It's rather sad that even the author concluded that they would continue to use Airbnb in the future, and there are no real consequences for the company. The profit from scammers as much as from legitimate users, so like Google (blogspam) or Amazon (fakes) or Etsy (drop shipping), they don't really care about them.
I've limited my exposure to these companies over the last years. But this is a path with a lot of friction, and unlikely to be chosen by most users, so until politicians are pressured enough into doing something, I believe that the scammers will continue to prosper.
As long as the customer is just 'very angry', but will continue to put money in the company, the company will gladly accept your money and will tell you it is 'very sorry'.
If Airbnb has a penalty of any kind for property owners to list on competitor websites, then it will be very difficult for competitors to enter the market.
Antitrust law is intended to do this. The general algorithm is:
- Company engages in unlawful anticompetitive behavior to drive competitors out-of-business
- A few years later, the FTC starts an investigation
- Competitors go out-of-business
- A few years later, the FTC possibly delivers a slap-on-the-wrist or possibly nothing at all
Microsoft played this game for many years in the eighties and nineties before there were any more serious consequences. They eventually came, but on the whole, Microsoft won big-time on anticompetitive behavior.
And of course, it's only what the FTC can find out about, and their jurisdiction doesn't extend into China, so Apple gets away with a lot of shit that they wouldn't otherwise.
The problem is that if you list on 2 websites at the same time, then these websites cannot guarantee availability anymore, unless there is some protocol to communicate this.
E.g. what if someone books an apartment on website 1, and another person books the same apartment on website 2 at the same time.
Usually hosters that do this are "professional" and have multiple listings or ways to mitigate it. One is tools that auto-update multiple platforms to keep them in-sync, leaving only small "timing" windows where there could be a double booking. Another is to simply phone the renter and offer another place (if they have multiples right next to eachother which is often the case), or give some sort of discount, etc.
Essentially, it's a "solved" problem at this point and is on the level of being a commodity.
This is a somewhat solved problem by hotel reservation platforms. Responsibility to notify the platform about availability changes are on the property owners. They pay some fines or (some other form of cost) if they have to cancel a reservation due to clashes.
Of course this is a solved problem. Even cheap booking systems manage and synchronise a whole bunch of different booking platforms. Tourism is a multi trillion dollar industry.
2. They have competitors that are larger than them, Booking.com
Booking.com is in every way better than AirBnB for guests and for honest hosts. This means that with time, AirBnB is going to get more and more scams, becoming the market for lemons.
Booking.com does sometimes seem not to do a proper integration and just rely on emails or phone calls to confirm the bookings. I've used them multiple times around 10 years ago and the hotel would show me a printout of an email from them with my booking details afair.
A friend of mine recently had to sleep in the car because booking never confirmed her reservation with the hotel and wouldn't accept her booking.com confirmation printout.
That depends entirely on the hotel. They can use one of the many booking systems that integrate with booking.com through XML or they can choose not to. If they choose not to, then they will have to manually sync availability and receive their bookings by e-mail. A nightmare, but their own fault for not running their business properly.
> A friend of mine recently had to sleep in the car because booking never confirmed her reservation with the hotel and wouldn't accept her booking.com confirmation printout.
If the hotel has any booking system on their own website, there is a good chance that it integrates with booking.com and others. If they ask guests to book by phone or email, then they probably do not have any integration.
I don't have first-hand experience, but I own a couple of short-term rentals, and the word on the street in the hosts community is that booking.com (BDC) is full of scammers and not worth the effort to integrate with.
This makes me wonder where you get your word from? Booking is well established since a very long time, if a host is problematic you'll see it in the reviews. If they're scams they get removed from booking. For clients there is no way for them to scam a host.
You are correct, of course, but then the circle of enshittification[0] begins anew.
The competitor starts out great, as Google did, with its clean front page without any bullshit. They defeat the incumbents, establish themselves, create a quasi-monopoly and begin extracting maximum value while coasting on their reputation.
There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the wheel of time [1], and it seems that this has carried over into our world.
My father runs a few guest suites from his house here in South Africa.
5 or so years ago I happened to be at his house when he had a slightly interesting case where a couple arrived unexpectedly claiming to have made a booking, but there was no corresponding booking on my father's profile.
When I looked closer at the booking on the app on their phone, it turns out they had made the booking for a listing which was a copy of my father's listing.
