
Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB - ancarda
https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba
======
decasia
I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question.
But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these
days:

1) Company: Doesn't like dealing with problem users/clients.

2) Company institutes policy saying that they can do whatever they want with
no explanation. This makes it more efficient to handle the problem users.

3) Sanctioned users are now more frustrated than before because they aren't
even given any explanation of what happened.

4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to
get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem
with their Google account and gets special intervention).

5) Company: Is happy because there is still an informal workaround for dealing
with sufficiently motivated users or weird cases.

6) Users: Are left more powerless and potentially frustrated than when they
had more sane tech support channels, but the company doesn't have to care
about this.

This seems really suboptimal and the OP's comments on power imbalances seem on
target. [edit: formatting, wording.]

~~~
nugget
Imagine a world in which Experian or Equifax would only fix a mistake on your
credit report if you had enough followers to embarrass them on social media.
This is where appropriate consumer protection laws come into play. The whole
idea feels intuitively like a silly overreach to me since I watched Twitter,
Airbnb, and these other services grow from nothing and so I take them less
seriously, whereas banks and credit bureaus have existed as giants since I was
born. On the other hand, one could imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must
be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts
can be deleted, and it wouldn't seem too burdensome when compared with the
rest of the regulation.

~~~
FussyZeus
People seem to be naturally anti-regulation, failing to see that those
regulations don't exist purely upon the whims of bureaucrats, but chiefly to
address previous issues brought to the regulator's attention.

Sometime in the last century, this idea was implanted by big businesses in the
media and therefore the thoughts of the citizenry that regulation is more than
anything, just people who couldn't succeed in business bullying people who
are, and that shit is so fucking dangerous that it makes me shake. Amazon,
AirBNB, Google, Facebook, Apple, none of these companies give a FUCK about you
any further than they are legally required to, not one iota further, and we
constantly bemoan our politicians over having a "too regulated" business
environment.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never
heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with _government_
bureaucracies? If anything, they're much much _worse_ than the worst that
companies inflict.

Regulatory capture is a real thing too. Regulation isn't _obviously_ positive
just because there are reasons people trot out to justify it.

You're right, companies don't generally care about me. But neither does the
Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, my local police
department, my local school board, or any post office in which I've ever found
myself.

~~~
FussyZeus
> But who regulates the regulators?

You and people like you talk as though the various regulatory bodies simply
issue an edict and every corporation is obligated to oblige that very second,
and it's ridiculous.

1\. The regulations themselves are often based heavily upon opinions and
trusted advice from people who actively are or who formerly were in the
industry being regulated, not simply dreamed up and pulled from someone's ass

2\. There is an entire months long process of discussion, meeting, decisions,
appeals, revisions, etc. engaged in between experts on both sides, lawyers on
both sides, etc. By the time a regulation becomes required law, it's likely
been attended to by a few hundred if not thousand people from both private
enterprise and Government over months if not YEARS of work.

3\. Once a regulation becomes law, companies often have months of forewarning
to get into compliance. In the event that a business is non-compliant with
something, unless it's immediately life threatening, they are given warnings,
written warnings, guidance, possible solutions, etc. Regulators are not some
comic book villain trying to fuck over mom and pop stores. They are attempting
to ensure the safety, efficiency, and long life of everyone involved in a
business. They _want you to be compliant_ , not to file paperwork and shut you
down.

> As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people
> fall into dealing with government bureaucracies?

Oh I have, and for years and years I took them at face value but ANECDOTE IS
NOT EVIDENCE. Almost every time you hear about some person who ended up on the
wrong end of a regulator's pen, if you start digging you'll find a long
history of shady ass behavior from that person which is conveniently omitted
from their account of the events, for I'm sure totally-not-lying reasons.

> Regulation isn't obviously positive just because there are reasons people
> trot out to justify it.

The vast majority of regulations are written in the blood of the people who
had to die to show us that storing some chemical in a break room gave every
3rd employee cancer, or every person who ate fish from a polluted river who
didn't know that the chemicals in it would destroy their bodies. The fact that
you personally don't understand whatever is behind a given regulation, does
not make it unimportant or frivolous.

> But neither does the Social Security Administration, the Department of
> Justice, my local police department, my local school board, or any post
> office in which I've ever found myself.

Except you can affect those if you get off your dead ass and vote.

