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Comment by portlander52232 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve lived in Airbnbs full-time for the last two years. While the existence of the service has enabled a fun lifestyle for me, my opinion of the company has fallen and fallen over that time:

* I’ve paid them tens of thousands of dollars in service fees. Yet the customer service experience is on par with an airline or cable company. Getting bounced from person to person every hour, having to explain the situation a dozen times (really, a dozen), and in the end they rarely help me.

* Easily 90% of listings contain some kind of misrepresentation. Probably half it’s something egregious. Airbnb doesn’t seem to care.

Hopefully they’re trying to turn the ship here. We’ll see.

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This is like the dirty secret of Airbnb. They have absolutely garbage customer service. The Reddit /r/airbnb is mostly frequented by Hosts, and there is a horror story posted there weekly.

I get that people only kinda show up there to complain, but there is a theme amongst these stories.

1. Customer Service doesn't understand their own policies. Often, a host will need to read their own terms of service back to the CS rep to get some requested action (undo an instant booking, not allowing a pet, etc).

2. To get a promised refund / money owed / etc. you need to call and call and call, continue to ask the status, etc. etc.

3. Their $1 million host guarantee isn't worth anything. Their marketing on this vs the reality is comically far apart. Unless it results in bad publicity for them, they will stick very very strictly to all of the gotchas. (Claim denied, guest says it wasn't them, existing damage. Ohh you had another guest in, claim denied it could have been anyone.)

The general recommendation is that as a host, you need to 100% look out for yourself and that the company does not have your back at all.

> They have absolutely garbage customer service.

I'm not a customer of AirBnB; I'm the neighbour of an unhosted AirBnB flat, that is let for most of the year. They dump food-waste in my recycling bin; break the common parts, leaving me to fix the damage; come and go at all times of night; and they intimidate me if I'm unlucky enough to meet them.

I'm OK with the old-style "couchsurfing" model. But the unhosted ultra-short letting model means that I don't have a neighbour, instead I live next to a glorified holiday chalet, except that a holiday chalet is usually let for a couple of weeks; this place is rarely let for more than 2 days.

I want to see AirBnB banned from the city I live in.

> come and go at all times of night

I don't see this as an issue unless they are being obnoxiously loud. Lots of people work night shifts or attend late night events.

Eight guests milling around in the stairwell as they decide where to go next or whether to stay is obnoxiously loud.

They use a 'dark pattern' where they don't really make clear how much you are actually paying for night till you are on the checkout page. Lots of hosts use this pattern and make their listing real cheap buck tack on a huge 'cleaning fee' and there are whole bunch of local taxes, service fees ect which you only know at the end.

They count on people to just go through with checkout since they spent a whole bunch of time to get through that point. Compare this with kayak which shows you final price right on the search screen.

And then there is a problem with reviews where a guest is not really motivated to write a bad review even if they have a bad experience because people are usually conflict avoidant. So almost all airbnbs have positive reviews 4.9 review average making the whole review section useless. Also, there is no way for user to sort reviews in ascending order of star rating.

The cleaning fee and service fee is under the rate off to the right, and it lists your total before taxes.

Currently, it's hidden in a collapsible widget, not in the main view.

Ideally, cleaning fees and similar shouldn't be allowed - they're a cost of doing business and should be rolled into the nightly. Heck, taxes too for that matter - no reason they need to be hidden from the main view.

The fees should be included in the list price. Instead you have to open each listing in order to compare real prices, which disadvantages hosts who don't play games with the fees. The last time I stayed at an Airbnb we found a host with reasonable fees, but they were buried under a bunch of "cheaper" listings that were all actually $100+ more expensive.

The way things are is bad for guests and bad for honest hosts.

It makes sense for the user to have this feature. The ticketing app Gametime has a settings flag that says "all in pricing" and it's so much better when turned it. It keeps me off of other platforms like ticketmaster. I guess the problem here is: who are they competing against?

There are a few reasons to keep it the way it is: Airbnb is probably aspirational about its userbase: they don't want people to choose based on price comparison, it's more about the unique space. Or maybe this even speaks to actual measured user behavior. Airbnb invests a lot in data science so I would assume they have either tested this or have data to show the performance impact of such a change. They also might want to one day reduce or eliminate such fees using a membership program of some kind. So a perk of this membership would effectively be "all in pricing"

yea i know you can see it but it shouldn't be a subtext. You cannot also search within budget because it searches for listing rate not the final rate making price filter totally useless. I also don't understand why they can't add taxes ( which are significant these days) in the listing. I really think this is a dark pattern designed to trick users.

