Airbnb removed my negative review
Airbnb removed my below review because "The review didn’t have enough relevant information to help the Airbnb community make informed booking or hosting decisions."
The rating of the place went back up after removal. The host still have "superhost" status.
Needless to say, i no longer trust airbnb reviews.
*my full review was:
I wasn't able to check in because [Host] requested 300 USD security deposit during check in. I told her - I don't have that much cash on me. - That is against AirBnB rules. - This should have been explained in airbnb listing. She can't just surprise guests with this at the last minute. She didn't listen. She said: "my house my rules", "you can't tell me how to run my business", "if you don't like it, you can cancel". I told her if i cancel, i don't get full refund so she should cancel. she said she won't cancel and me not getting refund is not her problem. I think she counts on the fact that guests typically wouldn't want to cancel in the last minute. you can see in some other reviews people had to agree to paying her this deposit. But i didn't want to cave in and called AirBnB. Thankfully, airbnb fully refunded the payment and i was able to find another accomodation in the last minute. I don't recommend this host unless you want a stressful start for your vacation.
472 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadRead all bad stuff about AirBnB on reddit, you see where airbnb is heading. People should stop using that platform, whenever you find an alternative.
AirBnB needs to immediately get rid of all fees for rentals and enforce that there's just 1 base price charged. The price you see on a listing should be the only price ever possibly charged. Between silly cleaning and toilet paper and checkin and other fees, there's too much of an opportunity for scummy people to try and take advantage of people that are tired and desperate after traveling.
Virtually all of the conflicts, scammy behavior, and confusion would be resolved if there was just 1 base price that was ever charged.
The incentives are different at different levels of the business. There could be someone with a shorter-term outlook making these decisions, or (more likely imo) it was a very quick misapplication of the policy based on skimming the review. Acting as a first reviewer actually seems like a great application of LLMs, where attention won't flag + they can hopefully be tuned to only focus on the policy-relevant pieces.
If those reviews help you decide to buy from someplace other than Amazon... perhaps in short term or narrow circumstances it still helps Amazon (reduced refunds/etc).
Unlike Airbnb, if users lose trust in their reviews, Yelp loses their entire business.
source: I am ex-yelper.
Yelp is worse than AirBNB.
That just doesn't make sense to me? Like Yelp is telling their sells reps to ask their family to give bad reviews for businesses that don't buy ads?
There might be an argument for Yelp to adjust incentivizes for their sales people to discourage that behavior, but AFAIK they are acting on their own and not because Yelp said to do that.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQAAauJlPq0
Do you really think Yelp is asking their employees leverage their friend's network to leave negative reviews or do you think this sales guy is at risk of losing his job for not converting enough and so he on his own asks a friend to help him keep his job?
If Yelp wanted to extort businesses, they wouldn't need employees to ask their friends. They could just adjust the search ranking to down rank businesses that don't want to pay.
This video doesn't pass the smell test.
Even though whatever Yelp does is not illegal, it engages in unethical practices: "[R]emoving positive reviews wasn’t extortion because Yelp didn’t have to publish those reviews at all. Third, publishing or showcasing negative reviews wasn’t extortion because Yelp has the legal right “to post and sequence the reviews.” Finally, the plaintiffs claimed Yelp wrote bogus reviews to punish non-advertisers, but the plaintiffs didn’t provide adequate evidence that Yelp wrote those negative reviews instead of someone else. For example, even if a business couldn’t find records matching the reviewer’s details, that doesn’t mean Yelp falsified that review (compare the Yelp v. Hadeed case, which in a different legal context gave more benefit of the doubt to an aggrieved business with similar claims)."
It's the startup dream.
We should aim to do better somehow.
I was a very early user of Airbnb and started using it back in 2012, when the platform was still mostly folks renting out extra bedrooms in their homes, and occasionally full house rentals (less commercially-run than nowadays). For a good few years it was always a positive experience, and most of them had a human touch to them (good interactions with hosts, etc.).
A few years later it has gotten commercialized enough that I basically just consider it a commercial short term house rental platform. In the past few years, stories like this post is so common that I'm hesitant to book one unless absolutely needed (can't stay at a hotel at my destination for various reasons, e.g. large group wanting a house, etc.).
What's the future path for this? There's obviously a market need for something like this. Is it a move toward more decentralized small boutique short term rental management companies (maybe geographically dispersed too)? And for platforms like Airbnb to move back to strictly renting out extra rooms in a house you live in?
So take your money elsewhere.
10 years ago (or more) the "hey, we're getting a neat little off-the-beaten path house experience for a great deal!"... probably was a selling point. Today, abnb/vrbo/etc is just a corporatized juggernaut.
The more people who know the fewer potential victims AirBNB and their hosts have.
The abuse will continue until prospective victims wisen up. There is A LOT of momentum in Airbnb.
Then when I left the review, I get a message a day later that VRBO took down the message. Cool, last time I ever use your service.
The “property” I rented was just some of the space of the original house, like 30% of it. There was a door from “my area” to the living room on the other side that was nailed or caulked shut, and the walls were paper thin. They were right next door and I could hear every word of foreplay. It was fucking gross.
Airbnb doesn't treat the hosts great either... They auto set new listings to auto approve...
They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested using it because it was cheaper.
It was awesome place, host was great, so left a fantastic review. It was taken down and I was called a liar. When I asked to speak with someone about why I'm accused of being a liar in my review customer support promised me many times I would get a call back. Never once did I receive a call back from anyone at Airbnb instead I would get an email that they had conducted a thorough review and their position still stands that I am a liar. I'm not sure what thorough means in their mind but since they asked me zero questions or confirmed no information with me directly it's impossible that they conducted any kind of thorough review.
