'I've never seen anything like it': Airbnb renters leave Calgary home trashed
ctvnews.ca
ctvnews.ca
#1 was "parking on premises". Having a car I wanted a space. One place I show up and "here's the space but it's often blocked so you'll have to park somewhere else". Another I show up. "Host, sorry I'm in Europe and my car is in the space so you'll have to park somewhere else". Have had similar experiences confirming. "It says on your listing parking on premises. Is that true?" "Yes, parking on the street is easy although if here on a weekday you won't have a permit so you'll have to park 3 blocks away". "What part of on premises don't you get???"
And no, the reviews didn't mention it. I assume because others didn't have car or didn't notice they paid for "parking on premises".
Another place claimed WiFi but it turned out he was stealing wifi from a neighbor and it only worked if you sat on their sofa. He said if it didn't work there was free wifi in the lobby of the building.
Yet another said their place was a 1 bedroom, not a studio but it was actually a studio with just a wardrobe separating the bed from the rest. What's the difference? Whether or not there's a door between me and the refrigerator who's noise keeps me awake. I wouldn't have rented the place had the listing been correct.
So, yea, no more AirBnB for me
For example, I stayed at a place in Germany that said they had a washer and dryer. Indeed there was a washer and I thought it might be one of those all-in-one units (washer and dryer), but it was just a washer. I asked the host about the dryer and she said she didn't have one. I pointed out that she listed one on the AirBnB site under amenities.
The problem here? Language barrier. She thought "dryer" meant hair dryer, which she had. It sorta screwed up my trip because I did a multi-city stay and that was the place I decided to do laundry and forewent laundry facilities and the previous and next places when I planned everything out beforehand.
And as grandparent here alludes to: people have wildly different ideas about what a particular amenity is. "Wifi, but only when you're sitting on the couch" isn't up to snuff for me. It may be that most people who stayed at that place were not in the apartment much and only checked email occasionally. It may be that I need to use the internet for a couple of hours each day to deal with work or some other commitment.
What I've found is that you need to find out which amenities are REALLY important to you for each place you stay and send messages to the people ahead of time to make sure the really important stuff is what you'd expect and not "just true enough that I can probably check this box for the amenity".
Ultimately, because AirBNB and VRBO are p2p you are accepting a certain level of risk in exchange for a rate much cheaper than a name brand hotel. The name brand hotel buys you a level of certainty in the experience you will have.
My example airbnb in Prague - a room advertised as a king size bed, but when we got there it was two twin mattresses pushed together, with a king size sheet laid over both of them.
In my experience hosts have been honest when you ask them direct questions when researching their listing. It just takes time to do this for every listing you are interested in, and there will always be things you don't think of. "Is your bed a single mattress or two mattresses pushed together?" wasn't on my list!
Or do they just keep your money and tell you find a legal hotel somewhere else next time?
They are supposed to find you alternative accommodation, but they didn't for me when my host cancelled <24 hours before I was supposed to arrive, or when my friends were staying in an AirBnb when the host was evicted(!).
You show up at the place say 6pm, it turns out to be a lie, what do you do? Book a hotel at $$$ a night because it's last minute and it's the only thing available?
I showed up to one place in Santa Monica, it was a cold day in January. I had just driven from Vegas, showed up, 6:30pm. It's raining hard. Check out the place. Windows are broken. Not shattered just they have these blind style windows that rotate and they've rusted so they don't close. There's a 1 inch gap between slats every 5 inches. Both in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Being about 44f outside I wasn't willing to freeze in that apt.
So, I ended up at the LAX Hilton for a week while I tried to find something else.
VRBO really has no way of contacting support, and I kind of assume their revenue is derived from listings rather than bookings, otherwise you'd think they'd crack down on this.
It's just like any community online, really. Airbnb started out as a tight-knit, mostly Bay-Area-techie demographic. As a host in Austin, where many techies visit, do job interviews, or hang out for a few weeks, I enjoyed meeting interesting people who were in the same (or similar) community as I was--startups/entrepreneurs. I met people who had shared connections with me on Facebook and people who became good friends.
Fortunately for Airbnb's valuation, but unfortunately for hosts, the demographic has dramatically changed over the past few months to a year. With Airbnb becoming a "household name" of sorts, with a multi-billion-dollar valuation, people have started booking on Airbnb who are not of the caliber (to put it nicely) of the original close-knit community that made the site so neat.
I get it. Communities, as they grow and become mainstream, tend to attract more not-so-great people. It's inevitable. It's just, as a host, it stinks. Airbnb is going to have to get even better with quality control. (One step, as I've made clear in emails to their support team, is to get really firm on their guideline of not letting people book for other people. It is a trust and safety issue--the person booking the Airbnb should be the person staying in the house, PERIOD.)
