Illegal host, electric shocks, slugs, leaks and no support – How Airbnb failed

The same is true for Amazon and other marketplace business. It's overrun by Amazon FBA sellers selling cheap low-quality white-labeled Alibaba products. It's almost impossible to find real brands or high-quality products these days, unless you specifically know what to search for.

How to deal with it? Personally I've started going back to hotels to be safe. If I do use Airbnb, I do a lot of research on the host and reviews and assume the place I'm getting is 80% worse than what the pictures show.

Other examples: App Store app reviews, restaurant review apps and food delivery apps. Fortunately it's not a big deal if these are scams. It's just a few dollars. Sucks much more when it's your vacation rental.

There was a recent fire in a summer vacation town popular with NYers. The town requires summer short term rental landlords to get a permit & inspection. The landlord did not get one. The landlord also had sketchy kitchen wiring that was probably some sort of DIY and not up to code. The landlord had removed batteries and hardwiring from 3 smoke detectors. These are the kind of things the inspector would have found immediately.

A family visiting from out of state lost 2 of their 3 children in this fire.

Apps like AirBnB create the facade of officialness on what are instead very sketchy markets. Family probably thought they were doing the right thing going through an app and the landlord must be verified and more "legit". Being from out of state they wouldn't know the intricacies of local town permit&inspection requirements and how to check if the landlord has one, etc.

Likewise in my condo in NYC, we had one particular owner who was trying to use their unit as an Airbnb. Regardless of the local laws which were tightening up at the time, our condo expressly forbid short term rentals, and had language around minimum length of stay and lease approval requirements. It only stopped when we started fining them $1000 per incident.

Stuff like this matters because you buy a condo to live in it and don't expect the unit on the other side of your bedroom wall to essentially be a hotel room with new neighbors every 3 days, staying up all hours (vacation, yay), dragging suitcases in&out at odd hours multiple times per week.. forever.

The building itself takes on a lot more wear & tear, and they put a burden on staff as they think the building porter&doorman are there for them like a hotel concierge and front desk.

This is what you get when you skirt laws, artificially lowering prices to kill competition and exploit workers. Stop complaining, it's your own doing for supporting this type of economy. Only because maybe some of those existing laws were cumbersome or outdated doesn't mean you just go around all of them.

Lisbon has a horrible housing crisis. Locals are barely (or not at all, in many cases) able to afford living there anymore, and airbnb has been there making the problem worse every step of the way. I hope the author gets plenty of evidence and reports this place to the authorities, then stops using airbnb.

Note that in Portugal garbage is usually collected from nearby (unsaturated green colored) lidded trash cans and dumpsters owned by the city government or entities contracted to it, where residents are expected to leave their trash. Lisbon does have a bit of a trash overload problem ongoing (more recent than the housing crisis), but there should always be a dumpster nearby where people can drop off trash for collection, leaving it right next to the container if the container is full. For this one single issue I imagine there was a miscommunication due to the language barrier.

Sometimes (speaking from personal experience), especially in a place so obviously neglected and unused, the toilet discharge issue can be as simple as grit or rust inside the tank preventing the part that drops to block off the water flow from moving, but it can be mechanically pushed down (or even washed to get rid of the grit permanently). Not to excuse the owner; just a possible way to make the author's stay a little less miserable.

It seems very hazardous to live in a place as damp as the author reported, damp enough that it attracted slugs and the water vapor likely got in the electrical system, causing a short circuit . Must be a real dump if it got this damp with the drought going on before this week. There are probably a lot of hazardous mold spores. They should have set up a dehumidifying solution immediately (three weeks ago); I would depart right away if possible.

If I'm after a more self contained holiday rental type of experience, I tend to look for places that have their own websites and independent reviews. They are, admittedly, a bit more expensive than what you'd find on Airbnb, but I find that if they've put the effort into building a website and social media, then they tend to be a decent quality.

Some places have been dirtier than I expected (nothing horrible though), some were much smaller than the pictures suggested, but the for the vast majority of cases it has been a good experience. When the experience wasn't good, I rated and commented accordingly, so the host got their rating lowered and maybe did something about it. I also met some of the owners, which was a nice experience.