When we all realized what had happened, they phoned AirBnB and had them reverse the fraudulent booking, fortunately one of the rooms was available and they paid my father directly through an immediate electronic funds transfer payment.
It's possible that the couple that was trying to scam my father, but based on their behaviour, it seemed highly unlikely to me. My best guess is that this fraud works against less savvy hosts who assume that there "must be an error with AirBnB" or when bookings are adequately in advance that the fraudulent listings receive the money before everyone realizes it's a fraudulent copy.
Most of his bookings these days come from repeat customers or Booking.com.
I have seen this so many times in Mexico on AirBnb. Specifically in Puerto Escondido. Somebody would just copy photos and post in slight distance from original location.
The apartment above mine is listed on AirBnB. Guests are often causing nuisance and the rest of the residents decided to intervene after we had to call the police. Turns out, the complaints of that sort are outsourced to the company who doesn't have access to the AirBnB database and are trained to make you go away. They requested photos of the inside of the property and other proof that it is listed on AirBnB. We couldn't provide them so AirBnB "support" closed the case.
Reminds me of the phrase OpenAI used in their recent Model Spec release - to make the user feel heard[0]. Your story is exactly what it means in modern customer support - making the complainers "feel heard", so they go away, but remain customers.
It's sad to hear that. Unfortunately, dirt-cheap labor in "customer service" outsourcing companies are only so good at pretending they care. Let it be of some consolation that LLMs are getting better at this job; next time, you will still be treated like an idiot, but in a way you'll thank us for it.
You misunderstand me. From companies' POV, they will fix the process, because they'll excel at tricking you into feeling like you achieved something, without actually achieving it.
It's something proponents of AI ought to oppose, but it's too late. My bank deployed an AI bot for the purpose of processing loan applications. Three weeks later I finally managed to speak to a real human who questioned all advice and info given to me by AI and another person and I was finally approved. The future is shit.
It's one of many things that AI "optimists" like me[0] oppose.
Unfortunately it feels like there's a culture war going on right now, splitting the world into the cautious and the eager. Ever was it so, that's where the terms "conservative" and "liberal" meant around a century ago.
We had a similar thing with a malignant AirBnB host next to our living place. Plus issues with water leaks on their side. The host company and AirBnB made it clear their business was rentals, not taking care of the property or community on which they profit.
I used to be happy with AirBnB as an option when I travel, now it is my last resort if I can't find a hotel room.
I don't understand why either you or the parent comment had to deal with AirBnB in any way to begin with.
Shouldn't your talk be with the owner of the property ? or more likely the shared building property manager (syndic is the word I'm looking for an english equivalent for, I don't know if this is the right one here, maybe HOA is the right one ?) + a complaint the local authority if need be ?
I'm not from the US but surely it's not that different around the world ?
I'm in London and would have loved to be able to talk directly to the owner of the property. I tried to do that, I really did. So would the building manager.
I only found out the place was being used as an AirBnB when I knocked on the door to tell them their flat was leaking water into the main corridor and a guest answered. The host (which claims to be a management company) does its best to dodge any kind of communications. Their rentals are mismanaged illegal stays in central London, which AirBnB doesn't seem to care about addressing.
My understanding is that our building has a number of AirBnB rentals. Since it's hard to get them out, building management doesn't worry about it unless it becomes a maintenance or noise problem. In this case, my "neighbour" is such a problem, so the pattern is to call in the authorities until something happens.
When I asked the building manager about contacting AirBnB, they laughed out loud.
I don't know if this is the case here but it can be difficult to track down property owners through loop holes in the US. You can use different things like ownership trusts to obscure.
Yeah but that's not going to be a normal first step for people, its also not straight forward either
Whom Do You Sue?
You may not realize it, but suing the right person is very important and not as easy as you think. Before you sue, you must determine the nature of the entity you are filing your claim against. Basically, there are three ways a person may do business. First, as a sole proprietor, second, as a partnership, third as a corporation.
To sue a sole proprietor, you file against the person running the business, no matter what name he or she is using. Suppose that Sara Smith opens a dress shop called "The Dress Shop." Who do you sue? The answer is Sara. To find out who "The Dress Shop" really is, check with the "assumed name" department in the county clerks office.
To sue a partnership you should get the names of the partners. Under the law, each of the partners is responsible for the obligations of the partnership.