I wrote more about my personal experience a few weeks ago on Facebook [1]. I didn't mention some of the particular bad experiences we've had with guests in the post, because I don't want to embarrass anyone publicly, but let's just say...we have had some really negative, uncomfortable experiences with multiple guests in the past couple months. That's after having over 100 positive experiences, but the percentage of positive vs. negative experiences has taken a dramatic negative turn lately.
My experiences are not as horrific as the above article--probably in part because we are here when we rent out our master bedroom. However, this definitely is a trend/issue that Airbnb is going to continue to struggle with. I hope their customer service team takes these incidents seriously and continues to make it safer for hosts and guests of the service.
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/ericabiz/posts/10152926663453305
I can't cancel his booking without being severely penalized by Airbnb. (Later, I found out I could have contacted Airbnb's host support and they would have cancelled it without a penalty since he broke the guidelines, but at the time I did not know that.)
His daughter turned out to be someone who (I am really trying to be polite here since this is a public forum) should not be living on her own. She was not...OK. After one really crazy incident, the next morning, I called her dad on the phone and explained the situation. They agreed to cut the booking short, and I ended up having to refund them their "unused" nights.
I straight up asked him, as politely as I could, "I don't mean to pry...but what's going on with your daughter?" His reply: "Well, she's never been diagnosed with anything..."
If I wouldn't have already had other people booked on the Airbnb for later dates, I would have taken down the listing after that experience. It was a nightmare. My roommate had to clean up the room, and that was a nightmare too. We were all pretty over it at that point.
But I think one thing that would be useful in this context would be to help 'out' the bad players. Children will be children, but we need to be able to work with the system to identify and neutralize people who are abusive. That saves further grief down the line.
Okay, a few days ago it was, "I'm gonna rent this out for some extra money".
Now the vocabulary has amusingly changed to "our sanctuary".
I somehow don't associate the word with FOR RENT signs. A sanctuary is literally a sacred place. That precludes it being a marketplace. (At least according to an obvious Western/Christian interpretation of "sacred place", pretty much in effect since old J. C. cleansed that temple of the traders and money changers.)
This is because everybody can be dumb.
If you're dumb, you need to get told so you become less dumb.
This is a terrible thing that happened, but shielding the people at risk of terrible things from all possibilities to learn how to avoid terrible things is not doing them favors.
there are several sites like the above. most of the real complaints are cleaning fees that airbnb promises to cover in case of abuse and they never do.
Also, several analysis from insurance companies saying that the $1mm "host guarantee" is a marketing ploy and not that most of the insurance business loss is on small things, and that only covering the big bust is a fake way to not have insurance losses. but you will have to search those for yourself
edit: ok, i've searched for you http://www.tnooz.com/article/homeaway-thinks-1m-airbnb-host-...
Yeah, right. I have no affiliation with AirBnB, I've used it twice and have a neutral opinion of it, I'd never dream of renting my house with their service, and if you are going to baselessly accuse me of being a paid shill for expressing my natural, homegrown opinion then we have nothing to discuss.
picked your comment to reply because, well, i had to pick one :)
As soon as something is stolen or damaged, though, I would hope that AirBnB would cover it no matter how small.
i'm never using it again - seriously, what is the advantage here? given the very real risk that someone can cancel on you, or simply make you feel creeped out, why would i choose this over reliable commercial accommodations when traveling thousands of miles? cheap hotels are just fine, and they don't cancel reservations on a whim.
you can also pick to rent the whole unit to avoid interacting with the host.
but yeah, imo airbnb is hit-or-miss now
I certainly would have done it as a teenager-- Chip in $5 per person, get a weekend party house that isn't owned by your parents. Get the kid with a beard and the voluptuous church girl to meet the hosts if necessary.
http://gawker.com/man-unwittingly-rents-out-apartment-on-air...
http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-host-cant-get-squatter...
Most people know someone who rents out property, and have heard horror stories like this. Laws and eviction processes tend to error on the side of the tenant for good reasons. So it's the responsibility of the landlord to know the rules and the risks. Just because the match was made with AirBnB doesn't suddenly absolve you of risk or responsibilities.
This is not to 'blame the victim', the renter seems like an asshole. For a long time I rented out my house to many roommates, and I've had some bad ones where lawyers needed to be involved. It's often hard to spot an asshole upfront and sometimes impossible to spot a sociopath, no matter how good your interview process (or AirBnB rating system) is. And life circumstances can turn a friendly renter into an evil one. But I knew the risks... namely that in CA it can take 6+ months after a problem occurs to get someone evicted, and your chances of getting paid for that period are very low.
