Thank You, Airbnb | Hacker News Reader

Thank You, Airbnb

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140 pointstomcam81 comments

Airbnb will always side with the host if possible, because hosts are much more valuable to their platform than guests. I had a similar situation a couple years ago when Santa Cruz was hit with catastrophic flooding; despite providing them with plenty of evidence that the place I was trying to visit qualified for a refund, Airbnb refused to give me one (telling me I needed to get one from the host, who was also not obliging) in clear violation of their policies. They also later deleted a negative review I left detailing said interactions with the host as "off topic." Thankfully there's always the option to do a credit card chargeback, but such experiences make it pretty clear how little these platforms actually care about their customers.

The deletion of negative reviews is particularly pernicious.

It undermines trust in the reviews of all properties, and reviews are a major part of the value of the AirBnB offering.

I've been on the move (nomad) for close to 3 years now. First year full airbnb. Second year, mostly airbnb. This third-year, I have around $800 of airbnb credit that I am yet to use. And I really want to use it. Airbnb has just became the worst of both worlds: 1. For hotels, it has an inferior booking experience and is more expensive. So I just book with booking.com and 2. for longer rentals, the experience is both unpredictable and the price are x2-3 times higher.

Case in point, I am in a Vietnamese city right now. I looked airbnb and the places I see average $500-700/month. Instead, I did a short walk around the coworking space I rented at and found a comparable place for $200/month. Big Plus: I got to see the place BEFORE placing the non-refundable one month rent. The place is literally across the coworking space (just have to cross the street).

As an extremely lazy person that prefer to use online methods than asking random people, I really wonder who is still using Airbnb.

> I really wonder who is still using Airbnb.

I guess people who are looking for short term rentals but not yet in the country/area, especially families with kids. I booked via Airbnb because that was the only way I could book my stay at another country before traveling with kids. Of course if i am staying for several months, i would look around in local listings too..

> So I just book with booking.com and 2. for longer rentals, the experience is both unpredictable and the price are x2-3 times higher.

Personally, I have also found that AirBNB is amongst the worst in class for booking accommodation - especially because they, as Americans love, use opaque pricing.

use the australia url, it shows total price upfront (auzzie law)

I'm in a similar situation, except it's closer for 4 years for me. My experience is completely different to yours, the options on booking.com/agoda/expedia/trip are usually garbage compared to what I can get on Airbnb. I do book for a month at a time, anything shorter I do just book a hotel though. My experience is in Africa and in Asia, no experience in the US and I only used it in Europe back in 2014 or so.

> Case in point, I am in a Vietnamese city right now. I looked airbnb and the places I see average $500-700/month.

I was in Da Nang for a month at the start of 2024, paid $450 for a month, it was much better than any hotel I saw for a similar price. The owner lived downstairs and invited me to drink with him a lot.

> Instead, I did a short walk around the coworking space I rented at and found a comparable place for $200/month. Big Plus: I got to see the place BEFORE placing the non-refundable one month rent. The place is literally across the coworking space (just have to cross the street).

Yeah, you can get cheaper places, but I always worry that if something goes wrong the owner won't care or they could try and scam me. You also need to book a short-term stay first, then go looking around, you need to move all your stuff a second time, I just can't be bothered.

I don't know, for me personally, the value that Airbnb provide for the cut they take seems worth it. I've had a few problems with Airbnb, and their support has always helped me out. I think people are _really_ assholes to them or something, because every time the person on the phone thanks me for being so understanding or whatever, even though I don't think I am.

Can you explain to me how the airbnb support was useful because my experience is that they are really useless and will do nothing of substance. They’ll contact the host which might scare him a bit but aside from that they almost never refund and they also do not vet their hosts. For the ratings, I’ve found that particularly for Airbnb they are meaningless. The system is heavily biased toward both parties rating each other favorably. I’ve stayed in countless 5 stars rated places that are completely disappointing.

Again, I do find value in what Airbnb is supposed to offer. I’d gladly pay more if I found this same place through Airbnb. I’d also pay more if there were serious and strong refund guarantees (ie: book for one month but decide within the first day to cancel for the price of the first day)

There was one time that I found bed bugs on arrival and took a picture (thank goodness I was able to escape without carrying any); they gave me a full refund + some extra inconvenience money (in cash, not airbnbucks). Probably would have been much more complicated if I had stayed a night or if I hadn't been able to get a picture / easy proof. But it was nice to have Airbnb as a 3rd party in that instance.

I booked a place that said it has a washing machine, it did not have a washing machine, Airbnb let me cancel that month and gave me some extra credit to book another place.