To sue a corporation, on the other hand, you file against the corporation. A corporation is a separate legal entity. To properly sue a corporation you should first contact the secretary of state and find out who the "agent for service" is so that you know who to serve with the papers. Visit, http://www.sos.state.tx.us/, andf look at the "Business Filings" section to see if the business is listed. If it is, get the proper name of the business and the name of the registered agent. This is the person you will serve with your legal papers.
Once you have determined the proper legal entity to sue, make sure to get the full name and address. A small error in spelling or an incorrect address could cost you months when your papers cannot be served.
In London properties are often owned by offshore companies who are in turn owned by other offshore companies whose only reason to exist is to hide the beneficial owner. Puncturing those structures is only possible if you are a determined hacker, journalist, or secret service.
Because AirBnB has a process supposedly designed to handle such situations. Also because I was dealing with a nuisance neighbour (loud drug-fuelled parties till 2:00-3:00am on workdays, all day and night on weekends) for four years and the London Met police refused to deal with my complaint unless my life was threatened. The local council had "noise patrols" conveniently scheduled at times when there was not much noise and proposed they install noise measurement devices in my flat to collect evidence as opposed to sending a policeman round to warn the neighbour. His fun stopped when his mates got busted for drugs. He mellowed down all of a sudden.
I guess at the worst case you could book the property for an evening to get the photos, then what are they going to say? it's illegal to take photos inside the place you rented? (though i guess they get a day of rent this way :( )
People swear hoas but this is exactly the kind of issue an hoa is well equipped to deal with. I also haven’t seen newly formed apartments hoa that allows short term rentals at this point so airbnb is slowly killing its golden goose here
> Goel would also de-list and re-list apartments so that no one would see his bad reviews and use some of his fake accounts to write glowing, positive reviews for his other fake accounts. The indictment lists 19 separate apartments where Goel carried out the alleged scheme, including ones in Austin, Nashville, Malibu, Denver, and Los Angeles.
Does AirBnb do zero validation of listed properties?
I vaguely remember when they first started they would come out to the property to take pictures (maybe Brian himself?). I wouldn't expect that level of high touch onboarding, but at least very least some kind of "Does this property exist?" and basic address validation.
I had this precise MO happen to me in Romania, only I got a "cancellation" message at about midnight the evening before. Plumbing issues. "We have another property that is much better instead."
I am not a trusting soul, especially at midnight, so I just said fuck you Rus, ima get on the line to AirBnB. And amazingly they made us whole, and after a night of interaction between an AirBnB droid, and apparently a couple of unconnected hosts in Bucharest, by 9AM I had another rental, not too bad in fact. This was 2018, does AirBnB still do that?
Also non-US countries' cellular networks for the win, a lot of communication happened the next day while I was on a bus heading toward Bucharest. Almost as good as Mexico in fact. Which is where I'm going next month. However I'm suspicious these days so my next AirBnB I have already stayed with that host before.
Anyway as I was messaging with the AirBnB repair droid all night, the Rus kept coming back and I decided to have some fun, and boy howdy did he get mad. I trolled him intelligently, good and hard, apparently they don't get much pushback. I got to thinking though, maybe not a good idea to troll the scammer hard as I'm about to inject into a city I don't know that well? Spicy!
Sadly AirBnB edited that message thread quite savagely, very annoying when I went back to enjoy the exchange later on.
I just remembered that I had the last minute cancel thing happen to me in Chicago too! Only the host didn't do the divert to the "better" apartment bit, and it was 2 days before, so I was able to find another rental.
I have a stayed in hundreds, maybe into thousands of reputable hotels in many countries over 40 years.
It is such a drag when this tired line comes out. 98% of our AirBnB stays have been fantastic, and I have cooked out of many food markets in lots of interesting places. Including Romania. The host interactions, often through side channels, have been quite cool in close to a dozen cases: theatre tickets gratis in Paris, local pointers that are truly local in some places.
But all good things must come to pass, and it seems likely that the enshittification process has terminally afflicted AirBnB. In the future probably we'll be joining the rest of you in our sterile "reputable hotel" rooms, eating out of the adjacent dreary (but sterile!) industrialized corporate food processors (aka "restaurants"), all of which might as well be located in the same interstellar spaceship, no matter where the nominal physical location is claimed to be. A dreary future.