The point is that the total should be what is shown in search. As it is, search is meaningless.

Book on https://airbnb.com.au where law requires showing the total (inclusive of all fees) in search results. You can set the price to USD or whatever other currency you prefer.

(disclaimer: I was an Airbnb employee)

How do you change the currency without logging in? Because as soon as I log in on .com.au to do that, I'll get the not so transparent pricing again :(

Edit: It's just in the footer and I was blind. Thanks, that's actually awesome!

On the footer of the page.

Wow, how did I miss that earlier... and googling it tells you on two different 3rd party airbnb blogs that you'd do it in your profile settings.

Thanks!

OMG thanks so much for this! You should post this as its own submission.

I am amazed that ABNB has this dark pattern as I don't see how it benefits them and it clearly pisses off users and makes searching so much more work than necessary.

Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious misrepresentation? What sorts of things were false?

We've used Airbnb about 2x/year for a while now and the worst we've had is a house that's a bit dirty (but never to the point we'd leave). But, most of our stays are rural, smaller towns, or western Europe, so maybe it's a location thing?

I dislike the pricing visibility (fees and taxes only shown later, and sometimes the feed are astronomical). That's probably my biggest gripe with the platform.

> Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious misrepresentation? What sorts of things were false?

The biggest offender I've seen is a "Dedicated workspace". Everyone seems to just tick that box, and it never really exists. I can see from the photos that it doesn't exist, but it makes searching really annoying. I stopped ticking it, because it just filters out otherwise acceptable places.

I've also seen people tick stuff like gyms/pools when really they mean a commercial one is available a short walk away.

What counts as a 'kitchen' is pretty debatable as well, I've seen places with only a microwave tick that box.

I don't mind all these things, I know what to expect judging from the photos. I just wished there was some penalty for doing that to make filtering easier. In the current state, the filters are pretty useless (in my experience).

Cleaning fees for dirty places also feels pretty bad. I don't mind paying the fee if the place is actually clean, but it seems people just set it to make extra money. I've had hosts ask me to take out the trash and put the bed sheets in the washing machine whilst also asking for $100 cleaning fees.

I don't actually mind cleaning the place myself (if there's a vacuum/mop and washing machine), but charging for it and not providing it really rubs me the wrong way.

> The biggest offender I've seen is a "Dedicated workspace". Everyone seems to just tick that box, and it never really exists.

Different people seem to have different understanding of what it means. To some, it implicitly means a separate room; to others, any table and chair are a workspace.

And for lots of hosts "a table" is either a kitchen countertop or a coffee table, while "a chair" is a small sofa next to it. Et voila, "a dedicated workspace".

AirBnB should explain to the people offering a room / house when they should tick it, or what the place should conform to in order to be allowed to check it.

But that requires oversight from AirBnB, to the point where they have to send out inspectors or mystery guests, and they don't want to have to pay for that, they want the service to be self-regulating. So the people offering the rooms, if there are no negative consequences to ticking a box unjustly but there will be benefits, i.e. more people viewing the advert and renting it, they will keep doing it.

The only way to fix it is with human intervention and Consequences. AirBnB would be a much better experience if it was curated, if people couldn't make their own listings, if there were Consequences for lying, or if they can't post their own listings but need an AirBnB representative to do it for them. With fines if they change something afterwards.

But that requires money and to give up on some of their profits, they wouldn't want that. It's about volume, not the best experience for their users.

The only way to fix it is with human intervention and Consequences.

Or, remove the filter, as it serves no purpose and is effectively unenforceable.

> To some, it implicitly means a separate room; to others, any table and chair are a workspace.

I take it to mean a _dedicated_ table & chair. A sofa and coffee table are not a dedicated workspace. I don't expect a separate room, that would be an extra bedroom in my mind. Just a desk that isn't the single dining/coffee table is enough for me.

Here's an example of what I mean [0]. That was the single desk like thing in the entire place, not even a coffee table. Calling that a dedicated workspace is clearly bullshit. That place was pretty convenient though, the perfect height for me as a standing desk :D.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/B3mWc6j

It is absurd that some hosts will even consider high/club chairs next to a kitchen counter a suitable place for work. It is the most frustrating filter on Airbnb right now.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/How-do-you-define-q...

This is one of the reasons I believe that Apple will feature Airbnb as a launch partner for whatever kind of AR/VR device they might end up launching. Could easily see the user story of "know exactly what you are renting" on stage when they launch the product. Remember, Airbnb built their business on high quality image capture. The famous story of doing things that don't scale where they hopped from host to host capturing beautiful photos of their spaces. VR is the next leg and a meaningful use case. Imagine if every host could capture their own space by waiving their phone around their space? Big idea here.