Another host tried to get me to pay a deposit in cash, I complained to Airbnb, he eventually agreed to drop it. I got Airbnb to let me cancel anyway because he was pissed off and I just didn't want to deal with it for a month.

One place had loads of mold and absolutely stank, Airbnb let me cancel.

From what I remember, they refunded with credits, not real money, but for me it's basically the same thing. I do find it really annoying, because then I'm looking for a place last minute and all the cheap & good places are gone, so I end up paying more than I'd like. But it still happens infrequently enough, and I find the alternatives less appealing.

> I’ve stayed in countless 5 stars rated places that are completely disappointing.

As in a 5.0, all 5 stars? I don't think I've ever even seen one, let alone stayed in one. Everything is usually between 4-4.8. But yeah, I agree, the ratings are completely useless. Also the "dedicated workspace" filter option is useless as well, every host seems to put even when when the only usable surface for a laptop is 50cm near the kitchen sink.

Don't get me wrong, I wish Airbnb was better, and I have read/heard some horror stories. I might be one nightmare experience away from ditching them, but for now, I just wanted to provide my experience as someone that still uses Airbnb and find it's good enough.

Thanks for this. I definitely didn’t get a similar treatment but will complain harder next time.

Airbnb still has better selection than most platforms, especially for longer term rental. also having comments and ratings of hosts is useful when booking overseas.

It is always possible to contact the host directly and bypass the platform, but only when breadcrumbs of info are left by the hosts (e.g. a logo to a website, reverse image search, etc) however making payments is much more difficult from past experience and not all hosts prefer this option

Of course, if you already are in the city and not pressed for time, you can typically find much better deals in person, especially in cities that are not very tech savvy

I don't like AirBnB, but still use it. Sometimes there are no places available on booking.com. (That said I only used it in EU regions and if I recall correctly I never had any disputes with them.)

So I guess casual low-needs travelers (couples) use it a lot?

>who is still using Airbnb.

When needing an entire apartment for groups, especially work groups, we still use Airbnb because in some cities it just feels more reliable than booking.com. For hotels I try to call and ask if they can match booking.com rate. I can't do that with all countries easily so booking.com gets their cut in that case.

What a confusing comment. Obviously if you are at a destination you can see a place and if you’re not you can’t. Obviously most people traveling can’t see the place ahead of time, so have to rely on websites. And obviously places on Airbnb advertising to international travelers are going to charge a premium than a local place that is not.

Those pesky startups and their need to become profitable post 2021.

Go figure

>“In this case, the guest booked on the evening of Jan. 7, after the wildfires had started,” a company spokeswoman told The Post.

>However, she added that the company has “contacted the guest to issue a full refund as a goodwill gesture” due to the “fast-moving situation.”

https://nypost.com/2025/01/08/lifestyle/airbnb-user-fumes-af...

That initial response is silly. They expect everyone to have perfect information about their destination before booking?

Why allow them to book if the place is literally on fire? That's like me going to a cafe, ordering and paying and immediately the staff tells me that electricity has been down for 3 hours and they can't fulfill the order. They also won't be able to refund my money because they have a strict no-refund policy.

> Why allow them to book if the place is literally on fire?

The hosts inside the disaster area have much more pressing things to think about than to disable a listing on AirBnB - primarily not to die in a fire. And AirBnB reasonably can't keep up with wildfires and other natural disasters because they don't have people on the ground across the world and there is barely any effort to develop global standards and interfaces to provide even something as basic as road closures to maps providers, much less about evacuation orders and their legal consequences.

However, and this is where AirBnB fucked up, their support agents aren't empowered to use their brains, to look up "xyz evacuation orders" and cancel reservations when they see a government issued evacuation order!

>And AirBnB reasonably can't keep up with wildfires and other natural disasters because they don't have people on the ground across the world

This is a trick big techs played on the world. AirBnB can and should keep up with wildfires! If they need to hire more staff to do this, so be it. Imagine if traditional hotel sold you a room that is on fire, and said that they don't have enough people to monitor all their properties so it's your fault.

Facebook and other social media do the same thing for moderation (yeah there's a lot of scam, but we can't do anything because we just don't have enough people). Either hire enough people to do your job properly, find an automated solution that works, or go out of business.

Or just process these events and their consequences through their support. They already do allocated considerable attention/resources, but mostly just to make sure they get paid.

> Imagine if traditional hotel sold you a room that is on fire, and said that they don't have enough people to monitor all their properties so it's your fault.

That can and does happen with regular hotels. For them as well, the priority is the safety of the guests already there (aka, to get them out), and the pipeline of new bookings can be dealt with once the immediate danger is passed.