For work I had to travel for 1, 2, 3 weeks at a time and it wouldn't have made sense in economic terms to get a hotel, so I'm glad airbnb existed.

New hosts might be an issue, but hosts with good reputation are, in my experience, not a problem.

I can see the problem where whole neighborhoods get used for airbnb, driving costs up for residents. I imagine that's a tiny minority of cities...where jt makes sense to enforce laws to avoid this. For the rest of the cities? In my opinion airbnb is a net benefit: if creates a product that didn't exist before and allows buyers and sellers to benefit from this transaction. For me at least (and the people I know which is, admittedly, a non random sample) it has been a good experience. I'm sure in most places it's riskier than hotels. Yes, there's a trade-off.

We arrived, looked clean and decorated well enough, but had 4 glade plugins for a 500sqft place… seemed excessive like their might be a bad smell hidden.

Sat down on a chaise which collapsed because of a leg attached by gum. Found a cockroach under said chaise. Reported it and the owner said it was treated the other day, so it should be fine.

Sat down on the couch, which also collapsed, one leg was missing and was held up by a coffee mug. The bed frame had cinder blocks and children’s notebooks supporting it, (stubbed my toe on the cinder block). Bathroom fixtures were loose, sink basins were not properly seated to their countertops, inviting mold.

In the morning I found 3 more cockroaches roaming around the otherwise clean looking kitchen.

I named one of them Gregor. Airbnb gave us a refund for the nights unspent and we’ve spent the rest of the time at a brand name hotel. More expensive, but more options for recourse if things go south.

If not for the cockroaches it would have been bearable, but the combination of issues left too many doubts as to the safety of the place. My wife and I could not find rest there.

Airbnbs can be nice and give you a real sense of being a resident of a place, but the quality control truly is a gamble. These days, I increasingly prefer the consistency of a hotel bed.

I will say this, the thermostat was better at the Airbnb than the hotel. No auto feature in the hotel.

AirBNB is not safe.

https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-faces-thousands-sexua...

https://feeneylawfirm.com/airbnb-spends-millions-to-keep-sex...

But regarding fake hosts: I think this is standard practice on BnB. Nobody wants to expose their real names on Bnb and be subject to abuse by unhappy guests... unfortunately that's the reality of it. From the host's point of view, I can understand that... the host shouldn't matter anyway in most cases, right? Most people who own these places don't look cool and young as in the fake pics you'll see in most listings! But guess what: those cool pics do seem to make the place a bit more attractive to guests, so the incentive to use fake pics is strong (not sure if that's illegal though).

I stayed in a few wonderful places in California through BnB, but clearly, the listings were all under fake people (I think some even go to the effort to pay a real person to pretend they are the owner, as I googled one of them and she seemed like a real person... though I 100% doubt a young artist lady own a 3-storey townhouse in a good, quite central area of San Francisco).

My sister is about to list her apartment on Bnb and she's going to pay a company specialising in this to do all the cleaning, customer support etc... They take a 20% cut I believe... but it's probably worth it. Not sure she'll allow her real profile to be used for the listing, but I suspect that as long as it's not illegal, she should use some kind of AI-created profile or something.

And the web site is useless. There is no option to sort by price, the filters for maximum price don't work.

It's going to have to be cheaper than a hotel or B&B to make it worth taking the risk and I'll have to be able to find it without scrolling all the way through the site.

So far I haven't found a compelling reason to try it regardless of the horror stories.

Whereever people sense they can make a buck or save a buck, laws amd regulations be damned.

I have never swayed an inch off my view.

I knew first hand how this affects housing prices and wear, I live in a severly affected area and pay the price for it, literally.

Same for uber. Neither is cheaper than the previous thing, hotel offers better bang fpr the buck, uber has surges and exploits the drivers and isnt even cheaper. Nope, I dont qanna hear about these drivers wouldnt have a job at all without uber. Lol.

Just because some tech bros with sexist issues can make an app and a service without customer service does not mean jack shit.

Airheadbnb is being declared cosa non grata in more and more places, uber is literally outlawed in half of europe.

Theres your business, kalashnick and the other pajasos.