~~~
slededit
Sounds like a great system for the incumbents, and a massive cost to any new
players. You give it away when you say "both sides". In fact there are many
sides, and regulation all to often favours the one with the best connections
to the government - usually the largest.

~~~
musage
Yeah, by now. The idea is to reverse that, because if you just say "fuck all
regulations" you have pandemonium, which is the same in that it also favors
the largest, but is different in that it's _a million times worse than even
what we have now_.

The very same interests that subvert regulations then use that subversion to
say regulations, "in general" are bad, without explicitly saying what the
alternative would be. No regulations, or less corruption? What, _exactly_ ,
are you arguing for?

~~~
394549
BTW, you've been shadowbanned for 5 months or so. All of your comments start
out invisible except to accounts with showdead=true. Those accounts can
sometimes "vouch" one of your comments, like I just did here, making them
visible to all users.

It probably happened to you because of something to do with this thread, since
the dead comments start just after that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16236350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16236350)

------
avaku
We recently rented a house at Niagara Falls, which looked nice in pictures,
although a few people in reviews mentioned it's kind of old. When we arrived,
the shower wasn't working. An hour later police showed up, as someone reported
property break in. The following day, in the morning the electric company
showed up and turned off electricity, at the request of the previous property
manager, who was recently fired, and decided to have a revenge. Finally, when
we came back after a day at the falls, there were police notices on the house
stating that it's illegal for anyone to occupy the property, as it was being
used as illegal vacation rental. We got our stuff and got out to a nearby
hotel, which luckily had prices on last minute discount... When I though about
raising a complaint with AirBnB for a refund, I've imagined exactly the same
situation as happened to the author here. I've also though about all the time
I would need to waste to provide the evidence to the AirBnB... In light of
this, we settled for an owner's offer to refund us privately over PayPal
(including AirBnB fees) in exchange for not leaving a negative feedback. Take
whatever you want out of this, but the reason we settled (and didn't provide
feedback which could be useful to other people) is precisely because we knew
how it is to fight with the giants. Been recently fighting for a compensation
from BA for 24 hour delay, and it's seriously not worth the time I had to
spend on getting these 600 euro, as the number of hours spent times my salary
is higher.

~~~
tclancy
>in exchange for not leaving a negative feedback

This is the same reason I roll my eyes when a ride sharing app asks me to rate
a driver - I assume anything less than 5 stars is going to kill their work so
I just give 5 stars. The one time I had a bad experience (nice driver, liked
to talk, but could not drive and talk and almost got us killed), I just
skipped the review entirely.

I have this working theory that we (people privileged enough to spend lots of
time per day on the Internet) are getting close to being able to spend our
time in fictional spaces; one of the reasons for that is the fact we spend a
lot of goddamn time lying about things in order to make systems work the way
we want. Now let's you and I sit down and talk about what 4 stars in iTunes/
Spotify/ whatever means in your personal system . . .

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
I went to a "hot" new restaurant recently...

It was busy alright.

The owner was running around like a mad person furiously cleaning tables.

I enjoyed my meal, the service was great, but as we were leaving I was
disgusted to see the owner (who was cleaning tables, mind you) cough into her
hand and then use that same hand to wipe down a table.

I noticed her voice sounded a bit off as well.

Anyways sure enough, the next day, I got sick.

When I told my friends I was considering leaving a 1 star review for that
restaurant as a result... they were dumfounded... how could I possibly... you
pariah you!

I was flabbergasted.

This restaurant owner came into her own restaurant knowing she was sick, and
was publicly cleaning tables with dirty hands that she was coughing into...
and I was the one getting pushback for wanting to leave a 1 star review as a
result.

I left the review, the owner apologized and essentially admitted that she had
come into work sick.

But I still feel weird about the whole ordeal.

What's the point of a review system if you are pressured to always be
positive? No matter the circumstances?

~~~
atombender
The incubation period for colds and flus is several days, usually about a
week, so you wouldn't get sick the next day. Unless by "sick" you mean that
you got food poisoning, but that wouldn't be from the owner's cough, but
rather poor hygiene in the kitchen. Presumably the owner wasn't also making
the food.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
I misspoke. It was a few days between my visiting the restaurant and my
getting sick.