> Why allow them to book if the place is literally on fire?

Speculation on my part, but presumably a natural disaster has several rings of declining danger around it.

"Literally on fire" at the centre, "mandatory evacuation/no electricity" around that, "strongly advised to evacuate by firefighters" around that, "advised to evacuate by a politician covering their ass" around that, "Safe for now but monitor the situation" around that, "heavy traffic and poor air quality" around that.

All of these rings could be called "the wildfire-effected area" but some are more wildfire-effected than others.

I hate when companies do nothing to help their customers, unless a national newspaper gets involved. Looks even worse than doing nothing.

"as a goodwill gesture" has to be the most condescending wording imaginable. Basically translates as "we are shutting down this PR nightmare in the early stages, here is your hush money, but you were still 100% at fault all along and nothing about this episode will make us re-evaluate that.

Airbnb has made me really appreciate a good old-school hotel. Find a nice one, and it's so much nicer than any airbnb I've stayed in.

This is unfortunately/fortunately (?) absolutely not the case in huge parts of Europe.

Guess it depends where you want to travel. I tend to use hotels in Europe now when I travel. My experiences are just as good, if not better, in hotels most of the time.

But Europe's a big place, so I can accept that it's not the case everywhere.

If you care about the price, youth hostels are way cheaper (and includes you in the local life faster), if you don't hostels are just better. For medium-term, Airbnb is still great though.

I came here to say this and you beat me to it. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks a night, get a free breakfast, and not have to worry about doing a bunch of crap like loading a dishwasher before leaving (lest I get a poor rating). In some cases, I'm finding hotels are actually cheaper. My experience is mostly in the US, but I also stayed at a few hotels in England (shoutout to the Holiday Inn next to Luton airport) and was happy with those as well.

Absolutely. Airbnb is great if you want a really unusual stay. Like a treehouse in the Scottish highlands. It should corner that market.

But if you just want an apartment, go stay in a nice hotel.

I stayed at https://another.place in the English Lakes and it was delightful, and only slightly more expensive than an AirBnb in the same area. And like you say... I got breakfast included. Maybe hoteliers will see this as a sign that the pendulum is swinging back if they up their game.

When I live somewhere for three months, I need a kitchen.

If a hotel offered a kitchen be fine, but they do not.

Hotels and AirBnB are only interchangeable if you're looking at a hotel-length stay.

> As always, their policies failed to account for context.

So seems that's not a first for her - and that kind of experience is expected by any gig economy scam once they managed to reach a decent market share. So why is she still using it?

From the very beginning I've refused to use that kind of gig economy services as their business model just isn't sustainable in the long term without making things worse for us - but thanks to idiots like her I nowadays have to deal with that nonsense in some cases (like food delivery) as people just jumping at "cheap now" without giving it any critical thought managed to kill of the sustainable alternatives.

>So why is she still using it?

Because her social media following is large enough her support queries are actioned upon so she doesn’t truly lose out like a normal customer.

Why isn’t the business model scalable? The model is to write software which scales at low cost so with lots of users the fees are minimal. And it seems to work since they are profitable and made 4.8 billion last year.

I didn't write scalable, I wrote sustainable. By that I mean that the longer term impact on society will be negative, compared to options they've been replacing.

One writeup about some of the airbnb issues is here: https://www.theinvisibletourist.com/why-you-shouldnt-use-air...

Any of the other gig economy setups have comparable issues. For food delivery it is now more expensive, with worse conditions for the drivers. Here in Finland unfortunately they deregulated the taxi market as response to uber (instead of just doing the senible thing of just banning it) - as a result taxi market is a mess now, and I've avoided taking a taxi or comparable services for years now. I'd rather walk.

For me taxi market was a mess before Uber. Long and unpredictable wait times, high prices, frequent scams, impolite drivers. Now with Uber and bolt it's a breeze - I just call a driver and drive with my mind at peace. And I know the price up front.

Hey I guess Brian can just re-enable Founder Mode, AMIRIGHT?

The so-called Founder mode is basically necessary when a CEO shows signs they're unable to effectively manage their suite of chiefs and directors to steer the company stably into better times. The founder (often CEO themselves) feels immense board pressure and blames reorganizations (they chose for themselves) for this and goes all-in on another reorganization after firing executives and publicly sharing their epic shareholder letter, while quoting Steve Jobs and other greats.

Absolutely not saying MBA CEOs like Tim Cook are superior (in fact I personally believe the opposite), but for a founder to go into "Panic mode" is an act of childish, unstable behavior. When you stop and think about it from 5000 feet, maybe the founder is the one that should be replaced. It wouldn't be so bad in case of AirBnB.

