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Comment by BrenBarn | Hacker News Reader

In addition to stuff people are saying about AirBnB reviews in other comments, as far as I can tell there is no way to leave a review or otherwise provide public feedback in cases where the host cancels the booking before you get there. This seems to grossly incentivize scamming.

I reserved an AirBnB months ahead of time to see the eclipse in Dallas last year, and the host canceled it the day before I was to arrive, with no communication (even when I tried to message them). I got a refund, but that's pretty cold comfort. Without any disincentive to do this, it's pretty easy for hosts to screw people over.

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Had this happen a few times with booking.com too. With the difference that booking offered a alternative accommodation and if that one was more expensive, the host who cancelled my booking has to pay for the difference.

I mostly stopped using Airbnb. The same listings often appear in other sites too and those usually have less bad UX for search and booking.

Yeah, that's my experience with booking and even with hotels in general. Much more customer-friendly.

Its worth noting that hotels do this kind of thing, too; just rarer, for bigger events. Its specifically been known to happen for things like Taylor Swift concerts, etc.

That is not true. You can rate them on booking.com or on google or tripadvisor.

They added a penalty a while ago. So it is very unlikely for hosts to do that now.

I went to Dublin in March and had two places cancel before we got the third.

I find it hard to believe those places paid any penalty and if they did it’s not enough.

it use to say something along the lines of "host canceled reservation less then xx time" in the reviews. did they remove that?

Also host can't offer that date for another guest (at least it used to be like that). In case of cancelling 1 day prior then they either have a serious issue or another booking so thats not so punishing.

It may also affect internal ranking order by which they show properties to people, but who knows whats implemented internally right now, and what will be in place in 3 months.

In this case it wouldn't really matter. It's fine for weeding out exceptionally-chaotic hosts, but hosts who rug-pull on a once-in-a-lifetime event like the eclipse (whether to re-rent for higher prices or because they forgot to take the listing down and were planning on using the facility themselves) aren't affected.

I believe there is a penalty for the host

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