
'I've never seen anything like it': Airbnb renters leave Calgary home trashed - rpledge
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/i-ve-never-seen-anything-like-it-airbnb-renters-leave-calgary-home-trashed-1.2351001
======
greggman
I've had the opposite issue which is as a renter which is out of 6 AirBnB
rentals 5 of them had issues, 4 of them the host lied on their listing and
several I didn't rent lied on their listings as well but I got smart enough to
confirm before.

#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

~~~
sukilot
AirBnB refunds you when they fail to deliver the advertised product... Right?

Or do they just keep your money and tell you find a legal hotel somewhere else
next time?

~~~
sjf
You have to go through a refund process. If they host doesn't agree to the
refund, it goes through arbitration which takes a long time and is kind of
pain.

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(!).

------
ericabiz
As an Airbnb host (we rent out our master bedroom suite), I can safely say
Airbnb is not what it used to be.

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](https://www.facebook.com/ericabiz/posts/10152926663453305)

~~~
mcmenon
Can't you vet the people that stay with you? Do you find the ratings process
unreliable?

~~~
ericabiz
Here is one example that happened to us. A man with prior positive reviews did
an Instant Book on our place. (We had it set so people with previous positive
reviews could instantly book our listing without our prior approval.) Then he
sends us a message through Airbnb saying the reservation is for his daughter.
Great--so he's already broken Airbnb policy.

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.

~~~
g8gggu89
What did you have to clean up exactly?

------
kazinator
Anyone notice the irony?

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.)

~~~
beedogs
I sure do love me some victim-blaming.

~~~
FeepingCreature
Victims can be dumb.

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.

------
slacka
Key takeaway here: "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."

~~~
gcb0
For each case like that, i bet there are 1000 where someone just steal a
stereo or leave the room dirtier than you can imagine that airbnb does not
reimburse the owner. and that the police will just ignore since it is not over
the threshold of monetary damage that is there so they don't have to care
about poor people like you.

~~~
mikeash
Unless there's some evidence of this happening, this is pure conjecture and
adds nothing to the discussion.

~~~
gcb0
The airbnb team is strong in this thread.

[http://www.airbnbhell.com/](http://www.airbnbhell.com/)

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-...](http://www.tnooz.com/article/homeaway-
thinks-1m-airbnb-host-guarantee-is-as-empty-as-a-vacant-apartment/)

~~~
mikeash
"The airbnb team is strong in this thread."

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.

~~~
gcb0
mostly hinting at the fact that several people downvoted, me for not doing the
search for all of you, while nobody provided facts on the contrary as well.

picked your comment to reply because, well, i had to pick one :)

~~~
mikeash
That's not an excuse for shutting down the conversation by implying the only
reason someone would disagree with you is if they were paid to.

------
beachstartup
i used airbnb once for a trip to europe, and one of the hosts cancelled on me
the night before, causing me to scramble to find a hotel that was wildly
overpriced. the next airbnb in the other city was run by a couple of weirdos
who i didn't feel comfortable interacting with.

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.

~~~
jpatokal
Airbnb is great when traveling with a larger group (family, colleagues of the
kind you'd want to share a house with, etc). There are plenty of cities where
cheap apartment hotels that do short-term bookings basically don't exist,
often for legal reasons. (I'm looking at you, Singapore and Tokyo.) When
traveling with young kids, meaning you _need_ a kitchen, a washing machine and
more space than the average Japanese business hotel, Airbnb has been a
lifesaver.

~~~
dman
So you are knowingly breaking local laws?

~~~
jpatokal
Nope, individuals can often quite legally rent out their apartments in
situations where a company could not. See eg.
[http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/27065/are-short-
te...](http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/27065/are-short-term-rentals-
airbnb-etc-legal-in-singapore) for the complexities of the situation in
Singapore, and I gather Japan is very similar.

------
williwu
I just had an awful experience with Airbnb a month ago. I rented an apartment
in Maui for two nights. We arrived really late in the night. When we were in
the apartment, we found out that it wasn't cleaned. Used bed sheets were on
the floor and still on some beds, tables were dirty. The host obviously forgot
to clean it. I contact the host, but couldn't get hold of him, since he's in
another time zone. I called Airbnb and send them pictures of the place, and
asked what to do. The Airbnb support guy basically told us that the apartment
was clean enough to stay for the night, and we have to resolve the issue with
the host ourselves. That was the first time I have talked to Airbnb support,
and the experience was just awful. We ended up staying at hotel for that night
on our own dime, but the host was kind enough afterwards to refund the booking
fee.