If I had my own country or my way, I would send these clowns to prison no questions asked, to, you know, disrupt them a bit.

Do not come have a shit in my place.

I am all for the strictest and heavy handed regulation on these matters.

Hotels expensive? Well, then stay at home or go to a motel or some cheaper destination. If its too expensive, your kin has no business being there, mate.

Taxi too expensive? Get a car, use public transport. Walk. Screw uber and the consumers of it.

I have sympathy for the drivers waiting in the dark on italian airports, but not uber, its a zero sum game to increase prices later on or to have a self driving fleet which then somehow makes this non viable business model good? Hell no, this is a deliberate scheme to burn through investor money.

Airbnb and Uber are the scum of the earth, its a shame the population let them get away with this stuff for a while. People are inherently and helplessly stupid on some things. In hindsight, its always easy to play the innocent one with a halo hovering over the head.

I wonder where the fierce hn defenders of these models are today.

_mostly_ miserable. There are some exceptions. They're usually very expensive.

I will never ever use it again. Apart from being a terrible company that doesn't give a shit for the cities and communities they're destroying there's just a host of practical reasons to never ever use them.

It starts with the key exchange. In a hotel you just get the key(card) handed, go to your room and be done. You'll never have to go through shenanigans like those described in the article.

Much worse is tip toeing around neighbors who, rightfully, hate your guts. Or even worse, tip toeing around other guests, which were not part of the description.

Don't get me started on hidden cameras, which may or may not be advertised. If I pay big bucks for a room I will absolutely not run a "The Conversation" type sweep of my private quarters.

There's huge scam and safety issue with all things AirBnb. No thanks!

If anything goes wrong in a hotel there's somebody who can deal with it. I had some bozos having a party in the room above me in a hotel in Prague. A call to the reception resolved the issue in 5 minutes.

It's not the quaint experience of a host providing personal guidance to a city. Often you wind up in a bland, badly designed cookie cutter apartment managed by a faceless company.

Hotels set minimum standards. Essentially I get what I pay for. I can splurge and stay at the Hyatt or a LeMeridien, or I can travel more on the cheap and get a good bed and a reasonable bathroom at an Ibis.

Think you got a bargain with AirBnb? That may have been the case 8 years ago. Nowadays I can only suggest: Best of luck with that one.

Support if something fucks up? Well, you just read the article I suppose.

AirBnb wound up on my eternal shit list. I wouldn't touch them or any of their properties with a haz mat suit.

Will be interesting to see how this all plays out long term and if these companies can control quality at scale or if this whole mode of trying to play middle-person just fizzles out over time and we return to more traditional approaches that weren’t necessarily terribly broken in the first place.

AirBnb started out as a company that basically fostered and encouraged illegal, unregulated short term rentals. Many of the hosts were breaking various ordnances and bylaws to rent you their home.

There is also a huge societal cost in terms of increases rents and reduced permanent housing supply because of AirBnb.

So if those type of people at that company screw you over, don’t be surprised.

Back when these apps were released they were disruptive and competitive, but I wonder that in front of the increasing fees for a decreasing added value, the pendulum will swing back and customers will revert back to direct contact with the service providers instead of using middlemen apps. The old way.

We booked our first AirBnB and stayed for three weeks. While it was everything the host promised, we weren’t misled at all and it was nice enough. We realized we would like hotels better…

- consistency: we could just go on the Hilton or Hyatt app and we wouldn’t have to worry about what we were going to get. We knew what to expect from a Homewood Suites, Embassy Suites, Home2Suites or Hyatt Place. Even if the hotel ended up having issues, we knew there were easy remedies - everything from getting another room or changing hotels easier.

Besides, we are changing cities on Sundays and I need to be set up to work by Monday morning and don’t need any complications.

And no secret codes. We get to the hotel. We do a digital check in from the app and our phones open the door. We check out digitally and just leave.

- gym access: we have two rooms in our house dedicated to exercise. We have a studio for floor exercises and another room with cardio equipment. We wanted to be able to go downstairs to a gym.

- no hidden fees: we know exactly what we are going to be paying up front.

