I ran into this myself (literally could not check out with my credit card without agreeing to those terms) and opted to paypal instead. Anybody at airbnb/plaid know if this is any less awful than it seems?
At least before you'd pay significantly less than an hotel. Now hotels are more convenient especially if you're member and you get it with a discount
Same I don't want to think if my flight delays for a few hours whether the host can give me the key, where we should meet etc. I just want to get in the room as soon as possible knowing that if I'm in a new place I can always count on the hotel staff for any help.
Definitely hotels win on many levels compared to private hosts
I've been in many both for work and for pleasure in 4 continents
I made the mistake of not using a credit card to pay for an airline ticket. They canceled my flight at the last moment with no reason given, did not want to provide alternative transportation, and only offered to refund 80 euros of "credits" tied to that airline (far less than what I paid for the flight!). I never want to use that airline again, and would happily chargeback.
The problem with that idea is that sometimes Airline X is the only game in town for certain destinations. I have an Airline X that screwed my then girlfriend now fiancee and I over rather badly last year, forcing us to fly a day later than planned, with knock on impacts on our plans/schedule.
Airline X are a bunch of unregenerate, dishonest scoundrels who I'd cheerfully feed into a running woodchipper but the strongest position I can realistically take is that, where a viable alternative to Airline X is available, even if it's a bit more inconvenient or expensive, I'll use that alternative.
However, sometimes a combination of scheduling, availability, outbound airport, destination, and other constraints make it either literally impossible or practically impossible to avoid using Airline X.
So a few months after the unpleasant occurrence last year I had to use them once again for a one way flight because they were the only viable option. It pained me to hand over the money, and it pained me even more to watch them single out somebody in the queue for reasons that are obscure to me and make their life extremely unpleasant even though, apparently, they'd paid for the bag they were trying to bring aboard.
Scumbags. But I still needed to get home. So I can't afford to get barred by them.
Showed up in foreign country with negative balance before I realized their was a problem.
Airline said charges would fall in a week or so. Which was true. Spent hours on phone with airline. They did not care at all. But I was stuck with wife and a new baby and no funds for a week.
I now have multi bank accounts credit cards and cash for traveling.
Did you book through multiple methods and fail to cancel one?
Did they run three charges each matching the printed invoice?
It's unusual to come up with scenarios that would require much "fighting" to resolve.
The only overcharges I've ever incurred across thousands of hotel nights were my own fault for excessive cleverness*, and easily sorted.
* For example, playing off Hotwire's blind pricing with after hours front desk pricing.
* Traveling with young children * Traveling to visit family in rural areas * Traveling for pleasure in rural areas
For example, I can get a house on Airbnb near my extended family in a rural area that has 2-3 bedrooms for a similar price as the 2 rooms that would be required when traveling with my immediate family.
Cross-shopping hotels is useful in some situations, but don't pretend Airbnb has no advantages.
It's implied that both Airbnb and hotel must be available to make a comparison. When that's the case most of the time hotels are better.
That being said, if there are no hotels available of course any other alternative would be better.
If you've a large family with multiple children yes, Airbnb may be better
The example I gave is explicitly where they are both available. A hotel near my extended family, or a detached house from Airbnb that has bedrooms for my kids and a full kitchen for a similar price as two rooms in that hotel.
> most of the time hotels are better
That which can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
> a large family with multiple children
I'd posit it's better with any amount of children, especially if they're under, say, 5 years old.
- secure,
- clean,
- *fire-safe*,
- always have my rooms ready,
- have working WiFi,
- don't have things like unsecured bottles of bleach in bathrooms,
- don't have stray dogs hanging around,
- don't have inappropriate art, books, TV-stations, etc.
Not even considering the amount of horror stories I usually hear about related to Airbnbs.
You have never gotten screwed by a host.
If you are, going with young kids sucks beyond imagination.
Hotels are a lot more reliable in my experience. Or, in Europe at least, Booking.com.
As long as you're careful about the reviews and double check all charges to not get overcharged, they're actually good at protecting you as a guest against the property afterwards.
Yes, in an ideal world you'd get accommodation directly from the provider but that is a TON of work and it adds extra risks.
This is how it always starts.