This transpired a long time ago now.

~~~
dawid-s
I totally agree that coughing into your hands and then touching things that
other people touch, especially in a restaurant is disgusting.

However the fact that you got sick doesn't prove anything at all. It could
have been one of hundreds of coincidences that we come across every day that
we don't really pay attention to until it matters.

------
temp987656789
Airbnb prioritizes hosts - _even violent ones_ \- because that's the
bottleneck.

We had a scary experience where Airbnb allowed a VERY aggressive host with a
documented history of violence to continue. The listing is still active today.

I wrote them a long letter with facts which began:

> I am sending this to make clear in writing that this listing is extremely
> unsafe for travelers.

> We were harassed, feared for our safety, and left early as a result of drunk
> management on the property. We filed charges with the Maui Police Department
> for harassment, and we have since learned that the host John [redacted] is a
> convicted felon who has had the police out for harassment, disorderly
> conduct, and resisting arrest before and has been ordered by the courts to
> "obtain and maintain mental health treatment or services, including anger
> management treatment or services, [or] domestic violence intervention".

> He has been in and out of court since at least 2004 and was most recently
> arrested on [redacted] 2014, barely a week before we arrived. I believe that
> the situation on this property is extremely unsafe and I cannot keep silent
> in good conscience, even though the host has threatened me and my family.

I detailed the event further for a page or so, and sent Airbnb all the prior
police reports. The host was even using a fake wife alias to run the listing.

Airbnb's response was to refund us our money in full, but _they never pulled
the host, nor did they publish our negative review of the location_. The only
action seems to be that they required him to use his own profile instead of
the fake wife's profile.

So it's much more than just prioritizing hosts over guests financially, Airbnb
also prioritizes keeping a profitable host more than keeping guests safe.

~~~
teachrdan
Name and shame! Is there a site for posting bad experiences with Airbnb hosts,
complete with their name and listing address?

~~~
Stasis5001
I think you may be missing the point -- the one being named and maybe shamed
in this post is actually Airbnb.

~~~
fullshark
Also this post implies if you name and shame someone outside the Air BnB
platform you get permabanned.

------
cabalamat
> is this all part of an ongoing trend, toward something like the Chinese
> Social Credit Score system, where the consequences of not maintaining a high
> rating are socially crippling?

Yes, except that at least with the Chinese social credit system you presumably
know what your score is and what rules you are supposed to follow.

I expect that Airbnb, Facebook, Google et al will find it highly profitable to
maintain and monetise lists of how credit-worthy / reliable / conscientious /
conformist people are. Their neural nets' verdict on you will be both opaque
and unchallengable.

> We’re becoming increasingly dependent on a handful of major tech giants to
> get through our basic daily routine. Imagine waking up one day and no longer
> being able to check your Gmail, buy things on Amazon, or book an Uber.

Quite. Do anything the new corporate oligarchies don't like, and you're an
unperson.

~~~
exolymph
> Yes, except that at least with the Chinese social credit system you
> presumably know what your score is and what rules you are supposed to
> follow.

It's not like "don't talk about what really happened at Tiananmen Square" (or
an equivalent message) is explicitly taught.

------
reaperducer
This sort of thing is why I don't use Airbnb, or similar services.

If I want a professional hotel experience, I stay at a hotel. If I wanted a
less predictable experience from people playing at running a hotel, I'd stay
at one of these amateur hotels.

To be sure, there are excellent hotel-grade Airbnb places. But just like there
are excellent Uber/Lyft drivers, there are others who are simply cosplaying
taxi driver.

It's the nature of the "gig economy." And why I avoid it.

~~~
meowface
Not everyone can have that luxury. I've stayed in a dozen or so Airbnbs in the
past few years, from low to high end, and didn't have a single bad experience.
It's always a lot less expensive than hotels in the same area, and in many
cases a higher quality building and room than nearby hotels. Just no room
service.

There's honestly not much that can go wrong with an Airbnb experience as a
guest, unless you're doing some weird spa cycle arrangement like the person in
this story did, are gambling on a first-time host, or have some bizarre fluke.
If they lie about any of the amenities or anything else in the listing it's
simple to bring it up with Airbnb.

I've reached the point where I can't find a single reason to actually stay in
a hotel anymore, no matter where I'm traveling (internationally or in the US).

~~~
dorian-graph
Luxury? I travel _a lot_ (been to 45+ countries and travel every couple of
weeks for fun) and more often then not, AirBnbs cost more. A lot of my friends
travel just as much, if not more, than I do, and we've all slowly moved away
from AirBnbs as much as possible. ftr we don't mind AirBnb, and I've had good
experiences with them. Also, we're not luxurious travellers, but we do so as
cheaply as we can manage.

The main reasons (cost aside) are unresponsive hosts, late hosts, and
incorrect details. I've never had any 'weird' arrangements either, just normal
stays.

Hell, people's experiences like this person's are reason enough.

------
stratosmacker
The last point in the article hits the nail on the head; power is being
centralized in these large tech giants. It's not so much that they are
inherently bad, but it's that there are quickly becoming no alternatives.

~~~
close04
At some point they will be regulated like utilities. Which they might as well
be in the future.