I find it hard to believe that Apple would associate themselves so closely with another company and put them on the stage, but I could be wrong

They could present the same story but keep it generic to get the same value without towing airbnb along

Apple does this all the time. Here is a link to the Apple Watch hardware launch which shows off use cases made by developers (Twitter, American Airlines, City Mapper, BMW, Nike):

https://youtu.be/bdyVH5LqneU?t=2043

I would actually be very concerned if Apple launched the device (still an if for me) and didn't have 5+ 3rd party partners to show off the capabilities.

These companies weren't on stage, but they have brought many partners on stage for various reasons (Verizon CEO for mmWave in the phones, I believe Epic games, and a few other games-related partners as well).

Anyone claiming to have a dedicated workspace can easily include a picture of it. Those 99.9% that don't do that can easily be discounted as liars. And if they are lying about having a workspace, well they can just as easily be lying about everything else too - such as:

The place is very quiet (except for dogs, nusiance neighbours and constant building work). Is walking distance to the beach (if you consider a 5 mile treck nothing but a stroll). Has nice views of the park (if you stand on the 5th rung of a step ladder). Has fast internet (provided the local bar has not changed the password recently). Etc, etc

Ah, dedicated workspace. I can see your problem, and agree. I'd expect that to be a proper desk and chair, not the kitchen table or similar. I've never tried using that filter - the one time we booked for a working vacation, we knew it would be a massive compromise for the duration.

And totally agree on the cleaning fee - that should be baked into the nightly cost, along with the taxes. It's a cost of doing business, no different than other running costs (mortgage, etc). Our expectation for departure is to quickly sweep the floor, wipe counters/sinks, and put sheets/towels in a laundry basket. Basically put the place in a state where the cleaning crew can do their job without having to clean up our messes.

EDIT - my other pet peeve is the lack of pet pricing transparency. There's a pet filter, which works, but pet fees aren't part of the Airbnb pricing model, and hosts have to add them manually after the fact. Completely ridiculous oversight.

"cleaning fee" often means "base price for the booking".

Ie. It's a way to charge more for short bookings and less for longer lets. That makes sense because for a host the chances of a place being trashed totally is approximately proportional to the number of bookings, not the total days booked.

I wish they just had an option to use different wording so the customer didn't think the money was for actual cleaning.

> Curious, where have you been staying with the egregious misrepresentation

One thing I recently noticed was, including "sofa bed" as an actual bed. Screwed up with my filters so much that I had to verify from the pictures that they actually had the number of beds I was looking for.

Airbnb could EASILY fix the issues by two tiering their market place and having a HUMAN BEING validate listings and holding hosts to a very strict set of standards.

Unverified listings could be in the tier two marketplace. The problem would sort itself out.

I don't believe they would do that. They know we know there are both honest and dishonest hosts, but they prefer that it is us who take the risk. Based on the reviews, apparently.

They have underpaid, undertrained human beings.

That behavior is going to drive their company to ruin as they slowly poison their own well with bad experiences.

That's not what happens when you're a monopoly. What happens is the people just eat it.

You can see it more clearly in politics. Does anyone think politicians have the people's interest at heart? The answer is it doesn't matter, because people have proven that they'll just eat it, for decades.

Its not a monopoly at all. In europe booking.com is more prevalent and for example florida rentals most ppl use vrbo

If I live in a town with one internet service provider, it doesn't help me that they have a different provider in Europe.

There is a monopoly on internet service, in my town. Get it?

> That's not what happens when you're a monopoly.

Fortunately, that's not exactly correct. After getting burned a few times with AirBnB I now use booking.com mostly. Of course they are evil in their own ways, but the percentage of incidents is much lower for me.

> That's not what happens when you're a monopoly.

But they're not a monopoly at all. There are countless other ways to find lodging, whether short term or long term, and even the market for app-powered short term letting like airbnb has very low barriers to entry so someone with enough capital (harder in the current environment, but eventually doable) can come in and outcompete them

> There are countless other ways to find lodging

Would you mind sharing some? I only know of Booking.com, the rest are country-specific billboards at best. E.g. Craigslist in the US, Bazaraki on Cyprus or Avito in Russia. In all of them you'd better view the apartment in person first, and you manage your own contracts and payments.

They do this. It’s called Airbnb Plus [0].

[0]: https://www.airbnb.com/plus

Interesting, I didn't know about this.

