Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

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My favorite AirBnB trick, which I've encountered in both Germany and Spain, is the "extra fee due in cash on arrival."

You only hear about this after your booking has been accepted -- in the case of instant booking, you have already been charged. And it's usually not too much -- maybe 20-40 EUR. Often it's explained as a mandatory city tax or something like that, and you don't know the city so....

So at this point you can choose: report the host to AirBnB, lose the booking you wanted after already going through all the stress of finding it, and wait probably a long time before you get your money back.

Or, just grumble and pay it. Because of the way reviews are incentivized, it would be a Bad Idea to complain about it in the review, which is why you didn't see anyone complain about it so far.

I'm not proud of this, but the four or five times it happened I just paid it, because in the big picture it wasn't that much. I think the highest was 100 but it was for a long stay costing over 1000.

But unlike the "cleaning fee" where you can, with a lot of imagination, picture some definition of "cleaning" that might, on average, cost that much -- maybe every third guest soils the bed? -- the cash-on-arrival thing is transparently cheating.

Follow the incentives -- five star reviews only, please!

If you're letting yourself get used like that not once but multiple times I don't know what to tell you lol. Do you also give money freely to scammers on the street?

Why would you not report that? Airbnb would bring the hammer down on that host so quickly it wouldn't be funny. I'm serious, they would not tolerate that whatsoever and would get you compensated and moved to another property.

Yeah I agree, parent commenter should show some additional gumption.

> they would not tolerate that whatsoever and would get you compensated and moved to another property.

I've heard way too many Airbnb customer service horror stories to believe that you can count on this.

Personal anecdotal data, but to be fair to Airbnb, they have repeatedly looked out for me..

Just recently I had someone cancelling on me whilst I was in the car driving to the place. Airbnb were straight on it, instant refund, extra credit towards another place and someone rang me to try and help me book an alternative for that night (I was quicker than them and had thankfully booked the next door unit before they even rang).

I've had a few bad stays over the years (getting woken early doors by bailiffs was fun), but they've generally been sorted out really quickly.

The times I've tried the alternatives in the last few years I've come up short and regretted the lack of support.

I've used airbnb for many years (since the glory days!), but have to agree the fees are killing me now.. just give me the full price up front..

> and moved to another property

Because of this. I spend a lot of time picking the property and often, where I go, there aren’t that many good ones, nor much time left before I arrive. “Another property” might not be in the same town.

Between tolerating the BS, or losing my preferred apartment… or, I guess, antagonizing the host who already doesn’t follow the AirBnB rules… I have so far chosen to tolerate the BS.

If you make another choice, that’s fine. If you find it so outrageous lol then we just have different priorities.

Why not just book a hotel?

Could you elaborate on "the way reviews are incentivized". As I understand it, guests review of the host is only visible to the host after the host has also reviewed the guest or a deadline has passed.

Do hosts look at the reviews the guests have left to previous hosts and that incentivizes the guests not to give bad reviews? Or am I missing something?

Yes, if you give sub-five-star reviews it seriously messes with the hosts’ bookings, from what I’ve heard. And it’s pretty common for one person to manage a bunch of properties for the owners, so a bad review is messing directly with that person’s livelihood. The profit from your booking is not worth the risk of a negative review.

Additionally, I’ve heard stories of negative reviews getting “disappeared” but I’m not sure how that works.

Tangentially: this is why I read lots of reviews before booking, because you can sometimes spot rotten host behavior hiding in the five-star reviews.

this is precisely why a bad review should be left for hosts doing this sort of practice. They are likely running this across large operations, extorting “hidden fees” from each stay at each property.

Their profits should be systematically targeted if the fees are undisclosed upfront and they’re abusing it.

I have also encountered this in Spain, and my counter was to refuse the cash extortion after I had arrived and had the keys in hand. They will grumble or threaten you, but they know they can't force you to pay since it violates Airbnb policies. Even local occupancy taxes must be collected via the platform.

If they're extremely sneaky, their next trick is to fake property damage or extra cleaning fees collected post stay, but that's not a highly repeatable trick without them getting banned, so less likely to happen and you can dispute it with Airbnb, though ymmv.

I’ve had this in Barcelona even when booking a hotel directly through its website.

It was advertised up-front but unsure if there was any reason they couldn’t roll it up into the fee. Maybe it is a separate city-issued POS?

Or maybe a tax thing: if the hotel collected it, they’d have to charge VAT, but not if the booker pays it direct?

Mandatory "resort fees" are pretty common at some types of properties in the US and they're often not very clearly spelled out up-front.

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