In the meantime imagine your electricity provider cutting your power because
you gave a bad Yelp review to one of the people individually producing solar
power and distributing it through the provider's grid. Or some other similar
scenario.

~~~
dunpeal
I don't see any clear path for Big Tech to be regulated like utilities.
Certainly not in the US.

The internet itself is still not even close to being regulated as a utility,
decades after it became indispensable for our lives. So Google or Amazon? How
would that even work?

This is a tough problem, and I don't think it's going to be solved so easily.

~~~
close04
I think the path is there, we just don't really know how long it takes to get
to that point. I gave electricity as an example because at some point is was
also just a service provided by a private company to people who had
alternatives. So it's perfectly conceivable that in 10-20-50 years such
services will be considered utilities.

Electric, gas, water, sewage, trash, these all _became_ utilities. The
internet itself might also become one. Or some of the services relying on the
internet like mail, shopping, accommodation, etc. I expect it will take a
while though.

------
iuguy
Benjamin Mako Hill has some really interesting things to say about how AirBnB
displaced couchsurfing[1].

We could've had a world where people can stay anywhere in the world for free.
Instead we let a bunch of VC-funded bros convince us that adding a gatekeeper
to the short term rental market was a good idea.

We all need to think carefully about the consequences of our actions online,
from building such applications to using them. I refuse to use AirBnB after
being stuck out in the middle of nowhere and basically told to go whistle. I'm
not the only person where the bad experience has been a result of AirBnB's
handling of the situation, but it was us as users that enabled AirBnB to get
into it's partial monopoly situation by evangelising so much for it in the
early days./

[1] - [http://media.mako.cc/hill-whither_peer_production-
libreplane...](http://media.mako.cc/hill-whither_peer_production-
libreplanet_keynote-20180326-EDITED-v3.webm#t=199)

~~~
reverend_gonzo
Couchsurfing and AirBnb are not even remotely the same.

Hosting on Couchsurfing is a way to meet other travelers and show them around
your city, and most importantly, you don't get paid.

Hosting on AirBnb is a business. AirBnb is far closer to HomeAway and VRBO.
These existed before too, but their usability was terrible and they were prone
to scams.

~~~
joveian
The people running couchsurfing killed it themselves by changing from a non-
profit to a VC funded for-profit business after accepting huge amounts of
volunteer effort.

But yeah, they aren't really the same thing. There is some overlap since it
could be difficult to cover every day that you wanted to visit (and there
isn't always enough hostel beds available, which are closer to the same idea),
but for anyone who really preferred AirBnB it was better for everyone that
they not be on couchsurfing.

------
lechiffre10
I've continually voiced my discontent with the way Airbnb treats guests vs
hosts. Guests are completely disposable and I even had a personal experience I
wrote about on medium as well for a long-term stay. Airbnb is the company that
is going the way of too big to fail. As more and more customers complain
cities will eventually be forced to regulate and potentially kill this
company. It's quite ironic that Brian Chesky,the CEO, tweeted end of June
about how wrong the travel ban is in America ( a ban that fails to provide
clarity as to why some of the countries are on it) and yet Airbnb feels they
are allowed to ban a user without providing any clarity as well.

------
a2tech
Why would you ever agree to rent a place where you need to vacate it for 4+
hours every day? The experience with AirBNB sounds all around awful, but I'm
honestly baffled why you would go along with such a weird setup.

~~~
koolba
Same reason someone would be willing to rent a pod with barely enough room for
a sleeping bag and shared access to a toilet across the street: _price_

That aside banning people for external reviews is nonsense. What’s next,
banning someone for speaking (literally talking) about their negative
experience?

~~~
ibejoeb
Isn't "banning" the user in this case simply declining to provide the service?
If I were a house painter and, for whatever arbitrary reason, I decide that I
don't really like you, I wouldn't paint your house even if you demanded it.

I have the right to not engage you. You don't have the right to compel me to
engage.

As much as Airbnb made this worse that it had to be, I think the flip-side is
much worse. Imagine if by some authority one individual was compelled to buy a
good from or perform a service for another individual.

~~~
s73v3r_
I disagree. This is not AirBnB deciding they just don't like someone. This is
AirBnB deciding to ban someone because they gave a negative review. I think
the world where you're banned from services for speaking honestly about them
is far worse than the alternative. If we can't speak honestly about our
experiences, then others simply are not capable of making informed decisions,
and all of capitalism goes poof.

------
calyth2018
Author learns a lesson as to why we regulated the hospitality industry.

Turns out rules are kinda necessary.