Airbnb is a horrendous company along with all of these gig economy companies. They need to be regulated in the same manner as they're non-gig counterparts are. I can't imagine that any Airbnb executive actually stays at Airbnb places not with the kind of customer service that Airbnb offers.
Have you seen the 45th president? Have you seen the average American?
Are you actually serious right now?
Your third line is entirely unnecessary.
See what happens if you ask a bank for a loan with no credit history.
Of course these are only tangentially alike, but public history is an important way to distinguish organic reviews from AstroTurf.
You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?
OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.
> Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews?
It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.
Edit: furthermore spam prevention takes all sorts of random signals in to account. Having no online presence other than a single stay in Airbnb certainly looks suspicious.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy.
Nobody writes their spam detection algorithm as policy, but there is also no evidence whatsoever that social media presence was in any way shape or form used to make the decision here. Airbnb at no point mentioned it, nor would it have been something that crossed your mind if original commenter didn't mention it as a fact about themselves.
I'm not arguing that Airbnb does use presence/lack of social to make a decision here. I just objected to you saying
> Since when is a social media account required to do online business?
I interpreted that as you being outraged that Airbnb requires some form of social presence to do business. I felt you were exaggerating and responded by saying its just about the review. I meant that even _if_ Airbnb is checking this, it's not a big deal cause this is just one of many signals that could feed into spam detection and we're only talking about the _review_ not the ability to use Airbnb at all.
You raised a valid point earlier, I doubt they're actually checking this, my point is just that even if they are, who cares. OP looks suspicious by having no online presence at all and only one stay on Airbnb. That combined with the language in their review probably tipped the spam filters to say "hey it's probably safer if we don't let this review through, doesn't seem legit"
Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time.
Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd.
My theory on this is the same as usual – Airbnb outsources or understaffs their customer service department as usual; some stressed out agent closed the case without even looking at it. Making some noise and opening a separate case will probably work if you're bothered enough.
It's possible there's something more mundane, like not having a browser cookie when the review was left or something like that.
After that, they’ve already made the fees on the stay. Most people won’t be losing 20% or whatever to farm good reviews.
Why would the final and optional review step be the part where they decide to verify if the stranger staying in someone else’s house is a real person.
Implying that a "bot" or "puppet" is paying to stay at AirBnB's just so they can write salty reviews?
It is not really a big cost because you only really need to pay the platform fee (you control both sides of the transaction do the only real cost is the middleman).
Reviews are super important and it is hard to get booking when you have 0 reviews so it is not surprising that some hosts would spend some dollars for 3-4 fake positive reviews to kickstart their property (many people will bounce off the ad without at least a couple positive reviews, so it changes your business radically)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34219765
> Airbnb removed my positive review and accused me of being in cahoots with the host to leave positive feedback.
Effectively, you can't.
Many of them collect their data via third-party scripts so you should ensure those are blocked.
Reviews are an auxiliary cost to Airbnb. They need moderating and their Hosts complain and use up support time if bad reviews are let through. I suggest profiling users is a quick and cheap way they've done the sums on to weed out the easiest level of abuse (on both sides).
They're not going to lose any business until it affects you.
"We have a suspicion based on this data we don't have that you might not be a real customer so we're blocking your reviews" invites a whole lot more customer support time than "We're not accepting your reviews."
It is simply cheaper to be firm, however unfair it is when they get it wrong.
Edit: I should have expanded on my post a bit. It's quite obvious that the review was flagged by some ML model, most likely not because the reviewer is a liar but probably because the host has a high prior for shenanigans. Combined with the lack of social signals for the reviewer, I could see why an ML model might be overzealous. But back to my original question: nobody is being called a liar, why take it so personally?
There could also be bad faith from Airbnb as some comments frame it but I believe most of the time it's just a tricky business. Check ebay and you see the same issues or even worse.
That’s how you’re supposed to know where is worth staying and where isn’t.
If those can’t be trusted, then it’s an inferior B&B platform with doctored reviews that you can’t trust.
My advice to those reading this is just to get a hotel unless there is no alternative.
AirBnB was fine for a bit when it was cheaper than alternatives, but, in my experience, it’s now as expensive (if not more) as the hotels they’re trying to replace.
There’s usually a massively inferior experience when compared to Hotels the majority of the time. At least, that’s been my experience.
Reviews that you can’t leave unless other party reviewed you which self censors whenever there’s a slightest disagreement
See reviews for same places on booking.com and they are consistently 1 star less
So just saying "regulate it like hotels" doesn't mean much.
Require Airbnb hosts to pay for a license, have regular inspections, etc.
And how does this help with reviews on airbnb.com?
These sorts of HN posts is often how change happens.
There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist.
Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.
That's not a realistic solution.
If all the reviews were fake 5 stars but it's just the property's friends always leaving reviews then when you got there, you feel there's no way it's 5 stars. But less obvious is property manager says, hey i'll give you a 5% discount for 5 stars, when really the place was a 3-star at best.
Those shifts in star ratings are material in your personal decision making process.
Airbnb is incentivized to have higher scores because lower ratings might not push people to other properties - it might discourage them from booking all together. They need them to not be totally worthless, but score inflation is definitively in their best interest.
I don’t trust sites like Airbnb and I understand how sites have problems with review fraud.
If I posted with a unique signature then over time people could learn that mine aren’t fake.
Also would be nice to know that the Airbnb reviewer also rated a restaurant and some headphones, etc.
So you can basically collect people who review in ways that are useful to you and layer that over the web to rank search results, apartments, blenders, etc etc.