- no expectation to have the place spotless when we leave. Staying in a hotel is purely transactional. No reviewing the host. No worrying about reputation.

- loyalty points: between the loyalty points that come from the hotel and the cobranded credit cards, you can easily get 15%-25% back in points you can redeem for future stays.

- housekeeping - enough said.

I stopped using Amazon and went back to shopping at my grocery store, Costco, IKEA, etc. You get to actually see what you’ll be getting, bring it back the same day, and know it’s not some fake that you need to ship back the next day. Hell, even the dollar store sells me better junk than Amazon does, and cheaper too.

I stopped using Uber and went back to taxis. Three times now I’ve arrived at my home airport to Uber surging their prices to $100+ for a simple airport pickup. The last Uber I took in Vegas decided it was ok to run red lights and Uber wouldn’t do a thing about it. No thanks, I’ll take the fixed-rate taxi service, or even just rent a car.

I stopped using AirBnB and now book hotels. Prices are comparable, and the quality is far more predictable. It’s getting harder and harder to find good listings, and when my family shows up and the place “isn’t as described” it’s a real downer.

A recession of sorts might be the perfect thing to force these companies to start focusing on their product again, instead of this growth-at-all-costs mentality.

I always click into the host details, check for additional listings, check their history, and usually try to street-view the property as well (harder to do for apartments, but usually possible for full homes).

It's annoying that I have to do it. No question Airbnb should do a better job ensuring their listings are legitimate. But, when I travel, I almost always need a kitchen and someplace that's dog-friendly, which rules out most hotels.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but across most of the eastern US, Scotland, Italy, and Iceland, I've had good experiences. I generally pick a mid-priced listing, not the cheapest, and definitely not the most expensive.

There’s a pretty simple correlation most of the time: the cheaper the accommodation compared to the local market, the higher the chance of disappointment.

On the other hand, when I take Airbnbs that are only a small discount compared to a reasonable but completely average hotel room from a reputable chain, they are often fantastic.

Bad and scammy holiday and short term accommodation is surely a problem, but Airbnb and their rating system doesn’t look any worse than many other alternatives from my experience.

Many of the comments here show more about the author’s attitude toward a once popular start-up than much else.

If you haven't had the pleasure, having an AirBNB next door is like having your house moved to a cheap hotel parking lot. Random yelling and screaming at odd hours, parties every holiday (even the minor ones), lots of middle of the night loud drunken discussions. Random people all the time, is that guy trying to break into my house or is he trying to get into the AirBNB back yard. Questions, where's a good place to eat, where is the water hose, how do you like living here, do you know of a late night pharmacy nearby?

The interesting part is how much of a hellish experience AirBnB support was. If you're staying in an AirBnB, you likely do not have the time to spend waiting for support to get back to you. Their customer service should help the customer immediately, and sort out the details later.

For reference I have great reviews both staying and hosting in the US.

This was after an my first international booking when they ask for passport pic.

They let me know after I was in my room and told me I had to GTFO and where absolutely no help at all.

Been using booking.com, locations can be hit more miss still. The nice apartment I’m at now in Mexico City shower hardly works for instance.

Also it’s pretty much a meme now that hotels are about the same cost after fees and usually much better service.

Same goes for booking.com these days- no support response until after the problem.

This question is not specifically about the OP but in general about people that pay so much money for an Airbnb when they can have a room in a nice hotel for the same (or even less) money. I'm not talking about special occations (i.e people that want to organize party and stuff), I'm talking about traditional tourists. Why would anybody choose an AirBnb vs a hotel?

Maybe I'm not in the right mindset (or age?) but I've never even considered an Airbnb when going on vacation anywhere.

I have booked many dozens of apartments on AirBnB and my approach these days is:

1: Never book an apartment with less than 50 ratings

2: Never book an apartment with an average rating of less than 4.8 stars

The problem is that AirBnB has set up their system so that even complete garbage apartments have average ratings of over 4.5 stars.

Because of that, people still book those for normal prices.

If AirBnB would normalize the ratings (median rating = 2.5 stars), there would be an upward pressure on the hosts to improve the quality of their services.

But the way it is, there are only few good apartments on AirBnB.