~~~
jstanley
Do hotels have a regulation that says they're not allowed to ban customers?

Or are you just taking the opportunity to get on your soapbox to complain
about AirBnB?

~~~
siegecraft
Yes, if you're interested you can look up hospitality law or innkeeper law.
Airbnb and others attempt to replicate existing services while sidestepping
the regulations in place, which of course makes them cheaper / faster because
they don't have to deal with the regulatory burden..

~~~
daveFNbuck
I tried looking up both of these terms, and I didn't find anything about not
being allowed to arbitrarily ban an individual from your hotel.

~~~
hitekker
IANAL, but besides the protected classes that have been linked below, the
United States regulates the hospitality industry on a federal, state, and
local level. For the guest, that means a legal recourse, and not a medium
blogpost.

We can quibble about the word “banning”, but the fact remains that, for
hotels, there is a body of laws “against [guest] injury, whether accidental or
intentional“. For the tech giant that pretends it’s not even in the same
industry, there’s just a patchwork of guidelines.

~~~
daveFNbuck
I'm still haven't seen anyone claim that you'd have legal recourse if the
Hilton refused to rent you a room, unless it was due to protected class
status. Wouldn't a person in that analogous situation be stuck with a blog
post too?

------
sdf43543t345
How is "we are not obligated to provide an explanation" a valid reason? Of
course they need to state why you were banned? Dystopian nonsense. Stop using
AirBnB.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The potential downsides are huge legal costs and the upsides are almost none,
so any business is wise to keep their mouth shut unless through lawyers. Same
reason why you don't comment on people you don't hire.

~~~
s73v3r_
And we as consumers care about that why? It's not my concern that providing an
actual answer might get them in trouble.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It's not, I'm just stating why I believe businesses don't always explain their
actions.

------
orbitingpluto
The Black Mirror third* season social media hellscape episode starring Bryce
Howard Dallas seems a more apt reference than the Jon Hamm as sexual deviant
episode.

The smallest breaches of protocol snowballed into her becoming a persona non
grata all while trying to please a system that doesn't actually care.

~~~
marksomnian
Season 3, no?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive)
[spoilers]

~~~
orbitingpluto
I stand corrected.

------
codezero
I too was banned for life from AirBnB – I don't really blame them, given the
information available, it was fair for them to side with the host, who was
their long term customer over myself who was a new user.

The apartment I was in had a gas leak while I was gone, the door got kicked in
by the fire department and the gas was shut off. The replacement cost $1300+ –
and I was out of a room for two nights. I refused to pay the fee for the door
– that seems like something insurance should cover. I was not in the room when
the gas was on, but I guess there's an off chance I bumped the stove and
flipped it on – seems like that should not be possible, but I don't know.

------
theandrewbailey
I wrote a comment earlier this week about a Google user being locked out of
Google. I expanded it into a story, peppering it with less than flattering
stories about Google.

[https://theandrewbailey.com/article/203/Insanity-Locked-
Out](https://theandrewbailey.com/article/203/Insanity-Locked-Out)

I haven't read any Kafka, but I'm probably a fan already.

~~~
bonyt
I find myself using the word “kafkaesque” a lot more lately.

------
csomar
AirBnB is a shitty company.

1\. Apartments are more expensive than Hotels. I've been to 20 cities and I
have yet to find an apartment that is cheaper than an equivalent Booking.com.

2\. This probably works, however, because it is cheaper to book the same
apartment for 3-4 people instead of being a single traveler.

3\. This makes the target customers of Airbnb problematic guests (imagine
having 3-4 new guests to the apartment everyday). Probably why neighbors are
complaining about Airbnb.

4\. The prices displayed are way distorted. It is _way_ worse than
booking.com. The price on the search function is like half of what you'll
actually pay.

5\. Pretty much every property is 5 star rated. Pretty much every guest is a
nice guest. Really? This cannot possibly be the truth and probably mean that
the rating system means crap.

~~~
atombender
> 1\. Apartments are more expensive than Hotels.

Why wouldn't they be? It's a different product. I like being able to prepare
and eat my own food in a full kitchen. I like washing my own clothes and
tidying my own bed. An apartment typically has much more space than the
equivalent hotel room, with multiple rooms to stay in. I also don't need to
interact with any staff, or see much of tourists (nor do I need to be in a
crowded downtown area). For me, these are all benefits.

~~~
Markoff
almost all of those requirements can be met by staying in hoStel

~~~
atombender
Hostels are generally dormitories where you share minimal bunk-bed rooms with
strangers. I've never seen a hostel with its own kitchen, let alone its own
bedroom.

