AirCover by Airbnb
airbnb.com
airbnb.com
I had an Airbnb guest steal all the electronics from my apartment -- Sonos speakers, wifi router, everything. They also left behind a large stack of obviously stolen credit cards, social security cards, and driver licenses.
When I called up Airbnb support to tell them what happened they responded by saying "We've found that most disputes between hosts are just misunderstandings. Have you tried talking to them about it?"
Then when I tried to claim they needed original receipts (which I obviously didn't have for everything) and ultimately only paid out a small fraction of the original cost (because the items were no longer new).
Would a more typical insurer have done the same thing in asking for receipts and such? Maybe?
(I've never had to make such an insurance claim so I have no idea...)
Airbnb has the means to properly screen guests, but does not adequately do so.
I've always personally thought both sides of the AirBNB transaction were crazy. When I was a teenager, long before AirBNB was a thing, we used to rent houses to party in and it was always a disaster.
I've never found that getting a hotel was significantly more expensive. Getting my price might be less convenient distance wise but the experience is consistent. To me, AirBNB seems like all of the risks of unprotected sex without any of the upside.
Normally just printing out an invoice from even 10 years ago from a site like Newegg (and i have had to for a claim) is accepted just fine.
Progressive paid for full value of bike (which at the time, pandemic just started was higher than what I paid for it). Plus any add-ons they reimbursed full price. I had pictures and receipts for it all. But all in, from moment of noticing my bike was gone cash was in my bank account 4 weeks later.
I had another incident at the beginning of covid, where I had to fight hard to get a refund. The international borders were closed to the UK, and the initial response was "talk to the host" who didn't want to refund it. Eventually got solved, but AirBNB was happy to not-help.
Generally their support just seems to give few fucks, no matter what side you're on.
Stayed at a property while visiting my parents. Bed was broken, but, worse, ants crawled out of the sink when I went to brush my teeth in the morning. I hadn't eaten anything at the apartment.
I left one day into a seven day stay. Literally left the next morning. I only got refunded for five of the nights. The host refused to refund me for the sixth night.
I wish I knew that going to the CEO was a support path, as I strongly felt that ants coming out of the bathroom sink is unacceptable and I should have gotten my six night refunded. But based on what I saw in /r/airbnb, it seems like I did better than many other guests did.
I'm still going to use Airbnb, as most of my stays have been really good. Just won't use them in the tri-state area, I suppose.
This is a key point. As a host here in NZ, its basically useless as I still have to have commercial insurance. Aircover only covers you for the period of time that you have someone staying in your property. As soon as they have gone, you have no insurance. So if you have a house listed on Airbnb and someone breaks in and burns it down between bookings, you're not covered.
I'm discovering that, having just become an Airbnb host in the last year for my beach pad.
My new worst experience is Airbnb doing nothing and saying "too bad" when a guest with a new profile stayed for 3 days, then wrote a scathing review warning people off and demanding a refund.
The guest posted in her review that the place is full of broken furniture, rock hard beds worse than in communist countries, black mould, animal smells, urine smells, and is a health hazard. She used a lot of capital letters and accused me of punishing her for "sins not yet committed."
And yet she didn't contact me or Airbnb to complain until after the end of her stay of 3 nights.
My property averaged 4.8 stars (out of max 5) prior to that with zero negative reviews. I thought Airbnb might consider she is trying to scam a refund. But they say she hasn't done anything against their policies so too bad. The review stays. When I tried to complain the support ambassador warned me that if I insist on an investigation it could result in penalties for me as a host.
I asked Airbnb to send someone out to check my property so they can see the guest is being unreasonable, but of course, Airbnb doesn't have anyone who can come out because it isn't a real company. It's just a listed entity on the stock exchange that made a few people $100 billion renting properties owned by... people like me.
> Airbnb doesn't have anyone who can come out because it isn't a real company
This part is especially infuriating. Google, Amazon, Airbnb, etc. they're all the same. They play a numbers game. At one point they may run out of people to trample though.
This is the same lame justification for any big corporation, they have millions hosts but also millions of money coming from them.
Any business should be able to support properly their customers, particularly in the case of middle-men, such as AirBnb and similar, part of their business consists in having BOTH hosts and guests "at least moderately" happy.
It becomes a debate, or a he said she said. Pages worth. What better way to scare off a guest looking for a relaxing holiday?
This is how Airbnb plays hosts off against each other. Any host that tries to stand up for themselves loses out to a more compliant host.
> One bad review shouldn't impact you in the long term.
The last review (1/5 stars) goes to the top of the list. It's the first thing new guests see. It dragged the average down half a star, which was enough to lose my super host status, which requires 4.8 average.
I have to get 10 new guests to rate 5 stars just to restore the average to what it was.
How do I get 1 new guest when the first review says HORRIFIC. HEALTH HAZARD. BLACK MOULD. STAY AWAY.
It would be fairer if Airbnb, which is an accomodation company, had the resources to independently rate properties. They wouldn't even have to do it all the time - just to resolve disputes. But they don't have the resources to do it ever. Nor the will. That's because they make more money by not actually managing their core business, and simply playing hosts and guests off against each other.
So this insurance policy isn't even worth the pixels it's rendered on. It's not a good sign when a company purporting to be entering into contract is already trying to wriggle out of it, and this goes doubly for insurance.