Compare reviews on Steam to reviews on Airbnb. You'll quickly notice something, Steam shows you far more information at a glance. You get to know whether someone bought the game themselves or if it was given free to them, how many hours they played before the review, how many hours they played in total, their rating, how other people feel about that review, how many other products the user has, if the review was edited, and of course review text.
Airbnb's reviews has a scoring system that was generalized, and review text, maybe a translation badge if the review was translated.
Reviews work best when you are given as much information as possible. Without it, you might as well be relying on an anonymous 5 star system.
True but also one they’ve created for profit. They choose to ignore complaints about hosts to avoid losing their fees, they choose not to audit reviews, etc. There’s an entire industry of people who get paid to do mystery shopping to review customer experiences, which is quite effective but not free since you can’t automate it at scale.
This seems like it’s basically a VC playbook now: focus on growth numbers and assume you’ll be able to convey the shiny tech imagine until you reach market dominance, and avoid spending money visibly on “menial” jobs to support the image that you are about to be unbelievably profitable.
I wonder if "tipping" could improve things.
A new platform like airbnb could have an expected tip built in to the platform. Hosts are expected to provide good service and get a tip.
Customers are encouraged to tip at the end of their stay (with a lower base price than airbnb to account for that).
Hosts can see the average, median, max, and min tips of potential customers (along with distribution, and percentage calculations) and use that to determine whether to accept them as a guest.
Customers can see the average tip a listing received, and use that to determine if they'd want to stay there. Of course, they would sometimes leave $0 or a low number as a tip, but they'd be incentivized to also provide good tips for good service, because a low tip average would reflect poorly on them and make them less likely to be hosted.
I suspect tying things to real value for the customer and host would lead to better service and a more honest indication of host/customer quality.
But perhaps it would just lead to hosts literally bribing customers for good tips.
Now I'm forced to expect my price to be 15-20% more expensive than the list...
If the industry moves to service included, then the prices will still be 15-20% higher, or more, than they are today. You will have removed the incentive for those that want to provide better service however.
Multiples of 5% calculations is pretty simple and keeps the brain sharp. It’d also be easy to show the price with tips, but dark patterns.
The incentive to provide better service for individual employees should be provided by their employer.
The incentive for the employer to provide better service to customers is competition with other service providers the client might choose.
Which is how it works in all the jobs that aren’t within the weird and arbitrary bounds of tipping culture.
Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure. People don’t like surprise fees, inflated prices, etc. They don’t mind tipping as it gives them some control back.
My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.
Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices.
> Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure.
It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.
> My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager likes my work from the previous year then I get more RSUs. If they don’t like my work, then I don’t get RSUs (and maybe fired). Tipping is everywhere.
Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.
The market said no.
> It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.
That’s great, but it didn’t work in the US. Some of the larger corps ran the experiment for 4 years and when the waiters lost income they complained. You see, here tipping culture means they make more money.
> Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.
It’s exactly the same. It’s lay I would not have received otherwise.
> hasn’t been implemented
I’m not going to evangelize what a correct stance on this is, but IMHO tipping is a big, not a feature.
I’ve had so many bad experiences with Airbnb. It’s never like in the pictures. It’s always noisier, low quality mattress and furniture that looks good on pictures but isn’t functional or breaks if you touch it. I also feel like I’m living in ikea showrooms around the world. And given how expensive the cleaning is, it’s rarely passably clean. Moldy corners in the bathroom, dirt under the bed, chipped dishes…
And good luck trying to get Airbnb to help you. Best they can usually do (after you explain your case over from scratch because it’s always a new customer service person) is “alright we’ll check you out, you get a refund, and good luck finding a place for tonight out of pocket”
Never again. It’s hotels for me every time as well.
I like to search for newly built hotels as they usually offer the nicest accommodations.
I think the point was 'No -surprise- fees.
Edit: top context is “That is against AirBnB rules” and “refunded” i.e. AirBnB has explicit rules against surprise fees or bonds, and it can enforce rules.
I am guessing you just responded quickly but it is always good to spend time to try to “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And no, not until recently could you see the actual total prior to sunken cost of Reviewing your booking. That too, Airbnb finally implemented once the Biden administration compelled them by law - that is, not before making much fanfare about it with the pretense of them "doing it for the customers"
The last 3 bedroom home I rented on AirBnb had a $500 cleaning fee. We were there 4 days. Its ridiculous, but it's becoming the standard on AirBnb.
People criticize all sorts of things they don't understand. Our cleaning service charges us $280 per turnover. Separating the cleaning fee from the nightly rate makes our property more appealing for longer stays, which we (and our neighbors) prefer. It's not like a hotel, where the cleaners come every day; why should guests pay every night for a cleaning which will only happen once, after they leave?
People are annoyed because these fees are often sneaky or not apparent at first sight which makes the UX annoying.
Tourism taxes are per head, per night and generally Airbnbs are required to charge them as well (though they often don't).
A resort fee is a bogus surcharge added by hotels to "cover" advertised amenities, like if a cinema charged you a Dolby Surround fee after you showed your ticket at the entrance.
I tell them its a separate service because not everyone uses it. So if I am not using say the pool or the gym then I shouldn't have to pay it.
The single time I paid the fee was when it included Internet service which I needed. I wrote the CEO of the chain after my stay arguing that charging extra for Internet is like charging extra for electricity or water. Never received a reply.
Things are different on this side of earth, rest assured. I have paid extra every single time.
Further, there is always things like "parking available", but then either its not free of charge or always busy or its....public parkings.
Same with internet access. Available, if you pay and if its tourism months. And the internet you get comes from a router in the hallway and is shared and at times it seemed like it has the capacity for one concurrent user.
Airbnb enables hosts to publish such things in the name of revenue.
But if a host gets in trouble, they have a half arsed wannabe collection team which will drop them like a hot potato soon.