~~~
kaybe
About any good hostel I've seen had a decent community kitchen. Some of them
habe private rooms, sometimes even with private bathrooms.

~~~
atombender
Of course. But I don't see the relevance when we are comparing between a
private hotel room and a private apartment.

------
xeetuur
I'll just leave this here:
[https://www.airbnbhell.com](https://www.airbnbhell.com)

Coming from a guest perspective where I've had things go wrong during my
stays, Airbnb has been absolutely horrible to deal with. It's literally
gambling with your vacation, because if anything goes wrong you can count on
Airbnb to take your money and run. Why do we give so much money to what is
essentially a middleman that provides almost nothing of value?

------
_bxg1
The same story keeps playing out:

\- A new "marketplace" platform takes off with a idealistic free-market
approach. It's different enough from previous companies in the space that it
doesn't get regulated, and it denies having any social obligation or
responsibility.

\- As more and more customers and - primarily - vendors come to depend on it,
its hands-off approach becomes one of arbitration, and its relationship with
both groups becomes exploitative.

\- We get to start over at square one, re-learning the difficult lessons about
consumer and employee protection that we've spent the last century developing.

This is going to keep happening until the government gets more agile at
regulating nebulous and category-breaking companies. Uber, YouTube, Facebook
(with news companies as the vendors), Twitch, AirBnB, etc.

Companies that invent new business models and break with preconceptions aren't
inherently bad - that's potentially a great thing - but it becomes bad when
regulatory laws can't keep up.

------
subway
Gross behavior on the part of AirBNB. I'm half tempted to post a "ban-me"
review of AirBNB's HQ to Google and friends.

------
jrrrr
> Please understand that we are not obligated to provide an explanation for
> the action taken against your account.

Do you really want to behave as badly as legally permitted? That's kind of a
low bar.

------
teachrdan
A story about Airbnb, bedbugs and a lack of accountability:

My now-wife and I used Airbnb in Berlin and the mattress in our otherwise
clean apartment was badly infested with bedbugs. I took a video (see below)
and posted it to YouTube so that Airbnb would have the evidence needed to make
what I assumed would be a quick decision in our favor.

Instead, they were completely unhelpful. I was an American traveling in Europe
so I didn't have a phone number where I could be reached, which they insisted
was the only way they could communicate with me about the issue in real time.
They demanded photos of the bedbugs, which I didn't take, because I assumed
the video would be more helpful and my wife and I got out of the apartment as
quickly as possible. (after frantically checking to make sure our clothes and
luggage were bedbug-free)

Finally, they took the host's word that there were no bedbugs, besides the
obvious conflict of interest on his part to not report the visible bugs and
blood stains on his mattress. (below a clean topsheet!)

After much complaining on social media and repeated Skype calls from WiFi
hotspots they finally agreed to cancel our remaining few nights and pay for a
hotel for us instead. This might sound generous, but it came after losing a
night to bedbugs and the better part of a day to dealing with their terrible
customer service--one full day lost out of a 7 day trip.

Like many of the complaints people are describing ITT, the problems that arise
with Airbnb can happen in any hotel, too. The difference is that a hotel can
quickly make you whole by giving you a new room or, if need be, putting you up
in another location across town.

With platforms like Airbnb it's simply too easy for them to ignore you and
your pesky complaints or, in the case of OP, ban you from their platform
forever. While I'm reluctant to call for more regulation, it's hard to see
what else could make them treat you fairly, as a customer and a human being.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJHScbdp15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJHScbdp15s)

------
coleifer
The host complaining that the guest was entitled to a room they had paid for
is unbelievably ironic. I guess the irony was lost on Airbnb.

------
hsnewman
Perhaps the moral to the story is to create a dummy account on Google to leave
negative feedback, so Airbnb can't link it to your account?

------
beamatronic
If the situation were reversed, how would you handle it? You run a service
that connects two parties, something happens, and there is a dispute. Do you
ban one of the parties, or both, or neither? Do you force them to go to
arbitration? Does this scale? How much time, energy, and capital is
appropriate to expend on this situation?

~~~
nieksand
I would never ban people without telling them why they were banned. That's
just moronic.

I'd offer banned user contact information that goes directly to a human being
which can be used to appeal if the user believes they did not violate said
terms and conditions.

I'm neutral about how a company handles matters after the appeal--whether it
focuses on protecting buyers over sellers. It's totally fine for the decision
to be final after said appeal, but the company response had better show that
the rep actually bothered to read the appeal message.