Silicon Valley, it's time to disrupt commerce - get on it!
[edit]
> The couple posted to Instagram saying that they were "thankful" to Airbnb for providing coverage under its Host Guarantee, which offers up to $ 1 million in insurance "in the rare event of guest damages which are not resolved directly with the guest."
Then don't rent it to people you don't know. Duh.
Your comment only has any punch because you made it on one of the rare negative outcomes. And you could have made it after any similarly rare disaster. Their home could have been trashed after letting a friend stay. After having a cleaner come by. After a plumber. After they left the door unlocked. After somebody broke in when they went away on vacation. And you could have said, "Well duh, what were you thinking leaving your house unoccupied."
Life is risk. Running around and acting smart after the negative outcomes is boring and easy. It's the same game played by the vast number of people who explain why a startup could never work after the startup has already failed.
EDIT: Oh, and the startup comparison is silly, most people who run startups don't even put their own home at stake in case everything fails.
The startup comparison is not silly, because my point is not about houses. It's about after-the-fact commentators finding occasions to kick people when they're down.
The reason why I thought it was silly is not just that. Startup owners are known to take risks because they venture in stuff that has never been done before and therefore high-risk is a natural factor in that environment. Renting your house is nothing like that: it's very clear from the beginning that it could be trashed by the occupants, it's a very REAL and tangible risk (and it has been known to occur in many occasions), nothing like the "Unknown" startup owners face.
You need to be wise to be a startup owner (and lucky), but renting your own place (if you actually care about it, like that person in the article) is just silly in terms of benefit/risk ratio.
> renting your own place (if you actually care about it, like that person in the article) is just silly in terms of benefit/risk ratio
Ah, note another rhetorical maneuver: the false objective voice. That is a belief of yours, not a demonstrated fact. Many people differ. Try owning your opinions.
It's not the negative outcome; I just find simultaneously calling your home a sanctuary and renting it to strangers for cash to be passing strange. I have friends who aren't particularly attached to their house, and the wife even has a massage studio there; they rent it out on airbnb all the time. But they already have all sorts of strangers passing through anyway.
I love my books, but I lend books out pretty much at the drop of a hat because there's a joy in sharing. If somebody willfully destroyed one of my books and handed me back urine-soaked shreds, I would still feel violated. And if somebody then said, "Well duh, what do you expect lending out your books?" I would think that person an asshole. Because what I expect, what most people would expect, is what generally happens: the book gets returned with appreciation. One can always seize upon the rare bad outcome to sound smart in hindsight, but as far as I can see it's just kicking people when they're down.
I'm really not trying to make this sound like, "Well, what did you expect!" -- shit sucks and these homeowners don't need people piling on them -- but seriously, anyone who's rented out homes knows the deal.
The reason your book example is misleading is you aren't renting it out for cash to strangers to take to a party with them. If you have a personal connection to people they treat your stuff with more respect because it's tangled up in your relationship.
When you let friends use your home, it's personal for both of you. When you let strangers use your home for money, it's personal for you but just business for them. It's an alternative to a hotel and will be treated with the same (lack of) respect, for better or for worse.
I agree money changes things some, but less and less. And the theory of much of the modern "sharing economy" stuff is that the era of disconnected, faceless capitalism is on the wane. That's certainly been my experience on both sides of AirBnB.
My take on the so-called sharing economy is it's a scam run by uber et al to exploit soft employment in the united states by sidestepping the requirement of being an employer in favor of an exploitative game where you can pretend all your employees are contractors and hence not subject to minimum wages, worker's comp, or the majority of legal protections given employees.
I also don't understand how your (not unreasonable) belief on Uber has anything to do with AirBnB.
You cannot take only the good stuff from something without the bad.
I agree that we should take the bad with the good. However, I believe that assuming the mantle of intellectual superiority after something bad happens is doing basically the opposite. These transactions work out just fine for most people. Seizing upon the rare bad outcome as a chance to sound smart is ignoring that most AirBnB guests really do treat other people's homes well.
I imagine a lot of people on this site have considered renting on AirBnB. Certainly I have. It's a hip service, it fits in well with our techie notions of the world, and you make a little extra cash. Perfect!
Then I came to my senses and decided that the risk to my house, where I happen to live and in which I place great value, wasn't anywhere near worth the relatively small amount of money it would bring in.
If you thought it through and decided it's not worth the risk, it's hardly "hindsight" to point out when somebody else clearly got it wrong.
There is no reason to say that these people "got it wrong". They were unlucky. Suppose the same shitheels broke a window, climbed in, unlocked the door, and had a big party on a weekend when the owners were away. One inclined to superiority-by-hindsight could say, "Well duh, why didn't they have bars on their windows?"