------
xkcd-sucks
I'm honestly quite surprised that renting AirBNBs for partying/selling drugs
hasn't become more popular.

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.

~~~
fragsworth
You can do this with hotels too, but you don't see that happening. Not really
sure why.

~~~
richardbrevig
People party in hotel rooms all the time. It's just part of the standard
operations of the hotel to deal with them so they never become a big deal.

------
ojbyrne
It's a testament to Airbnb's PR that the people quoted here don't know about
previous issues like:

[http://gawker.com/man-unwittingly-rents-out-apartment-on-
air...](http://gawker.com/man-unwittingly-rents-out-apartment-on-airbnb-for-
xxx-1544961941)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-host-cant-get-
squatter...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-host-cant-get-squatter-to-
leave-2014-7)

~~~
furyg3
The guy in the second situation is a huge asshole, but it is also very naive
to think that you can simply rent out your propery to someone (especially on a
long-term basis) and you do not somehow enter a landlord/tenant relationship.

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.

------
Devthrowaway80
New business idea: people engaging in risky commercial enterprises (like, say,
renting a valuable property on AirBNB) could pay into a central fund, which
would cover damages in rare but nasty circumstances like this. The amount they
pay could be proportional to their expected loss, plus an extra fee to cover
administration. That way you could pay a predictable amount per month and
you'd be covered in the event of a disaster like this.

Silicon Valley, it's time to disrupt commerce - get on it!

~~~
readme
So, your new idea is insurance?

~~~
woah
I think the idea is sarcasm

------
ekianjo
> "I mean, this is our home. This is our sanctuary," Mark said.

Then don't rent it to people you don't know. Duh.

~~~
wpietri
There are few kinds of HN comment I hate more than the superior-by-dint-of-
hindsight putdown.

~~~
mikeash
Personally, I dislike comments that just criticize commentary as "hindsight."
If it were technologically possible to discuss these things before they happen
then I'm sure we would do it, but for now we're stuck with traditional
concepts of causality.

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.

~~~
wpietri
I am in favor of commentary, but his comment only makes sense as hindsight. If
he posted it beforehand, he would mostly be wrong, because AirBnB mostly
works. If he posted it after any of the many successful outcomes, he would
look dumb.

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/...](http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-
Understanding-Human-Error/dp/0754648257)

~~~
mikeash
"Why didn't they have bars on their windows?" could be a reasonable criticism
or it could be pure hindsight. Which one depends on whether the person stating
it was faced with a similar decision and decided in the direction they advise.
If I've evaluated the risks and decided that putting bars on my windows is
wise, and I did it, then it's totally reasonable for me to criticize people
who didn't and subsequently got their house broken into. That's not hindsight,
that's having foresight, and criticizing other people for not having it.

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.

~~~
wpietri
Your theory here seems to be that one person in the world having an extremely
negative outcome validates basically all negative risk perceptions. I think
that's bunk. It makes no more sense than saying that because one person wins
the lottery, it validates everybody who buys a ticket and loses. To evaluate
risk and reward, you have to look at baskets of outcomes, not crazy outliers.

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.

~~~
mikeash
What exactly is the difference between "blame" and analyzing a past problem
with the idea of avoiding similar problems in the future, and what makes you
put this particular statement on the "blame" side of it?

~~~
wpietri
From Wikipedia: "Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making
negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions
are socially or morally irresponsible."

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.

------
c0pypas1e
(Gasp) you mean requiring pictures of the host & pictures of the potential
renter is not a cure all? Why, I never....

------
beedogs
Another Airbnb host learns the hard way that being an Airbnb host is a sucker
bet. It's the meatspace equivalent of running a Tor exit node.

------
linkregister
It should be really easy for Airbnb (which insured the house under its TOS) to
recoup the damages from the renters, of whom it has all pertinent information
to track them down.

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.

~~~
hluska
Does Airbnb pay you well?? I mean, a police officer in CALGARY said that he
had never seen anything like that.

Note - Calgary is right in the middle of a highly prosperous oil patch and
nobody can wreck a home quite like rig workers.

~~~
quadrature
Well he isn't wrong, Airbnb asks for Government ID when you rent a place and
they have your credit card information.

~~~
bdcravens
Pretty sure the credit card doesn't have a limit of $75,000. There's plenty of
identifying information, but it's still a matter of civil litigation.

------
aaron695
Are we not past the immaturity of having to post the fact someone trashed a
house, but OMG it was on Airbnb?

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.

~~~
Retric
I don't think the homeowner is going to be stuck with the bill. But, that kind
of dammage can easily end up with some prison time.

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.