This doesn't seem like rocket science to me. Your customer service cost scales
proportional to number of customers / revenue, which is reasonable. In terms
of justifying capital spend... how much are you spending on marketing? Each
customer you screw over is canceling a mountain of your outreach efforts via
negative NPS.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Customer service costs only scale if the customer is spending enough at your
business to offset it. Many people probably don't spend enough to offset this
and make more sense to drop as customers than to keep maintaining. And when
there are only a handful of sellers in the market anyway, what difference does
it make if they have a negative experience to share.

~~~
nieksand
I assume you're talking about the general case rather than AirBnB
specifically?

Tell people why they're being banned. There is no excuse not to.

I can imagine a B2C freemium product with a high rate of abuse where the non-
paying users aren't given the appeal option. But if somebody is paying you,
you should have a human driven appeals process.

There are certainly cases where customers aren't worth the support cost. Many
years ago a SaaS I worked for cut out its entry level subscription because
those customers represented most of the support load while also being a
minority of the revenue.

If you are a monopoly or oligopoly... it might be worth considering what
happened to the taxi industry when Uber came to the scene (even before UberX).
Years of underwhelming service and zero product development translates to zero
customer loyalty. Choice will arrive sooner or later.

------
ThrustVectoring
Not a lawyer here, but wouldn't the author have a case for a libel suit?
Especially if he can _prove_ that the host made false statements.

~~~
alexc05
But what are the damages? The calculable damages are likely the cost
differences between Airbnb and hotel for the proportion of time you spend in
travel.

So maybe a few hundred to a few thousand over a few years? I’d think the cost
of the lawsuit would really dwarf the value of the lie.

Are Airbnb accounts tied to anything truly identifiable or can you make a new
account with a new email & different credit card? (I’ve never signed up for
Airbnb so don’t know how rigorous they are)

~~~
matte_black
If you win the lawsuit you could force them to pay your legal fees. Even if
you don’t make profit, you wound them financially.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
legal fees are rarely given in court.

most of the time, it's because someone sued you and they were being assholes
and the judge didn't like it.

------
mattnewton
The whole no-reasons-or-explanation thing particularly looks really bad, as we
are free to speculate the worst possible petty reasons for lifetime bans. I
can’t imagine the logic behind that - is it some kind of legal liability
issue? Really sours me on the brand.

~~~
princekolt
> I can’t imagine the logic behind that

Lazy tech companies want to automate everything.

------
hoopism
I had a disupute with AirBnB long time ago (You can find it in my history
because I posted about it here). They had a "sign up a friend" promotion and I
liked the service so much that I recommended it to my parents. They used it
and liked it too... but I didn't get my promotional credit.

When I emailed them they were adamant the conditions were not met. They then
changed the terms in the email to something new... luckily their own website
was still active and represented EXACTLY what I had originally stated. I
finally got a very patronizing email from support.

Won't use AirBnB again. Plenty of other services.

------
chrischen
The bulk of airbnb’s value and valuation comes from enabling people to run
illegal or subpar hotels. I travel frequently and occassionally use Airbnb.
Only in one instance was my host actually just renting out a spare room. All
other occassions it was clearly a business operation turning residential units
into hotel rooms.

------
ggm
I dislike AirBnB on many levels, second-most to Uber: Its a mechanism which
marginalizes tenants and maximises profits in property rental to the detriment
of neighbours and people just trying to find homes. But this story, of being
excluded by the parent company, for un-reversable, un-appealable reasons
"because you signed a contract and we don't have to" really is the icing on
the cake.

The extent of "yea, if google want to make you rue the day" comments also
rings true to me. I'm concerned about my exposure of risk:consequence here,
not because I think I have done anything to warrant it, but because
successfully reversing arbitrary acts in these situations is so fraught.

Basically, its a guilty-until-possibly-accepted-but-not-acknowledged-as-
innocent-and-no-recompense world.

------
jancsika
> After booking the weekend, we were told that we’d need to vacate the
> premises from 12–4pm because the room was located in a spa retreat.

 _After_ booking they told you that?

IMO either do the sane thing and cancel or get into whatever horrible
interaction you describe in the rest of the blog.

------
qume
Similar experience here. After years of evangelizing airbnb I got shit on by
them by some low level employee with no way to continue communication, even
though their misunderstanding could be explained in a single sentence.

Apparently after years of driving customers to their platform, I'm not even
worthy of being able to send a note to second line service, or even a single
response to first level service after he closed the issue.

It will be an interesting calculation to sum up the net benefit my efforts
have provided to airbnb vs the damage that will occur due to my now committed
lifetime of the opposite.