I've stayed in at least a few hotels that had small kitchens in Europe. I washed clothes in the tub. In the US, extended stay hotels are incredibly common, cost-effective, and I actually prefer them.
La Boqueria, La Merced, oh let's see in Paris, Marche Couvert San Quentin, La Libertad in Guadalajara, I could go on and on. What on earth could you do with the stuff you can buy there, but hardly anywhere in the US. I should go out for a drive in my FSD Tesla, and meditate on this question.
Over decades of travel, I've found that one of the best ways to experience a culture and a place is to learn how to cook the local food. I guess you could do that through cooking classes, etc., but I've found a whole new dimension of traveling by staying in Airbnbs/etc. that have kitchens, and going to the market down the street to find ingredients.
For more experienced & long-term travelers, having some way of preparing food (maybe just breakfast, or breakfast + lunch) often means you have the budget to stay in a place longer and get to know a place better. And you can take a day or two off to recharge if you've exhausted yourself, and know that you won't go hungry or be forced to go buy crappy to-go food at a convenience store or the like.
You'd do well here to not start attacking someone for how they want to live their life. Nothing about cooking means they have to stay inside while traveling. This is a fully valid way to do things. You can get access to new ingredients in new places.
The last time I used Airbnb was in 2018 on a holiday trip. A hanging cupboard fell off the wall from poorly installed wall anchors and nearly killed my wife and the host accused us of having ripped it off intentionally. Shortly after that the prices started to rise even more and in all cases I checked, a hotel was cheaper by a lot. Haven't looked back.
I live permanently in Airbnbs for 5+years now and have none of these... Oh wait the sink fell right out of the counter while I was washing dishes in my last flat in Buenos Aires, week before last.
Well, I bought some glue and I glued it back in. I didn't have to do that, if I have real problems Airbnb has always refunded me, and hosts have always been great... But i didn't mind.
Was your trip in USA? I get a weird kind of feeling that Airbnb is awful in the states... But I'm not sure that's an Airbnb problem specifically. I feel like in the states it's a business, where the rest of the world is more easy going?
Yeah, I've been in Airbnbs for the last 3ish years all over Africa and Asia and mostly haven't had any issues. Nothing like described in the article, but if a host tries anything even remotely fishy I just go straight to Airbnb and let them sort it out. In my limited experience, Airbnb has always been on my side as a guest rather than on the hosts side.
In all my travels, I've not seen hotels be even remotely competitive in price compared to an Airbnb, at least when staying for a month. Usually for the cost of a run-down hotel room I could have a great 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and washing machine.
I used to use AirBnB extensively when I was a digital nomad. After the pandemic I took my wife (I was newly married post-pandemic) and my stepdaughter on their first international trip and had booked presumably nice AirBnBs to stay at. Every single AirBnB was somehow not matching its description, had problems, and was owned or managed by a bland company where we had no interaction with our “hosts”. We cancelled the rest of the reservations and switched to 5-star hotels for the rest of trip.
Since then we only stay in nice hotels for these trips, and I can often do so for less money than an AirBnB would cost but with clear service and quality guarantees. Even 5-star hotels are slipping in quality these days, but are more worth the money than overpriced AirBnBs that don’t match their description or promise.
I have no idea why anyone would stay at an Airbnb. The lack of regulation alone makes it a no-go for me. There’s so much that can go wrong, and you have literally no recourse.
If you're a family on vacation it's much more convenient than a hotel and most importantly it allows you to stay in more remote locations where there are no hotels; it's worked very well for us over the years (though I'd feel differently if we'd ever been scammed).
But it has gotten a lot more expensive than it used to be, and the charm and appeal of staying at someone's house and meeting new people is mostly (but not entirely) gone. If I'm traveling alone or on business I don't bother with AirBnb anymore.
It's a home with home amenities like an actual kitchen, a washer dryer, bedrooms. Getting a couple of hotel rooms for a bunch of friends or coworkers or a family is less cohesive so some actually prefer an AirBnB despite the downsides. Hotels with proper suites are competitive, but, say, for a small scrappy startup visiting town for a conference where they're sharing a car and meals and need to coordinate gear, an AirBnB is simply better.
I recently stayed in an AirBnB with a group of friends - we traveled to see a band we like play two consecutive nights at a venue in a city where none of us lived.
