VRBO refusing to offer direct refunds to people in Tahoe Basin | Hacker News Reader

VRBO refusing to offer direct refunds to people in Tahoe Basin

sfgate.com

29 pointsbryan08 comments

I remember years ago dealing with a then obscure online bookseller. I bought a book and after about 2 weeks it still hadn't arrived. I rang them and they said "oh no problem we believe you, we'll send you another, hang in there". In the next week i received 2 copies of the book. One which had been stuck at the mailcenter and the other they resent me. I rang up again and told them i now had two books and they said "that's fine, it happens, keep both". I've since used that company over alternatives despite the fact they sometimes cost more since it's nice to live life stress free.

Anyway we all know which online bookseller I'm talking about because it turned out they were pretty smart in how they operated and they grew and grew.

Just thinking about the stress that this causes means i won't even hesitate to pay $10 a more per night for the same lodging from another provider. Stress and being treated unfairly motivates people a lot more than a few dollars.

So yeah dumb business logic. I can call out a whole host of management books that all in unison tell you not to do this or anything like it.

Just to call out one of the management books that very explicitly gives guidance not to do this along with case studies "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle is a rather excellent book that looks at successful vs unsuccessful teams and businesses.

Around page 200 the book deals with this exact situation for restaurants. In particular where a franchised restaurant had one outlet doing really poorly in reviews and finance. They went there and observed management taking issue with a customer taking a bite and asking for a different meal. The management at this franchise tried to charge for both the replacement and the original meal.

Higher management saw this and quickly realized they needed a management change at that franchise. The franchise quickly corrected and went on to be one of the more successful outlets.

What do you do about the small number of people who exploit the system?

Consider hospitals and their approach towards giving anti-anxiety meds. From what I've seen, they don't have a good solution.

The advice here is not to be petty. Things like this are a cost of doing any business. A customer unhappy with the meal and wanting to swap shouldn't cause any food franchise financial problems. It would be extremely petty to charge and not at all worth the break in goodwill.

Likewise in an extreme situation such as forced evacuation of a region it comes across as ridiculously petty to demand they pay for the accommodation booked. It's pretty clear that a booking should be cancelled for no charge in such cases.

I'm not sure of what's going on in this situation, but if VRBO is an intermediary, which hasn't got the money people are demanding back, then maybe they have no good alternative to being "petty".

Maybe they should've bought insurance or something, but perhaps they are stuck now.

Same thing happened to me with Airbnb last year. They refused to refund me (apparently it was like a lottery, other's in similar situations were successful).

I ended not getting any money back, and getting a nasty review on top for asking for it.

Really made me realize AirBnb/VBRO have real downsides vs hotels, and made me try limit my use of those services. No way a reasonable hotel brand would allow this story to be written.

Its disappointing that these platforms abdicate responsibility for basic customer service functions like this onto the hosts/their customers to argue it out.

They won’t show you the address to the place from an invite email until you make an account. The whole thing is super disturbing.

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