There are no reviews of truthfulness of the offers etc.
If you have had a good experience, then irs thanks to the host, not thanks to airbnb.
Online descriptions and reviews should be more regulated.
Google, for instance, keeps removing legitimate reviews from myself and others regarding a builder that rented / sold houses with horrible snagging problems, e.g. bursting pipes and leaky roofs.
They want to charge you for potential damages, done by you or not, as well as wear and tear.
Never, ever put a deposit for them, not even by credit card.
And if you pay for the stay, always , always use a credit card, not a debit card. That way, you can pull the chargeback trigger on them.
A chargeback is their worst nightmare, trust me, it can have so many implications and hurt airbnb so badly if they are subject to chargebacks.
You can chargeback with a debit card, I’ve done it a few times myself.
I can stay at a 5 star hotel for a $50 deposit on my credit card. I'll just do that instead. Like you said, its not even really about tying up the money either. I would put this on my AMEX which has no credit limit, so tying up $1,500 isn't really the problem, its the need to authorize a host that I don't personally trust to be able to make any claim they want to justify keeping part of that deposit. I have much more trust in Marriott or Hilton and they only need $50. In all the traveling I've done, I've never had them refuse to release a deposit in full. By contrast, I've met enough crazy AirBnb hosts, that i wouldn't trust them with $100, let along $2,500.
Cleaning fees are also ridiculous. I've seen a lot of $500+ cleaning fees. Come on! What kind of cleaning are you doing for $500?!
I don't really care. If people want to go to AirBnbs, then great. I've had some good experiences with them, but i've also had several bad ones. I don't like the risk I need to take each time with the host. I also am getting fed up with the calculating the "real cost" for each one when comparing them. I'd rather go to Marriott or Hilton where they treat me like a God. So I'm basically done with AirBnb at this point.
Honestly, there was not much else it could do in the long term.
Booking.com did that.
I do however always choose an apartment for corporate trips, but always via booking.com.
The number of travelers staying at an Airbnb versus a hotel is under 1%. This is clear by looking at overall inventory available. Even a decent market _might_ have 100 AirBnB listings, that same market will have several thousands (possible 10,000+) of hotel rooms.
Generally the opposite is true. AirBnb hosts will justify their nightly rate based on comparable hotels in the area. But the average Marriot for example isn't all that worried about the handful of AirBnbs nearby that they might be losing customers to.
Personally though I've come to appreciate hotels more and my experience is that you can usually find a decent hotel room for about what an AirBNB costs and I usually like going to a hotel better. (There was that one in Chinatown in NYC that the experience of finding it was somewhere between The Blade Runner and a James Bond movies, I'm not sure if that is a good review or not.)
People have been turned away when they show up by security as it’s not allowed but the people just try to sneak them in. When reporting this to airbnb they refuse to do anything. I’m getting fairly sick of the laissez faire stances these companies are taking. It’s not just that we don’t want airbnb its that people in this area regularly rent airbnb with false names and rob the apartment and the ones next to it once in the building. Airbnb could care less about our safety though.
It would be nice if the companies could stop hiding behind stupid corporate policies and actually care about people.
Edit: to make things more sad when the building was sold as it’s brand new it was sold as no airbnbs and family only. Several couples moved in because they have been previously robbed in other buildings in the city and in nearby ones all from Airbnb rentals with false names.
The governance is definitely poorly structured, though. In my (limited) experience I've seen a board that gets elected and then proceeds to abuse their power to advance their own financial positions.
I think there should be a 3rd party company that competes for the management contract and annual contracts are awarded based off democratic vote from all the owners.
That's being said, $&@# AirBnB.
And buildings start needing more significant structural work after forty or fifty years. Which is to say, yes, I expect many more condos to collapse over the next couple decades.
This is correct in the sense that it is technically correct (for residential dwellings; commercial condominiums have existed for almost a hundred years prior).
However, residential cooperatives (co-ops) have existed in the United States since the mid-1800s. These are functionally the same as a condominium with a slightly different legal structure. But the end result is identical: multiple owners jointly managing a building in which they all own a stake.
It's also plausible the legal structure of a condominium itself is the problem that leads to, well, largely incompetent management.
Obviously I'm not sure landlords are a winning solution for anyone either. But particularly for large structures, I would prefer actual public/government management over a quasi-government entity comprised of self-centered residents.
I guess what you're arguing here is that groups of people shouldn't be able to own real property collectively, which would undermine a lot of the legal infrastructure that underpins business and society today; not just condos.
For example, what if one's parents die and probate leaves the family house to the adult children (who are obviously not married to each other), how would they take title?
The legal structure makes some sense but the accountability is a joke. Structural safety should be handled at a more reputable level.
Also the definitions between your property and the common elements is... unclear in many cases, at best, and somewhat predatory in design at worst.
Violate its rules and you're a goner. Don't pay their "taxes", whether literal taxes or AirBnB taxing you by having you pay via your labor in changing your home, curating your listing(s) on AirBnB, writing reviews on AirBnB, being responsive above a percentile set by AirBnB, etc.
All as AirBnB demands. No input from you.
“The platform does not have the capability to delist a whole community currently but our Friendly Buildings Program does allow you to have complete transparency and control over home-sharing activity in your community. You would be able to set minimums number of guests, blackout dates, amenity restrictions, or even create a waiting list if you want only a small number of homes to have the home-sharing amenity.
We understand in order to be able to control home-sharing, you would have to allow it in some capacity and change your CC&Rs, which is a process. Since our program establishes a partnership between Airbnb and your community, we would love to support in any way possible or even send someone to propose the idea to your board and fellow homeowners in person.”
So in other words, you either work with them or they let things happen anyway.