We all had our own bedrooms, and having the house to ourselves meant we could do stuff we couldn't have done in a hotel. Some of us brought instruments and had some jam sessions in the basement. We stayed up late after the shows listening to music, drinking and playing cards and laughing loudly at stupid jokes. When people got tired they could just go to their room and go to bed. We all cooked breakfast together in the morning.
It was a wildly fun time and it would not have been possible if we'd all just gotten hotel rooms.
Credit card companies are not as customer-friendly with chargebacks as they used to be. I've experienced Amex automatically siding with a vendor in a case where the vendor was at fault and there was a clear refund policy that the vendor didn't adhere to. I'd be surprised if credit cards are allowing chargebacks on Airbnbs.
I see a pattern where some of my friends can get a lot out of the combination of cheap plane tickets and Airbnb. The only downside is that you never know where you're going in advance, because your're just sifting through the cheapest options.
It's cheaper until you meet with an unscrupulous (or even just lazy) landlord and you need to scramble for last minute lodgings. Have this happen once in an expensive city, and it erases a lifetime of savings from cheaper Airbnbs.
It's been my experience that Airbnbs are not really cheaper post-COVID compared to hotels.
Obviously Airbnb could vet better (now that it’s a PR nightmare)
Relying on tech companies with negligible support and 0 transparency to self-police is reliably failing. Perhaps it’s time courts or some other system adapts to these modern problems
Most places have some legislation that applies to short term lets. Those same rules should apply to people that try to run their Airbnbs like a business. Leave the folks that are renting out a spare room alone and go after the people with 5+ properties they've never stepped foot in.
I don't know how cities get the resources to try and enforce these laws. I guess if the fines are high enough, it could even be profitable but that probably comes with it's own issues.
I had the same similar situation with Airbnb at 2016, the host sent a council letter photo, it says "the house has to be evacuated etc." which is fake. He intentionally waited the last day to notify me while I rented the place one month.
I was about to move another country and this happened at the last day. It was a devastating moment, I didn't accept scammer alternative place which is 5 times worse than listing. I rented a different place and did a report to Airbnb.
Airbnb contacted with me almost instantly after the report and they were used to this situation for sure. They gave me 200$ coupon as an apologise as I remember and I closed the case.
which is why I love hotels. if hotels are too costly, would rather opt for booking.com since it allows you to pay on the spot and has easy cancellation than airbnb
Amen, glad to have never used AirBnB. I also often use booking.com, but you should know they regularly f over smaller businesses that use them to host their rooms. I generally stick to big chains when using their platform, or use it as 'hotel google' before following up and negotiating a price directly with a smaller hotel. Much like Uber squeezes small business (menu items often 20-30% higher on Uber menu vs real menu) booking.com exploits the smaller accommodation providers so they appreciate direct bookings.
Last year they had 3-6 month delays on passing on booking fees to their partners due to 'technical difficulties'. While big chains were made whole as priority, many smaller operators risked bankruptcy or were put out of business.
As I said I like using them for most of my travel, I just choose to book directly when using a smaller provider vs Hilton etc to lower the small operators overheads, much like I go and pickup my takeaway order to avoid using UberEats.
That's insane! With the low margins and seasonality in the hospitality business, delayed booking income can threaten bankruptcy to a small business.
I also try to always give preference to small hotels by booking them directly, but most of them are foolish and give better rates and terms through booking, and hard headed about it. Doing the opposite of what they should do from a business sense.
Payment policy is set by the individual hotels on booking.com, so sometimes it's pay on the spot, sometimes pay in advance. The same with cancellation.
Isn't that the plan for virtually anyone that gives business advice? Jordan Belfort has likely made more with paid appearances than he ever made in the stock market.
There's some guy on YouTube I watched who does gold mining by hand on property you can either buy or lease. There's apparently still tiny amounts of gold near the surface in high enough purity for it to be possible. He does in fact extract and sell small amounts of gold. I imagine his book he wrote about doing this makes him more money than he ever could make mining gold.
Why do I think a distilled essence of his experiences is a gallon jug of urine from a very dehydrated diabetic asparagus enthusiast that’s sat on a sunny windowsill for one year?
I've limited my exposure to these companies over the last years. But this is a path with a lot of friction, and unlikely to be chosen by most users, so until politicians are pressured enough into doing something, I believe that the scammers will continue to prosper.