Over the last years, I have only been to two apartments via AirBnB which I would consider "good". And both had over 50 ratings and the average rating was 5 stars.

Having 0 support like Google would be much better than being promised help will come, then having various customer agents taking over your case from scratch and then after exhaustion, being told you won't be refunded or no action will be taken

I rarely write bad reviews but this place deserves one. Here's a list of things that didn't go well for us. 1. Unit is advertised as having a pool but there's a disclaimer hidden somewhere that amenities are not accessible to guests. Had multiple emails back and forth to understand that it's closed only after labor day weekend. 2. Unit has a kitchen but we were told that it doesn't have pots and pans. Again, a lot of back and forth. We packed a lot of utensils since we have some food allergies and can't eat restaurant food. In the end it turned out to have all the essential kitchen utensils. Wasted a lot of our time and caused unnecessary stress. 3. Unit does not have an air conditioner and it clearly states that there's no air conditioner. What was not mentioned is that the unit traps a lot of heat and is essentially unlivable at night. Our first night there, we couldn't sleep till 4am due to the heat. The fans were useless. 4. That night we discovered that the upstairs toilet was broken. We had to go downstairs every time we needed to use the bathroom that night. I tried to fix it in the morning but it was futile. 5. In the morning, I went to use the gas stove and saw a note that a lighter was needed to use the stove. Sadly, there was no lighter to be found in the unit. When I called the host, they said they'd reimburse the lighter which wasn't very helpful. I had to make a 30+ minute trip back to town to get a lighter. I missed my meal schedule which wasn't great. Someone had left a lighter outside the door when I was gone but forgot to tell us or knock the door. 6. Someone came to take a look at the toilet and said it was broken and that they needed a maintenance person to fix it. No maintenance person came that day. They reached out to me once to ask about a good time to fix the toilet but I wasn't at the unit and the place does not have cellphone signal. Out of the blue, the maintenance person sends me a text "+1 ( (Phone number hidden by Airbnb) : Go ahead give me more tickets I’m on a roll fixing everything lol Sorry wrong person Me: No problem. Looks like the toilet isn't still fixed" 7. The place continued to be unlivable at night. We did not get any sleep on all 3 nights. Woke up sleepy and dehydrated all 3 mornings. 8. For all this inconvenience caused, the response from the host was pathetic.

I'm back to hotels again, with airbnb as a very last resort

The flip side is I had also some amazing AirBnb stays (thank you to my wonderful hosts in Port Angeles, WA and Galveston, TX), and that does give me some hope for the platform.

The only practical tip I can offer regards airbnb is to rent places that are also featured on other well known sites, since this does reduce the risk a little.

Take Asheville, NC for example... they banned short-term rentals (for good reason). So, if somebody wants a 1-2 month rental, you would use Craigslist/Facebook, both of which are full of scammers. Friends got taken by a scam in 2020. Found a listing on Craigslist, had some email with "landlord", signed a 1-month lease, etc. When they arrived, the house was occupied (by its real owner, maybe). The neighbor came out and laughed, said they were the 3rd or 4th couple to be scammed at that address.

I've booked about 10 AirBnBs over the past month, while travelling through Europe. I basically had to as my mental and physical health had deteriorated due to staying in hostels, with the never ending cycle of snorers, lights on, late night returns, etc. And hotels were absurdly expensive.

Each AirBnB that I booked, in

* Barcelona, Spain

* Amsterdam, NL

* middle-Germany

* Denmark

* Norway

were all someone's extra space in their house they had; or a side unit to their main house; or their entire place and they were on travel or business outside the country.

Additionally, ALL of them I booked were far, far cheaper than hotels by many margins, and I could cook to my diet in many of the spaces I stayed. That really helped cost wise too.

None of them had ridiculous cleaning requirements OR cleaning fees (and I clean the dishes and pots and pans I use by hand simply because I need them again or otherwise, and I'm not an animal). None of them had ridiculous AirBnB fees, although most were pretty much a good deal, and then AirBnB fees made it a bit less of a good deal.

Sorry for this sounding a bit preachy, I'm well aware of the damage AirBnB does to communities, cities, countries even but I'm baffled how many shitty experiences it sounds like people are having recently.