This sums up my experience with pretty much every "gig economy" style provider these days.

Turns out when there's not quite as infinite an amount of free money to burn these companies don't actually provide any value (but do provide frequent customer service headaches).

After reading this, I realized that the problem with airbnb isn’t just the chores, but also the unreasonableness of their refund policy. While this is obviously and edge case, they are extremely unfriendly towards even the most basic of refund requests and their policy.

I deleted my Airbnb account a few months ago due to multiple similar situations, after 4 years of practically living full time through Airbnb in Europe. Airbnb’s “insurance” or guarantees are completely worthless, as I’ve found out after things go wrong, you’re basically on your own. I’ve lost thousands of dollars to the convenience of their app, would rather take my chances with old-school hotels and direct contacts, and be less likely to lose money at the click of a button with the promise of “insurance”.

Same if you're a host. I used to have a business which managed a few Airbnb properties on the side and I was getting plenty of word-of-mouth interest from property owners that could have let me expand quite rapidly. I gave up after 6 months, despite it being profitable, entirely because dealing with Airbnb was such a nightmare. I was wasting weeks going round in circles; emails being ignored, hours on hold on the phone, call centre staff who couldn't understand and deal with basic issues, refusing to be reasonable on insurance payouts when guests damaged things, and randomly cancelling bookings (without the guest's agreement) at very short notice with no explanation forcing me to either accept lost income or try to do a side-deal with the guest.

Direct booking needs to make a come back. Middleman platforms got too comfortable charging increasingly large fees to both seller and buyers while providing less and less value. I personally started booking direct from hotels and airfares unless I'm forced otherwise or direct is pricier.

Me too, there is no added value in Booking through Airbnb as they won't help you if their third parties won't deliver.

I was happy to use booking.com for that reason for many years. When there was a issue booking would fix and discuss it for me. 7 years ago.

I've had 2 interactions with booking in the last year and both went horrible. One booking literally broke several booking rules, and asked for a lot more money after already paying $300 a night. And still I had to make a drama to get my right and the hotel is still online without anything. They lost $15 and I lost hours of painfully calling around.

I bought a camper that year and haven't used anything but the hotel site itself ever since.

My first job as a SWD was at a company that built a reservation system, they had integrations with AirBnB even though our product did everything they offered. The only difference was that AirBnB had more/different traffic, so it was beneficial to also have a subscription there.

Little did they know, if AirBnB never existed that traffic would still find way through search engines or ads

Downside of direct booking is that you need accounts dedicated for each hotel that can be hacked.

Of course the "middlemen" can be hacked as well, but the likelihood of someone exfiltrating credit card data from the shitty fossil wordpress installation of the hotel is much more real.

> Direct booking needs to make a come back

Absolutely. I agree on airlines but when it comes to accommodation I'm fed up of:

- Contact us for rates

- 120x120px pictures taken on a potato in 2012 (B&Bs)

- JOIN OUR LOYALTY PROGRAMME (the rates we're showing you only apply if you sign up ! )

- "Prices (2021)"

- 15 different implementations of the calendar to select check-in and check-out dates

- Numerous different payment processors, some a bit dodgy looking

- Being redirected to some badly white labelled "synergix.net" booking site

Their support will eventually just end the conversation and block replies if you are unsatisfied. TOS bind you to arbitration but they'll probably kick it to small claims. Overall if you end up on the wrong side of a bad support response it's a shitty experience.

Typical insurance behaviour, not specific to AirBnB¹.

The issue is the difference between the more vaguely defined “Major Disruptive Event” and an “Act of God”/“Act of Nature”. The latter has a fairly specific legal definition²³, and clauses covering it pretty much always override any protections offered by other clauses, no matter what policy adverts may lead you to believe when signing up and later making a claim.

----

[1] Not that I'm particularly a fan of AirBnB, but they are far from the only company guilty of this. Insurance is often very scummy.

[2] Though that definition does vary in detail between jurisdictions.

[3] ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_God

I always thought that Airbnb was better version of Booking.com....idk cause I never used neither of them.

Yea now it's basically a scam. Less honest Booking.

Agree, Booking is also a hit and miss - like if it works you've got a cheaper deal, if it doesn't you're screwed as they won't move a finger. Same with Meta or Google, apparently everything once it gets big it drops any pretense of caring for their customers (peasants). Is there maybe some law for a golden age in life of a platform, when they're growing yet still small, so they still try to do things right?

Turns out "innovation" is just dumping with VC money and not providing customer service.

Sorry sorry I meant moving fast and breaking things.