From time to time you spot underappreciated comments here. This is one of them
AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, etc - their entire business model is predicated on skirting regulations.
Then people are surprised they don't keep honest negative reviews? Why would a company which is knowingly violating rules care about your negative review?
They make money from hosts putting their places up for rent, not from those renting and if a negative review causes a listing to be removed... Clearly it is far more economical to remove the review instead.
It's less about removing the review or listing and more about looking at the belief system in the business. If a local government says "this space is for permanent residents only" AirBnB would say, "why?" and would rather ignore or fight the regulation than comply (or more likely "take it up with the host, not us").
There are legitimate questions to what terms a government/HOA can force on property owners renting out their residences. From taxation to civil rights and racial equity there's a lot on the table to challenge. That said, companies can be reckless when choosing not deal with the question because it doesn't have an easy answer and grow/scale at ethics' expense.
AirBnB has actually had to deal with this, like removing the ability of hosts to see guest photos before booking because of racial discrimination, and charging the appropriate hospitality taxes on listings to comply with the vast number of of municipalities they operate in.
In the not so distance past there was a FLOOD of drivers, few rules and regulations and eventually a "race to the bottom" (too many drivers chasing too few fares).
Then the pendulum of regulation swings TOO FAR in the other direction, creating the "medallion" system where these are worth a small fortune.
A happy medium is where the market self-clears with reasonble regulations to protect both drivers and consumers.
AirBnB is in the same boat. It was a good idea when it was individuals renting out unused rooms for some extra cash. now AirBnB is an unlicensed hotel, where people buy up houses specifically for AirBnB.
There are countless stores of people renting property, and then turning around and putting that on AirBnB.
And strongly agree, some rules are dumb, but the correct approach should be to push for change, not run illegal businesses like AirBnB, Uber, etc.
If i called someone to come get me from "A" and drop me off at "B" how is this "ride sharing" and not a taxi service?
Thesis: too many taxis result in badservice Antithesis: too many restrictions also result in bad service Synthesis: breaking some of the laws results in better service
Now we talk about regulating the gig economy, a horrible thing mostly brought by Uber and airbnb: let's see where it leads us.
Mostly because the government sits around and does nothing until things get really bad, then they institute very strict rules to prevent a repeat.
Had they gotten involved earlier they would have had more flexibility with the regulations.
I would rather regulations exist to protect consumers and communities without respect for the business owners/operators' needs. Businesses don't have an inherent right to exist or be profitable and the choice to protect them is one of pragmatism (eg: national defense, airlines, rail).
I think something got lost in my last reply, I don't think companies should flagrantly break laws and feel that governments should take the gloves off more often to slap them with massive penalties for ignoring them. But it's not black and white.
I'd been finding bags of rubbish in the corridor, or in a recycling bin, and was woken several times by wheely suitcases bump-bump-bumping down the stairs early on a Monday.
Denmark changing the tax laws to require AirBNB to report short-term rental income for tax also helped.
Those willing to ignore HOA rules are often willing to ignore local tax collection rules so contacting your local tax authority to let them know you suspect someone violating the local tax laws is an option. Even when the planning officials were hesitant to get involved the tax folks were willing.
I have reported realtors which own or have close connections to those owning short term units violating HOA rules to the state licensing board. My experience is that realtors willing to knowingly violate HOA rules have often previously been censured by the licensing board for other issues. This in particular has been amazingly effective at getting units quickly removed and listed for sale. Once the listing is removed I withdraw my complaint and I have never had to follow through to completion.
Luckily once the registration laws went into effect there have only been a couple of people attempting to do short term rentals in my HOA and reporting them locally has ended those attempts.
That policy falls short in instances like this where a guest cannot or will not check in due to issues with the host.
You might also try calling AirBnB again and see if you can convince them to put the review back up.
BTW, $300 cash deposit is absurd. AirBnB already has a security deposit mechanism that the host could use.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056
In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often.
Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be associated with them.
AirBnB is now in a similar situation.
When tehy first came out you would get lots of positive feedback from people about their service.
now that they allow whole home rentals and people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market people have a far different opinion of the company.
Couple that with hosts are squeezing people with 100's of dollars in cleaning and other fees that dwarf the nightly rental costs.
Its hard to think of another company outside of Facebook that has blown all their good will so quickly and so completely.
You never hear someone claim to work at AirBnB anymore due to what the company has done to help ruin housing and rental markets.
Charitably I guess you could say that every company falls victim to the saying "You Either Die A Hero Or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain."
AirBnB really just provided a modern online interface with some customer service stuff that papered over the bad stuff for a while. But like with actual bad construction, you can't hide the stuff forever so sooner or later the magic disappears.
In theory zoning is supposed be in residents interest to stop things like fracking from happening next to playgrounds (it doesn't but again that's another story). Cities follow zoning law to the letter when it comes to new apartments.
Airbnb repurposes residential zoned property as commerical hotels. If we're going to take zoning seriously this shouldn't be allowed.
https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ
https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o
for me what I noticed lately is that in California it's impossible to have a quiet modern apartment because nearly 100% of modern apartment buildings are only allowed to be built on busy noisy high traffic streets. If you want a quiet street you're forced to buy/rent a house
But if we take zoning seriously when it comes to new apartments then we should take it seriously when it comes to Airbnb.
I think it is, but construction companies are trying to savd a few cents, and they don't add proper noise insulation.
This is an interesting read about the market effects Airbnb has caused. They’re definitely moving prices and removing units from the market.
