it or based on X bad business practices. You should only short it if you believe that the market will perceive it as over valued, and the valuation will go down. That's it.

If there is enough people who do or don't like something that can drive large swings in a stocks price regardless the fundamentals. A few very recent examples would be TSLA and BYND.

Can you share an example of a place where you stayed at and the negative review was removed ? Would be great to see a before and after screenshot so that people are aware that this is happening

For privacy reasons, no.

But check the AirBNB reddit group for discussions by hosts on the topic, do some searches, there are instructions and hints for how to remove negative reviews. In summary: it's trivial.

I followed your advice and searched on the Airbnb reddit for advice on review removal. And the results are the opposite of what you indicated. All posts are about how incredibly difficult it is to get reviews removed from Airbnb [1]. And it seemed like hosts are frustrated that they cannot even remove unfair reviews.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/search/?q=removing%20review&...

First off it's a host subreddit. Again, look for the tips on how to remove.

"ButchDeal Host5 points · 5 months ago

A little relevant comment in an otherwise mostly irrelevant review will not stop support from removing it. level 5 jackasseress 0 points · 5 months ago

This is simply not true level 6 ButchDeal Host2 points · 5 months ago

actually it is. I have had 4 removed (2 from early last year which were the hardest to do as they were from before the new policy ;) I also head up a local host support group for AirBnB and helped others get some removed as well.

It is in the discretion of the case worker but they have quite a bit of discretion on this, though just with other things occasionally you get a poor support person but I and others have gotten things removed."

(https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/fdyeim/damning_revi...)

Here's a one month ago experience similar to mine: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/hg8tmy/my_opinion_o...

Here's a two year-old echo chamber of hosts: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/73kdk9/airbnb_remov...

A recent echo-chamber dismissal of neg reviews removed: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/i7jzby/i_had_a_revi...

Someone was edited: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/3a1mgu/airbnb_edite...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AirBnB/comments/hed9xa/can_you_requ... Conversation about 'new review policy'

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