(there's a BIG anti-tourism/anti-AirBnB mentality and movement in Barcelona, which I experienced first hand not getting any change back for a 10 euro bill on a 2 euro purchase; minor but still, sheesh)

On the other side of that, I'm also fully on board with properties that were bought explicitly to use as AirBnBs or rental homes for tourists, to return to market, and I really hope that does happen. I say that because as evidenced by my experiences, there are still places that sort of follow the original ethos of AirBnBs: rent your extra personal space out.

I typed all this from a small basement area in Norway, that I booked on AirBnB, which is very comfortable, and relaxing. I made some great pasta too, which honestly I can't say I've ever been able to do in hotels. Also, I have far greater concerns with hotels and *bugs than with AirBnBs and similar stuff, but that's just me

Honestly though, I will probably avoid using AirBnB in the future as best I can, especially as it seems unnecessary through Japan.

I guess I'll probably keep using it for times when it if it fails it doesn't ruin my life (not a month overseas).

Too many of the hosts are weird, with odd rules and renting out weird spots.

I may be lucky, but all my AirBnb stays were pretty good to excellent. I book for convenience, not trying to beat the hotel on price and prioritize listings with long, consistent history.

In general, having several rooms where a jetlagged family member can turn on the light and read without waking everyone else is a huge feature. So is having a full kitchen, so for me the AirBnb has been a clear net positive option. My 2c, others may have a different experience.

As usual, the companies make money and the product is the economically strained consumer. We see this kind of grift everywhere from car sales to real estate interest rates where poor people and people of colour are targeted because they want something more than they can afford.

Everyone is always looking for a deal or something cheaper even when they don’t have to..and there are others who have been conned into parting with the few dollars they have because they have been convinced that they deserve a certain experience even if it’s sub par.

The only way to deal with this societal malnutrition is to find joy in everything. Example: The notion that one has to go on a family vacation annually like it’s a sacred vow pilgrimage is a uniquely western phenomenon. and a seemingly recent one.

Something strange has been happening recently. The attachment to material things has somehow made people blind to reality. Their own reality. The reality of their wallets.

Consumers in the west are not the true poor, but due to social media and some perverted sense of entitlement, they want the experiences of gazillionaires. Which makes them artificially poor. Quantity over quality is the first indication that one is living with a sense of lack or scarcity.

But I don’t understand the new found middle class obsession with luxury at cheap deals. Never has anyone in the world lived in such abundance. No one has childhood memories of overseas travels or annual cruises or vacations. So this must be a planted desire. It’s not real. The Airbnb customer is the product. Consumers minds are just fertile grounds where unreasonable expectations are seeded. Hence the wild chase for something cheaper.

The first priority for any vacation stay should be safety and then cleanliness and then comfort. The reviewing system and site should be independent.

But that’s a long game. Companies that want to stay forever put in such controls. Short grifts don’t have to worry because in a Ponzi scheme, the people at the top would have made the money early on well before the decay and rot sets in the balance sheet.

I am always surprised that people are surprised by this. This is what those companies do. AirBnB, Uber, deliveroo, twitter, whatever.

It's what they mean when they talk about "disrupt the market". Offer a service with the bare minimum of humans (underpaid as much as possible). No concern for communities they "disrupt", or their customers, or taxes.

They are the company equivalent of vermin infesting society.

Avoid in places you haven't been to before or when you'd be really screwed if it ended up being unsuitable.

I've used AirBNB for long and short term stays, in Europe and in the US. Each time I stayed in a delightful places that was a genuine passion project for the hosts. Those places would not exist without AirBNB and similar services.

If you're on a tight budget and just need a place to stay at for a bit, it's obviously easier to go with a Marriott. But if you're willing to spend some time on searching the best place to complement your trip, AirBNB can get you the best experience.

Just press the flush a few times or whack the water tank. Common problem with tanks in european households. If there is no water to flush, just fill a bucket, washbowl or pot with water and flush that way. Honestly, I stopped reading after this, seems like whining from someone without skills to deal with adulthood. Hey, maybe a lightbulb also burned out.