From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market. And restrictions on short term rentals have little to no effect on housing prices. It's just another scapegoat (like foreign owned housing) that people like to use because they can't accept the fact that the solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. (Reduce restrictions like exclusionary zoning and environmental/community reviews)
If you live in a ski town or beach town then it probably has had far more effect than the locals looking to buy or rent would want. if you live in a small town with very little tourism then people may feel like you do that its a non factor.
New York city seems to think that 10,000 distinct places to live will come back to the market, is 10,000 units in New York "negligible" to use your wording?
I don't know but I'm guessing it will have some measurable effect.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1145709106/nyc-could-lose-10-...
https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=february-17-2021
I don't see the word Local anywhere on it and I honestly don't get the joke.
The city has passed laws to keep down the amount of temporary rentals so the balance has undoubtably shifted by now. A later analysis by the same bank (https://bnb-beheer.nl/blog/2019/03/06/prijseffect-airbnb-op-...) says as much.
Any solution that isn't "build a fuckton more housing units" isn't a solution at all. We need enough housing for permanent residents AND people who prefer to live in AirBnBs. Often the AirBnB people are wealthy tourists who spend a lot and stimulate the local economy, so kicking them out is a horrible idea.
Amsterdam specifically wants less tourists.
They have a load of initiatives and policies to try reduce what they call "negative tourism" that are will just have the net effect of reducing overall tourism - the actual goal.
Similar issues in Venice and some other European cities.
Over tourism makes places less liveable for the residents who live - and vote - there.
"Rich tourists" are good for purely tourist driven economies, but most cities don't exist to please the whims of tourists, and most local businesses in a wealthy economy aren't targeting rich tourists either.
What actually happens is that family neighbourhoods are forced to deal with constant parties and drunk and loud tourists because some multimillionaire set up one of the rare available houses for his personal profit.
I'm sure there are people who enjoy living in AirBnB's but that's not what AirBnB is even trying to accomplish. Hotels exist and are regulated for good reason. Tourists are put in touristy areas where businesses want to attract tourists, also for good reason.
When dealing with a housing shortage, the local population is more important than tourists, unless there is no economy other than the tourist economy. Look at what happened to Venice, the city that exclusively exists because of tourists because of overtourism.
It changes depending on the location.
Some places e.g. Byron Bay in Australia have been significantly affected by short term rentals.
Kauai is one of my favorite Hawaiian islands and has one of the strictest short term rental regulations. I truly believe if short term rentals are free for all it would end up being a billionaire's playground (more so than it already is) with no locals being able to afford housing at all.
It’s a job - for many people, especially with families, they are fine with that, and they don’t wrap up their identity with it.
The same happens in the defense industry.
And I am very sure that's not the case 99% of the time based on my own experience. I'd be thankful if the kitchen counter is clean and there is no trash. That's actually not a low bar.
We were contemplating what to do with this information as the listing is under "entire place" when a few days later we got an email from Airbnb saying that there was a price adjustment of +$395 for cleaning PER DAY. We had it booked for 5 days so we needed to pay an additional $~2000. That was more than double the original cost. Thankfully we were able to cancel and get our deposit back with just the automated cancellation, but we did get a nasty message from the host that we we reported back to Airbnb.
The real solution is to tax each additional dwelling ~30,000$ (depending on area) to pay for the infrastructure to support it and then actually build that infrastructure.
The goal of such fees is to avoid subsidizing any specific type of development but as long as it averages out then it’s presumably fine.
Twitter comes rapidly to mind
Also massively bloated as recently as a year ago. Loads of people working there who didn't seem to do much except tweak icons 2000 times, enforce DEI mandates, and hit their department's budget. Awful. Glad to see the deadwood getting cleaned out, speed enhancements, and new features being rolled out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/technology/twitter-elon-m...
What's the speed enhancements?
I hear this a lot. I've always wondered if it was that easy wouldn't a lot more people be buying properties and airbnb-ing them out through local agencies ?
Uber, AirBnB, Netflix, Facebook come to mind.
I eventually gave up and resorted to going through an agency. For an actual vacation involving a group of people, that wasn't so bad. As a solo traveler wanting economical, shared accomodations, Airbnb was a game changer when it first came onto the scene. Nowadays, not so much, although I do still get lucky sometimes -- I'm writing this from a perfectly acceptable room in a very nice host's home that is costing me $113/night all-in.
Content that some people dislike is way different than [0]driving taxis out of business, [1]contributing to housing crunch, and [3]driving civil wars/genocide.
Awful experience, and I've sworn them off ever since. Very stereotypical "friendly but can't do anything" human customer support.
(1) https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com (1.3/5)
For instance, I had a week long stay booked in a “waterfront, two bedroom” in London. I needed the two bedrooms to set up an office that wouldn’t disturb my partner. Arrived at the place, and it was a one bedroom, not waterfront but the building’s communal deck had a water view.
Host was obnoxious about it. Airbnb support couldn’t find me a suitable Airbnb and booked me a two bedroom suite at a VERY nice hotel, worth much much more than I had paid for the rental. I am pretty sure they ate the host’s payout too as the place didn’t re-appear as available.
I've read people talking about how Airbnb screwed the host or the guest. But few people talk about how it screws the neighbors.
What does having a say look like?
I lived in a town house association where the unit’s being rented were the source of noise, trash, crime, etc.
People renting often don’t care as much for the neighborhood/ locals and they can move on at will. And you'd be surprised how much random citizen land lords are terrible at just being land lords.
After the numbers of rentals were reduced (and background checks required) the neighborhood improved greatly. It was like turning off a light switch on noise, litter, crime, etc...
The issue is not Airbnb or not. The issue is guests etiquette and difficulty to penalize bad/loud/disrespectful people.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing...
[1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/
I could believe (and maybe someone in this thread has data!) that in some extremely over-constrained markets that units are disproportionately used for short-term rentals. But I haven't seen any numbers. And in those cases, you still should be building homes to solve the root cause problem.