"The job of an insurance company is to take in as much money as possible, then refuse to pay it back."This is different than the gig economy where workers are just pouring hours of their lives into a dead-end job. You never get more efficient at being an Uber driver or a Doordash delivery person. You put in the hours, you get paid, and nothing changes for the rest of your life. (This is certainly true of some non-gig jobs, but at least you get a guaranteed 40 hours of paid work a week, don't have to buy your own supplies, get some paid holidays, and get health insurance.)
Then suddenly "they made it right" and some spokesdrone trumpeted some bullshit like "In this exceptional case we didn't live up to our members / hosts high expectations".
With rare exceptions I also don't see any more advantage compared to staying in a hotel. But to each his own, I suppose.
We rent them for work offsites, family trips, and individual travel. 98% of the time everything goes smoothly.
Therefore most of the time a hotel room is not the right thing for us.
In the UK, "homeowners insurance" definitely wouldn't cover you for Airbnb style scenarios, and most "landlords insurance" wouldn't either, e.g. because you needed formal tenancy agreements (e.g. Assured Shorthold Tenancy), no potential for long void periods etc. However, some specialist insurance companies would insure you for Airbnb style scenarios via "holiday let insurance". You'd still need that cover because AirCover only provides insurance for the period while guests are there, i.e. you would still need insurance for break-ins, water leaks, cleaners injuring themselves, etc. in-between guests.
So this supplements rather than replaces your existing insurance. Not sure why this is so prominent on the HN home page because it isn't really something "that good hackers would find interesting" or something "that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
The hassle of worrying about your personal belongings is just not worth it IMO. I want to buy nice nice furniture for my place and not worry about strangers ruining it.
Although I do want friends & family to be able to enjoy it. Maybe a site like Path was to Facebook?
It feels like their customer service was offshored to the cheapest contractor many years ago.
> protection from aircraft for land-based or naval operations in war situations.
AirBnB needs better branding people.
0. This is nothing new, airbnb always had a free "guarantee" they just rebranded it basically from what I see to a trademarkable name.
1. Umbrella policy is better than airbnb. Umbrella policy will go after all parties including airbnb on your behalf.
2. Airbnb has a history of ignoring or mitigating damages unless you get famous on social media - this includes sexual assault/rape and murder of animals.
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Guest-caused-the-de...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/16/airbnb-ne...
While these are just two incidents, there are countless more that can be searched, or you can probably filter through other incidents, and yes, while airbnb did "compensate" they did so only after intense media pressure.
3. If you are a tourist in most countries and "fly" back home, you are judgement proof. There only liability is the guests airbnb account, which, is worthless. You can create new accounts, and in most places you can use alternative government identification to bypass previous bans.
You can read the link I posted earlier about the death of a dog, the PII that airbnb released was not enough to start a civil court case. And even if you have a name, you have no guarantee that the nae of the airbnb account is the ACTUAL guest that stayed.
The moderation practices haven't changed here for many years. We don't publish a moderation log for a bunch of reasons*, but I'm always happy to answer any questions and usually spend hours a day doing it.
* Past explanations if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This isn't necessarily true. If you fly the coop, you might be out of the reach of a host or local law enforcement, but in some places action could still be taken against you in your absence. While for all practical purposes, you might never have to face the consequences if you never plan to return unless you were accused of doing something really terrible (like murdering or seriously injuring someone), it's best not to get yourself into legal entanglements in foreign countries, whether criminal or civil. Especially if you do think you might want to visit again in the future.
Also, AirBnB has taken legal action against guests itself[1], so that's potentially a risk in some cases too.
One of the best ways to avoid finding yourself in precarious situations while traveling abroad is to stay in legal accommodations, be they licensed hotels, hostels, homestays, etc. It's also one of the best things you can do to respect the places you visit. AirBnB is a horrible company that has single-handedly ruined buildings and neighborhoods and even, arguably, significantly harmed many popular tourist destinations, with its inventory of frequently illegal short-term rentals.
[1] https://sfist.com/2021/08/17/airbnb-is-suing-guest-who-threw...
The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like that without evidence. Why? Because internet users routinely make these accusations up based on nothing more than seeing a few things (or just one thing) they happen not to like. There's nearly never anything more to it than that, therefore (a) it's off-topic here unless there's something objective to go on; and (b) if there is something objective to go on, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can specifically look into it.
Please review the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There's years worth of explanation about this at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants more.
It is not criminal yet to not show up in a civil case.
You can send a fee request, but mostly you do that to show airbnb you tried and they'll maybe compensate you if they agree.
If you intentionally trash the place at a few thousand dollars level then year - nobody will probably bother other than banning you from AirBnB for life. One time we sort of trashed AirBnB (my 2 year old got hold of pen and draw on the wall and couch while we were not looking) and the only consequence was paying 400 or so in fine (max liability on listing) and stern letter from AirBnB that they may ban us if it happens again.
tl;dr mostly nothing if they don't value their airbnb account.
"A person is guilty of criminal mischief in the second degree when with intent to damage property of another person, and having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he has such right, he damages property of another person in an amount exceeding one thousand five hundred dollars.
Criminal mischief in the second degree is a class D felony."
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/145.10
Class D non-violent felonies are worth up to seven years in prison, likely varying widely depending on the circumstances.
I guess most states probably have similar statutes on the books. Whether you could get a prosecutor to charge it probably depends on the exact circumstances. I reckon you could find cases of people being charged on much less than $1M in intentional damage, though.
Also, yea, you can commit minor crimes that don't rise to the level of extradition then skip town. That's always been the case. So? Who is going to go to the U.S., trash an AirBNB, risk getting charged with a crime and potentially banned for life from coming back? The people who trash AirBNBs are not the same people who can travel internationally, by and large.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47