I've wondered before if Airbnb could do a Guest Plus: instead of paying a massive service fee (which likely goes towards insurance and customer support) and cleaning fee, a guest could clean the house to its original standard, wash the sheets, put the bins out on bin day, sharpen the knives, etc. You'd also get a late checkout as the host wouldn't need to get a cleaner between guests.

See also: that Black Mirror episode where everyone rates each other.

Agreed, I haven't lived in them full-time but I use the service quite a lot and have spent many many months in Airbnbs and definitely think it'd be a great idea if they had some sort of preferred service in the same way airlines do for frequent fliers that gave additional support. I luckily haven't had the same issue with you on the scale of misrepresentation for listings but agreed that many of them at least leave things out that would have been desirable to know (e.g. one in Armenia I stayed in was great, but while it technically had an elevator it looked pre-Soviet and liable to plummet to the bottom of the shaft at any minute, not to mention the rats in the trash room).

I've stayed in multiple Airbnbs avg 6 weeks since January. The first one had mold everywhere. Took two weeks to get refunded by Airbnb. Talked with like 10 customer service people. Customer service found alternatives that was 50% more expensive, but we couldn't afford that, so had to book something not-so-great ourselves. Got a small coupon as compensation.

They won't ever fund their customer service operations to a high level in that you get great client care across the board. It costs them too much money. The best you could hope for is some kind of tiered class care.

Good luck. Only for VIP's.

They're optimizing for profits and not allowing a buffer of higher costs in the short term for support, which would support higher profits in the long-term by maintaining a good relationship with people in the present. It's an externalized or delayed cost they don't seem to be accounting for.

I think a competitor will pop up before they fix themselves, just the right conditions have to occur and Airbnb's market share will quickly sink - they likely will have exited and dumped the risk and unsustainable platform onto the general public by that point though.

> * Easily 90% of listings contain some kind of misrepresentation. Probably half it’s something egregious. Airbnb doesn’t seem to care.

This. We stayed in Philly and got a nice looking AirBNB. What wasnt mentioned was that the nice pictures were of the owner's kitchen that is shared with their family room and that the room reserved for us in a 'private apt' was just a room off to the side with a glass door and a camera pointed at the door.

100% agree with you that the fees are really substantial when you start to pay attention to them. I guess when you are invested in a particular property and already dropping $2,000, it's easy for them to tack on another $400 without a lot of people questioning it.

On your second point, I think a lot of this has to do with the price point you are renting at.

My experience - I'm usually staying with a group of people at a relatively expensive property as a vacation/splurge, and I've never had anything less than a 5 star stay. I'm pretty choosy in reading reviews (but don't expect someones' home to be as spotless or perfect as I expect a hotel to be) - nonetheless my expectations are always met on Airbnb.

On the flip side, I've seen comments like this one from guests who have been deceived or disappointed, and also chatter among Airbnb hosts renting less expensive properties complaining about the constant stream of problem guests they have. There's a particular host on TikTok I occasionally get served who talks about her hosting experience and she's constantly dealing with issues (and as a result, micromanaging her guests.) Downward spiral.

On the other hand, it's still the only website I know of where one can find and pay for a short/mid-term apartment online in lots of countries. Booking.com is mostly pricy hotels. Local bulletins are even cheaper, but typically have worse interfaces, awful listings, and require that you are already in the town to view the place in person.

I cut my reservation short according to host's cancellation policy. Host wrote a review on my page that I was racist to her. I never even met the said host or anyone at the airbnb. WTF.

I explained this to airbnb but they said they have policy that reviews cannot be be removed/modified. So now I have that on my reviews. Great!

I'm curious how much time you estimate you have spent dealing with customer service per year or per month in those two years. That would be an interesting statistic given that you've been full time for two years.

It's not uncommon to burn the better part of an hour with cable customer service calls with an airline or cable company. And it's hard to quantify them solely in terms of time as I think most people would rate those two businesses' customer service at the bottom of the heap in terms of experience.

Check Vrbo for the same listing before booking on Airbnb. We have vacation rentals on both and we need to charge more on Airbnb to cover our their extra fees and charges.

You've actually managed to reach people at AirBnB? And not just one, but enough to get bounced from person to person? That's better than my track record..

Same experience I had constantly misrepresented, especially internet/quality of A/C which are not minor things.

Air conditioning is my pet peeve. Surprised I didn't see more mentions of it.

Book a large-ish house that says it has A/C. What it really has is a single small window unit in one of the bedrooms.

Wonder how human support scaling is done for a business with potentially millions of customers

It was done just fine for decades by all manner of businesses...

Comcast, AT&T, the DMV… I can think of a lot of businesses that struggle with customer service

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