I personally prefer it if nobody enters my room during my stay, even if it means no clean towels etc.
So what if the Airbnb does daily cleaning? You don't talk to the host to ask to remove the service?
> In my opinion, this should be opt-in, rather than opt-out.
I'm pretty sure most people prefer to come back with a room cleaned up, if you really don't like it just communicate it, write in the form when you book or whatever is not that hard.
I don't want to communicate to the reception to "not enter my room" because it feels rather awkward to say. The whole thing is just bad UX in my view. Of course your view may be different (or even most people's views), but that was not the point of my comment, of course.
You not wanting it makes you weird. So it's on you to move the little "Do Not Disturb" thing from inside door knob to outside.
Telling reception won't work. Reception can't be bothered to communicate to house keeping who can't be bothered to figure out which house keeper will hit up your room and give them special instructions to not do their training.
What if I wanted to leave my room and still leave my stuff in there without being moved/touched by hotel personel? A sign that says "do not disturb" makes no sense in that case.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GDBLYHM/
For most normal people, "Do not disturb" and "Do not enter" on a door sign mean the same thing.
- Do not disturb : me the person in the room.
- Do not disturb : the room and things within it.
https://ilovewalkinginfrance.com/what-is-a-chambre-dhote/
Also, a third option, options on VRBO compare favorably to AirBnB in price for quality and courtesy. I suspect VRBO is less appealing to the short term rental slumlords for some reason (less scalable? less volume of travelers?), but I haven't looked into it.
I've heard about more friends getting scammed and having their reviews deleted, and dragged out refunds if they happen at all.
Almost all of them ended up with chargebacks on their credit card, and then airbnb bans them.
I wonder if they're looking for a history of that, and just hoping people don't care about what info they're giving away.
If you have a cute listing description in a major city and a couple of friends who wrote you positive reviews you can get a steady airbnb income mostly without people properly staying in your place with tricks like this
(In this case some reviews specifically claimed superb soundproofing but it turned out to be an apartment subdivided into rooms with cardboard-like walls)
I stopped using Airbnb after a couple of such incidents. I actually don't miss it at all so far. It's mostly been a source of bad travel experience, and 99% of places that are good also publish listings elsewhere
When I got to the place - with my daughter - we passed a man defecating on the sidewalk outside the building. And inside the building, right next to the entrance of our "travel agency room" was a prostitute in an indiscreet position with a client. And I'm with my 15 year old daughter.
We left and got a nicer place. Airbnb refused the refund. And they haven't had my business since.
(If you don't wish to engage and negotiate with the host, document everything and spend time with support, the host gets to pocket the money. If the host ensured the place visually matches the photos even if it's awful in some way, smell, noise, etc., the host gets to pocket the money. And so on)
Sounds more like wanting to seeing if people do chargebacks ?
I did say it's possible the government is pressuring them do it, but that's something I suspect Airbnb could fight if they were motivated to do so.
(Chargebacks do make it their problem though, so my premise was false anyway.)
Know Your Customer laws are the reason given by AirBnB themselves: https://www.airbnb.ie/help/article/3004
OP complained about "your bank account numbers, entire transaction history, financial data, and contact info." Normal KYC does not include all this.
Property owners get paid with bank transfers, so clawing back the money from fraudsters is essentially impossible.
If AirBnB didn't do this, they would simply cease to exist at some point.
I could set up a fake AirBnB, steal credit cards, book my own fake AirBnB, and then run off with the cash. There's no equivalent workflow for hotels.
It's mostly a problem for "platform" style apps that have both ways to send money and ways to withdraw money. Turo and Ebay are probably better comparisons here, and may have similar issues.
Paypal is kind of universally reviled over their security measures.
VRBO doesn't do this, and has way harsher payout policies for new hosts than AirBnB. VRBO can do this because VRBO is not trying to attract new hosts (new to hosting, not new to VRBO) in the first place.
AirBnB can't do the VRBO thing and escrow payments to new hosts for 30 days, that would be super discouraging for newcomers trying to list their flat for the first time.
Unless you have proof they aren't selling that data, I'd assume (based on my experience at a major location-sharing company and a major credit-reports website) that they are absolutely selling that data.