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Comment by trhr | Hacker News Reader

I had the same thing happen to me. Not only do I not stay at AirBNBs anymore, I cancelled my Discover Card when they refused to fix it... after ~15 years as a customer.

Once you hit a certain tax bracket and your purchases tend to be of a certain value, you start getting a more skilled person trying to fuck you, and they often win. At this income bracket, it's time to get an AmEx (or another card with really good payment protection policies).

But in this case, I'd let the family member sleep in my bed, and I'd go stay at this AirBNB, and I'd probably trash the fuckin' place or something.

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Or just say that you’ll be staying there even if you're not and not trash anything? I feel like any normal person would not just throw $900 bucks away like this, probably because they wouldn't have planned for a $900 bucks extra spend. What is the host gonna do?

What if you book for a couple and the one that booked gets sick and has to return early? This makes no sense, I feel like most people would've edited the form through support and just added themselves in and not use airbnb again after this.

Are they going to have bed checks?

But depending on the circumstances of how the rental is handled with respect to checkin etc., if the host is going to be an ass, now you have someone else thinking they have a bed and the host won't let them--because you already told them you won't be there.

It does sound in this case though that they could have just checked in with their friend and then taken off.

Meh, Amex denied my chargeback when StubHub was illegally refusing refunds for events canceled due to covid. I don’t think there is any card out there that hasn’t gotten much tougher on chargebacks recently due to both the covid shitshow and the massive increase in chargeback fraud.

I had no issues charging back thousands because of covid cancellations

chwrgebacks from stubhub/Ticketmaster/etc are hard since they have you basically agree to not charge back and they use that against you. Had to try a chargeback one with them and also got denied because I signed a waiver. Complete nonsense

If that's all it takes to make chargebacks impossible, why doesn't every merchant add that to their 67-page terms and conditions?

They do try, it's just the way the ticket sellers do it make it a little more in their favor, especially when they can show you signed something. Bought a ticket to EDC and they made me write my signature with my mouse and then used that when I charged back after they cancelled half the event (this was many years ago now).

Outright trashing the place is obvious and will backfire, but there are plenty of subtle ways to generate significant inconvenience and expenses in a plausibly-deniable manner that will only take effect weeks or even months after the fact.

Hint: perishable goods and unaccessible (maintenance?) areas in the property. Pests would also work.

Many states have laws that are specific extra penalties for this sort of malicious behavior. Not only could it cost you the cost of undoing any damage you've done, but criminal charges on top of it. probably not the best advice to be giving to people.

Key words being "plausibly deniable".

You find that term plays a lot more on TV than the courts, but feel free to roll those dice.

Maybe you could also leave the water running and keep all the appliances turned on for the duration of the stay.

edit: I did a ballpark estimate and it won't even come close. If a bathtub wastes 10000 gallons/day at 0.25 cents/gal, then that's only about $25/day.

I used to do something like that whenever I was in a hotel that charged outrageous fees for WiFi (this doesn't seem to be as common nowadays, though oddly it's more likely to happen in a "luxury" hotel than a "business" hotel).

Nothing damaging or malicious per se, but "Oh, hey, I think I need a fresh copy of every Linux distro"... stuff like that.

Sorry, if a hotel charges me $25 for WiFi, I'm going to do my best to use up $25 worth of bandwidth.

'Forget' a nice swiss cheese behind the heater.

idk, i'd feel morally duplicitous engaging in plausibly-deniable damages to someone else's property. i'd rather just steal all their lightbulbs or burn the place to the ground. but that's just me.

the nice thing about this strategy is that _you_ don't have to do any of it. because eventually, they'll try to fuck me.

Or just lie about also staying there. Say "yes, I will be staying there as primary customer", go there give the keys to your sister and that's the end of the story.

Seriously, I am renting a place from you for 2-3 days for $1000, it's none of your goddamn business who's staying there. It's mine for 2-3 days to do as I please, as long as it's not trashed and neighbors don't complain.

Is that what AmEx is for? I've always wondered in all honesty. I had a similar experience with non-AmEx. Got double billed by a hotel and the credit card company initially didn't have my back. I had to go back and forth with them multiple times even with a seemingly obvious fraud.

I dunno if that's what its "for," but it's quickly becoming a point of differentiation between their competitors, if it hasn't always been.

It's likely that having a lot of cards with annual fees attached to them, plus not being an easy target by those manufactured spend weirdos, plus having a fairly high "minimum bar" for customer quality means that they've got their customers' backs an inch further than Discover does.

For comparison, Discover gave me a ~$20,000 credit limit when I was 19 and didn't have a job. Now I'm 37 and have millions of dollars in the bank and I had to call and argue with AmEx before they would approve my application for their entry level card.

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