They just create cool product. Gain some momentum, user base via mentioned innovation and overall hype based on "everyone's problem solved" and after it is acquired they just focus purely on profit and push enshittification forward.

"Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

When your company is small you have few customers and your structure is simple, so you hire one assistant to handle all customer support and that assistant has enough time to process each request with attention, and she has enough knowledge and authority to solve non-trivial problems in creative ways.

When your company gets big, the amount and complexity of customer support needed scales disproportionately, and it stops being possible to process each customer in a meaningful way, so the whole thing becomes a game of leaving the least number of customers dissatisfied.

Booking changed their support in the last years from being really helpful and nice to being absolutely useless and even mean. It's not what it was

I knew someone who worked for their support a few years ago and loved his job and his team and colleagues. I wonder if they had some huge layoffs/offshoring?

I honestly don't know. I spent much money with Booking until I needed help again last year, just to notice that they nether have the resources nor the interest to actually help.

In the past (many years ago) one booking call would usually solve all my issues, even finding translators and discussing with the hotel owners until issues have been solved.

Now they just want to upsell insurances, and send me constant coupons for things I don't want or need.

They are also very annoying with trying to get me back. One accidental click can easily result in 3 or more emails. I really don't get why they didn't try to keep me instead of trying to get me back afterwards.

I guess they just replaced people with chat bots.

Enshittification is a real thing, and AirBnB suffers from it like all every other major digital services platforms.

I'd go further - AirBnB is virtually the poster-child for enshittification.

It was so good and so refreshing once upon a time; now it's just another profit-maximising f*k-the-customer corporation.

Maybe I’m just lucky but I never had a bad experience with them… Of course only the disgruntled people speak up here - maybe it’s extra bad in the US, i used it in Europe, South America and Africa and had good experiences

But yea enshittification is real - just for me it’s no option to go back to booking hotels, they also are way down the enshittification pipeline

Same. I’m in US and mostly use in US, internationally I usually do hotels. To me they’re totally different and the comparisons are weird IMO. And personally I find most hotels grosser than most Airbnbs.

Concur.

I remember 10, 12 years ago.

They were great.

Also known as "shareholder primacy", one of the great achievements of late 20th century neoliberal economics. If you don't like the airbnb customer experience, that's because you're not their main priority. The solution is to become an airbnb shareholder and use your profit to stay in expensive hotels.

> Enshittification

While we are at it, can someone post content of posted link? Twitter used to work for anyone with internet connection - which is no longer the case.

I think having monopoly in the domain leads to this, similar to Netflix/Google/Facebook etc. Would love to have more competition in the space. Wonder whats preventing a competing platform to emerge, at least country/continent wise?

Can’t read the tweet, I just get random error.

I wonder why people still link to this platform on HN, for me it’s become entirely unusable

Surprisingly it worked for me today. All twitter have been down (in Asia?) for the last 2-3 weeks that made me wonder if that platform is still in business.

it's been several years now that for me this is all tldr : twitter link didn't read.

Technically you can read any X posts with a free account, so it's an individual choice that shouldn't be assumed to hold across the HN readership.

Obviously where non-sign-in/paywall alternatives to any submitted post are available that would be a better link. That's not the case here.

I read the linked page without an account.

Me too, but without the followup “To clarify” self-reply (which Twitter does not show to unlogged users), one loses some context. Thankfully xcancel.com still works, but for how long?

Here the full followup:

> To clarify, I called Airbnb to request help with rebooking accommodations farther from the danger zone. As always, their policies failed to account for context. The fires keep getting worse, and unfortunately, many others are probably stuck explaining bushfires to someone in another country right about now.

Current behaviour seems to be a bit random; sometime it will show the tweet (though without replies). sometimes it will redirect to the user's profile (which generally shows a random selection of tweets, _not_ the most recent ones, sometimes it will simply error. Thoroughly broken website.

They want my phone number, I'm not giving it to them

The tweet is comprised of one message and two images.

The first image is a screenshot of a chat with "Airbnb Support" with Airbnb's representative saying "We're sorry to hear that you won't be able to make your upcoming reservation [...] Unfortunately this cancellation is not covered under our Major Disrputive Events Policy. [...] This means your Host's Strict Cancellation policy will apply"

The second image is a screenshot of a map, showing the Palisades Fire, the location of an evacuation centre, a danger zone that fills almost the entire screen.

The tweet says "Thank you Airbnb"

It's not clear from the context whether the rented property was literally on fire, close to the wildfire-effected area, merely in the same city, or whether the poster was just unable to travel due to the wildfire.

Without the issues: https://xcancel.com/anammostarac/status/1876872587738833184

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