Americans persistently seem to want to find any reason at all to absolve themselves of responsibility for the housing crisis. It's investors! It's short-term rentals! It's corporate landlords! But it's never the locals who oppose construction.
And my question remains, which is more valuable to society, short term rentals or homes?
You're also failing to process my point: that banning short-term rentals is an ineffective lever, not that it won't have an epsilon of impact. Yes, you will increase supply by a tiny amount relative to the shortage. It will have near-zero pricing impact because the magnitude pales against the problem.
https://time.com/6223185/airbnbs-empty-short-term-rentals/
"At the median owner-occupancy rate zip code, we find that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.018% increase in rents and a 0.026% increase in house prices."
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.2020.1227
PS: the author's own words contradict your claim that the effect is tiny, although again I think this is a serious undercount resulting from a poor model and ever worse availability of data nationwide: "This means that, in aggregate, the growth in home-sharing through Airbnb contributes to about one-fifth of the average annual increase in U.S. rents and about one-seventh of the average annual increase in U.S. housing prices." https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-c...
Instead we have social mobility so that we can move anytime when better opportunities arise. That may be a good or a bad thing depending on which side you are.
Where I live now is area of all single family homes. One house on my street is also a full time Airbnb. There have been fewer issues, but there was one occasion where some people rented the house, threw a party in the house, shots were fired, and bullets went through a neighboring house. There have never been issues at this level in the neighborhood, so this was out of the ordinary.
Not all short term, full time Airbnbs are disrespectful. Not all long term, non-Airbnb neighbors are respectful. But IMO, with non-Airbnb neighbors, you have a better chance of working something out since they are there for the long haul.
Neighborhoods have a lot of societal norms, my house has frequently been referred to as "the rental" even though I've lived here for years and the prior tenants also all had long runs here... even being a rental house in the neighborhood is considered strange here.
The people behind me have done it a few times. How can i tell they had "guests" over?
I find beer bottles, coke cans and garbage on MY property. There is the obvious noise from the late night "pool parties" as well.
Normally people dont care what their neighbours do, but when it starts to impact others, people start to care.
If you have a problem with noisy neighbours you basically must make a "noise diary" with date/time/description of the noise over a period of time before anyone will give a shit.
Even then, enforcement varies wildly. Seems to depend where you are, etc.
The best person to complain to is building management, but even then, they vary.
The next best thing to do (and the most German solution) is leaving passive aggressive notes on the buildings noticeboard.
This puts me off the idea of ever renting out my own place, because I would then have to choose between feeling like a sucker, or being a criminal.
Right?
Out of curiosity, do you own properties specifically to rent on short term rental sites?
Our neighbors on the other side, unfortunately, own their home. This means I'm forced to live next to (depending on the day of the week), a live concert venue, a muscle car engine noise appreciation celebration, frat parties, and/or a farm (they had a goat for a week ?).
There's nothing anyone can (or will) do about any of these things, and no one's checking their papers to determine if ignoring the noise is your only recourse. The only way to attempt to improve the situation is show respect and hope it's eventually reciprocated. This is just part of living around other humans. The systems in place to mitigate these kinds of petty conflicts aren't taken seriously, whether the rental is long or short term, or the property tax kind.
HOA style Large grass areas and office park landscaping mcdonaldifies America and is a travesty for the environment and water use.
Select grass areas for actual usage are okay but HOAs default to grass everywhere and bland non-native landscaping. And beige everything.
But whether I cut my grass every 2 weeks or every 3 weeks, or god forbird I decide to have a vegetable garden on the southern side of my house (covenance says must be backyard)...that's HOA realm.
Have heard about this from friends and family more than once.. it would be comical if it didn't impede their ability to live so much.
You may as well be renting from them. No, thanks!
Another problem is that HOAs are the worst possible size of a government. They're large enough that you're in the minority, but small enough that they don't have anything else to preoccupy themselves with but how you're using your own property.
I've heard that "just imagine what kinds of horrors happen without HOAs" argument many times over, but... I live in the Bay Area in a densely-packed but older neighborhood without a HOA, and I'm yet to witness the terrible consequences of my neighbors' supposed recklessness. Yeah, the houses are painted in different colors and picket fences have different styles and heights, but I think I can live with that.
Most people are reasonable. When you bump into people who are truly unreasonable, a HOA is unlikely to save you. How peaceful and pretty a neighborhood is depends largely on socioeconomic factors (not just wealth, but also the prevalence of problems such as addiction). It just so happens that many new and expensive neighborhoods have HOAs, but that doesn't mean that HOAs are to be credited for good outcomes - or that they will be able to prevent the decline of such communities if the economic climate changes.
With who? I don't have a neighbor, I have an endless string of rotating strangers. I understand that bad neighbors have always existed, but that's not what's happening in my specific situation.
Anyone and everyone has potential access to the house 30 feet or so from which I sleep. Anyone and everyone at any time. It's a big change.
In the US, and California specifically, any kind of zoning change is met with pitchforks. If your neighbor tried to build an apartment and you didn't like it you could have easily held up the project for years.
Airbnb figured a way to rezone property without invoking the wrath of local busybodies. Kudos to them. But at the same time, if you live in a place that takes zoning seriously then Airbnb shouldn't be allowed.
I enjoy the fact that I get new neighbors all the time because, quite simply... in the past, I've lived next door to people I didn't like at all. When that happens, what can you do, move? This way, if there is an unruly renter, I just call the owner of the condo and they deal with it (only happened once in the last year). Worst case, they leave on their on in a few days.
What say should you have in how your neighbor uses their house?