After a rare negative occurrence, one can always look back with hindsight, find some way the bad outcome could theoretically have been averted, and then say, "Well duh." Always. It is a great way to sound and feel smart. But it never actually fixes anything. Indeed, it can prevent the fixing of things because, having blamed someone, we mostly stop looking for useful lessons to learn.
If you want the book-length version of this, Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Understanding Human Error" has a great explanation of why retrospective blame ends up being immensely harmful: http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/...
That's relevant because the AirBnB question is one that a lot of us have actually thought about and decided on. I (and presumably the other guy above) had the foresight to realize that renting my house on AirBnB was not wise. Pointing out the natural consequences of making what we see as the unwise choice is not hindsight, because we made that decision beforehand.
I don't see how this particular instance doesn't fix things, or prevents fixing things. Convincing people not to rent their houses on AirBnB if they care about said houses is a fix! It's a really good fix! It doesn't fix the problem of "AirBnB guests can sometimes cause major damage to their accommodations" but it does fix "AirBnB guests cause emotional violation by trashing a person's primary dwelling."
"Don't rent your home to strangers from the internet" is not searching in hindsight for some way the problem could have been avoided, and using that to unjustly criticize. It's a completely rational approach to life that a lot of people have been following for a long time.
Suppose he lent his house to a friend who trashed it? Suppose he gave keys to a cleaning service and some reprobate there stole the keys and trashed the house? Suppose an earthquake destroyed his house? No matter what happens, there's always a way to blame people after the fact.
The way this discourages fixing things is that blame never fixes anything. Blame isn't a solution, it's another problem.
If somebody wants to do an integrated risk analysis on AirBnB and make some predictions on that, great. I'd love to read it. But comments like the one I call out are predicting the past. They're not just worthless, they're harmful to useful dialog.
This guy didn't "analyze a problem". There was zero intellectual contribution. He called people stupid for taking a risk and then being unhappy when they got a 1-in-a-million negative outcome.
If you want a longer version of why blame impedes risk analysis, try the book I recommended upthread. (Or pretty much any book on retrospectives will have a shorter version.) But the short version is that you basically have a choice between the emotional activity of blame or the analytical activity of analysis. Because humans.
Though the article is sensationalized linkbait, unnecessarily showing pictures of the damage, the story is an affirmation of Airbnb's good business practice of mitigating risk to the owners.
Note - Calgary is right in the middle of a highly prosperous oil patch and nobody can wreck a home quite like rig workers.
My (pithy) question about whether Airbnb paid him well was in response to this:
"Though the article is sensationalized linkbait, unnecessarily showing pictures of the damage, the story is an affirmation of Airbnb's good business practice of mitigating risk to the owners."
That's a little over the top...especially considering they did an estimated $50k damage to floors and furnishings.
Of course the action performed by the renters is egregious. What about that is newsworthy? The fact it's in Canada?
Airbnb has a good insurance policy for owners. The news story buries the lede. Isn't it HN policy to point it out when posted stories do this?
"Though the article is sensationalized linkbait, unnecessarily showing pictures of the damage, the story is an affirmation of Airbnb's good business practice of mitigating risk to the owners."
That is way over the top...so far over the top that a reasonable person could conclude that you are perhaps conflicted. If you do work for Airbnb, I won't attack you for defending your company (I've defended far worse), but I sure wish that you would disclose that.
As for whether or not this article is newsworthy, once again, a police constable senior enough to speak to the media used some very strong language to describe the scene inside and the pictures were absolutely shocking. If the estimate of $50 - $75k proves correct, this was a deliberate and prolonged attempt to destroy.
I could see an editor deciding that it was worth running this story to warn potential Airbnb hosts of what could happen. This story originally ran on Calgary's local CTV station and in that market, it was certainly news. Especially since Calgary's economy is slumping and some Albertans (with their highest levels of personal debt in Canada) are likely more than tempted to make some quick money.
Accusing a fellow user of being a shill or astroturfer is not ok here. Please don't do that.
I just want you to re-read that so you can think about what you just wrote
Continuing this level of immaturity, it seems to mostly be just mess that a simple mop and bucket could fix.
But I guess to the immature having to clean for a few hours is a news worthy horror.
Yes a couch or three might be total write offs for the immature, where as a good steam clean from the non lazy might fix some of them, but Airbnb will replace them anyway.
The 'what's wrong with people' should really be directed to the people who watch these style of stories.
It depends on the house, but doing $50,000 to $75,000 worth of damage to a 'normal' house without fire or flooding takes some effort and is a little more than just a few couches. Sure, you could also do that much dammage by chipping the wrong cup, but and assuming a normal house I suspect the party was actively trying to trash the place.