You can live in an HOA with covenants that restrict renting, but that has their own set of problems.
This so much.
There's a neighbor on the street with a 'unique' house who decided the way she would make money is AirBnB'ing it to film companies. So...a weekend or two a month (usually Th-Mo), we would have 50-60 cars parked wherever they wanted on our narrow street and sidestreets. We would have vans and delivery vehicles block our driveways and sometimes the whole street for as long as they wanted. They would drive over lawns to position trucks because the street is too narrow for a 20+ foot cargo truck to back into the driveway to unload. They would film until 3, 4, sometimes 5 in the morning with loud noise, dozens of people and floodlights. If we said anything, they would mob us and start filming us trying to get us to lose our tempers. Whenever the cops showed up, they would shut down and play nice until they left, and then crank back up. And every one of them didn't get the required city permits until after we complained.
Lovely people in the film industry. /s
The city has regulations against such abusive behavior but not the resources to enforce, and no real recourse when the film companies basically gave the city the middle finger. They're going to be gone in a couple of days so screw those pesky neighbors. So we became the squeaky wheel to get some action. We eventually had to get a lawyer to get this shut down. And you bet there's a bunch of us at the city council meetings lobbying for better enforcement. It looks like we'll get some new regs passed with more teeth.
And, of course, AirBnB didn't care one bit.
So far most renters have been friendly or kept to themselves. Some were noisy, and some left dozens of cigarette butts on the sidewalk and street, and for the past couple weeks the place has been empty. No one has even come by to put away the trash bins.
The owner has over a dozen houses like this, and I really think it's a bad thing that these houses are not available to people who want to live in them.
"Reviews were stunning, the location was great, the price was reasonable".
Then, I went on explaining that I landed in front of a closed door, the host was not reachable, Booking.com support was not helpful, so I just drove on through the night and over mountains until I reached home 11 hours later.
After I made the review, Booking.com only kept the first sentence.
Since then, I try ordering directly from hosts or hotel chains.
Booking.com gave us a refund after a 2 hour call and offered us $20. They removed our negative review because "you didn't stay at the property and were refunded".
I am strictly hotels only after the shenanigans from AirBnB and Booking.com.
I'm never trusting online reviews anymore. Especially when the companies pull BS like this.
Edit: I just revisited the original email that I got from Amazon. They rejected my review because I left feedback about the seller, so I went to their seller feedback portal and left a message and never got a response. I still feel like this is a dark practice though, a review highlighting the fact the seller is farming 5 star reviews should still be posted, even though it's about the seller and not the product.
Ideally Amazon would do something against this, but I think they just don‘t care.
They both arrived the very same day.
From the seller addresses on the package, I could know which pair were coming from Doc Marteens website and which pair were coming from the amazon seller.
I put the pairs side by side to compare them.
At first sight, you couldn't tell the differences, but once you got close it was very clear there were not the sames : - The laces were thinner on the fake one. - The leather were thinner on the fake one. - The sole were differents, with different markts and scripture. - The logo at the back of the shoes was very badly reproduced.
The amazon seller had recorded an obviously fake address situated in New York city. The front of the address on google map was a store which has nothing to do with shoes or clothing business.
I posted a review telling the shoes were fake and the seller was selling counterfeit products and had posted a fake address.
Amazon informed me 24 hours later they had removed my review because I didn't stitch to only review the shoes.
I had an experience where, after arriving in town, the host denied me entry because they thought my negative COVID test result was faked.
That was bad. But what was completely insane was that Airbnb refused to refund my money. They only offered me $200 back on a $500 charge. Ridiculous.
I'm in the process of arbitration right now. Here's the guide: https://fairshake.com/airbnb/arbitrating-with-airbnb/
Her negative review was removed after a complaint by the host, and then the host proceeded to libel her in the review they made with false statements. It took a battle and sending loads of pictures to AirBNB to get them to remove the false review of her and restore the negative review of the place.
Needless to say, I lost of a lot of trust in AirBNB that day. The "air cover" guarantee isn't worth the paper it's printed on. We've gone from 50:50 hotels:airbnb to hotels only, outside of extremely specific cases.
But it had damn near a five-star rating and the reviews were like "great place for my family!" et c. Something shady was going on, both with the host and with AirBnB, to make that happen, I'd say. It was shockingly bad.
AirBnB removed the review and would not say what guideline it’s broken so I couldn’t amend the review.
I was not allowed to even post a review.
Tip for the future: buy a good guidebook (or several). They have listings of hotels with price estimates, whether BnB is a good idea or not, and what the legal requirements are how to handle them when things go wrong.
Another issue I have found is that many of the listings on Airbnb are not by the owner, but by some person acting independently as a broker. I have found this in many different countries. This may explain why, when I tried to request a booking, it was not available. The actual property owner had already rented it to someone else. Further, once the broker/host gives the owner the rent, there is no way to get any kind of a refund if there is an issue. The owner has no affiliation with Airbnb. The 'host' no longer has the money. And, Airbnb does not want to pay the expense. So, the guest is left hanging. Maybe they, too, can submit a review that the host will have removed. It's disgusting.
If risking the use of Airbnb, be very careful when a 'host' says a property is not available, but provides a link to a different property. It may have a very different cancellation policy than the original property.
Airbnb claims in their FAQ pages they want to be authentic. But, they seem to be authentic only in the support of their bottom line, even if that requires dishonesty in other areas to achieve.
Because of the combination of different issues, I have decided Airbnb can no longer be trusted. I now prefer to book hotels or apartments through competitor sites. I encourage others to do the same.
I'm fully open to this possibility, we shouldn't take them at their word, but it may also have been a half truth (they couldn't see your review but they could see their average go down).