All they needed was an appeal button, everything would have been resolved in
minutes.

But hey, lets fuck the people we built the business on.

------
LarryPage
I don't know exactly why, but the indignity of this story really gets to me.

Does having a desk at a big tech company really strip your humanity to the
point where you're OK sending messages like these to another person?

How do you treat other human beings with so little respect?

------
smsm42
It's pretty easy to live without AirBnB. While outrageous and rude on general
ground, AirBnB behavior here is not too harmful. But what if another company
like Google just blacklists you? That could be a lot more trouble, especially
if you have Google mail, use Google identity to log in to other sites, etc.
And what if it's some cloud company that just blocks you from your data,
backups, digital assets, private keys, etc.? Modern tech provides a lot of
nice opportunities, but if you stop to think about it it's scary how fragile
it is and how much a lone keypress of somebody (alive or even bot) inside the
guts of a major company can have impact on your life...

------
foobandit
This seems pretty clear. He had a bad experience but didn't leave a review for
the place, and then when the review period expired, he saw that the place had
left a bad review for him. Airbnb keeps both users blind to each other's
reviews until the review period has expired, because otherwise people will use
the threat of leaving a bad review (as retribution) in order to ensure they
get reviewed well. But he did an end-run around this and posted reviews on
multiple other sites, which makes airbnb's system break down.

It sounds like Airbnb just needs a way for people to respond to reviews that
are left for them. I'm surprised it doesn't have that already.

~~~
Kagerjay
Airbnb has "public" and "private" reviews. "Public reviews" are shown
everywhere, "private" is just messaged directly to the host only. You need to
write a "public review" to do a "private one" to my knowledge, last time I
used it.

Whenever I had a bad host relationship, I decided not to pursue it further and
leave no review at all. It feels weird that there is no recourse action
because you don't know if your host will recripcate posting a good review, a
honest terrible review, a fake bad review, or none at all. Your host might
know your experience was bad and doesn't know either if you will post what he
will post. Airbnb reviews feels like the prisons dileama game theory problem.

------
pnutjam
Ebay did something similar to me,account banned with no reason given. I was
selling some old Alix computers and I believe the ban was because I put
something in the listing about using them for vpn's to hide or change your
location.

------
cryptonector
A few simple regulations would help a lot.

First of all, arbitration and civil court access for challenging bans and
such. Second, require specific explanations. Third, require content-neutral
social media / common carrier policies.

------
sjclemmy
Very Kafkaesque.

It’s completely unacceptable to remove a service without explanation.

------
dolguldur
I also had an incident where they sided with the host and refused me a refund.
That was quite a surprise and the way they handled it had a strong taste of
they decide by numbers and then it's a brick wall and they'll just coat it for
you but the decision is incontestable. Now I'm weighing the risk and
uncertainty and oftentimes it's just not worth it and I'll rather go for a
hotel.

~~~
oh_sigh
Do a cc chargeback if you think you have a real case

------
stefek99
Banned for life.

Sounds familiar:
[https://steemit.com/twitter/@genesisre/decentralizeeverythin...](https://steemit.com/twitter/@genesisre/decentralizeeverything-9-years-
on-twitter-with-no-right-to-appeal)

Not enough crypto-currency scams.

Notified Twitter about one with verified-fucking-account.

Instant, irreversible ban, no right to appeal.

WOW

------
tmaly
It is scary to try to predict what the state of things will be in 10 or 20
years. Are we going to be like the society in the sci-fy series Continuum
where corporations literally control everything?

Maybe a rating of customer service for online services would be appropriate.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
I'm very curious how this story develops. Usually, a tech company ending on
the front page of HN for messing up is shamed into fixing the mistake, often
quietly and without providing any explanation to the victim.

~~~
wolfgke
> I'm very curious how this story develops. Usually, a tech company ending on
> the front page of HN for messing up is shamed into fixing the mistake, often
> quietly and without providing any explanation to the victim.

The company should better be shamed into dropping the Kafkaesque policy in
their terms of service completely. Anything below means that such terms are
actually acceptable.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Of course. Personally it's the first time I've heard they're using that kind
of language. I'm wondering if this is even legal in Europe.

------
Scea91
I always wanted to try Airbnb, but everytime I searched for accomodation it
didn't seem to offer better deals than I could find on booking.com or
elsewhere.

------
ap3
Instead of a ban why not let the rating amd comment system do the work?

Rude hosts and guests will get nicked and after a while a pattern will emerge

------
Yizahi
So very Google'ish, ban a person for life with zero liability. FUCK. THIS.
SHIT. Period.

------
throwaway0718
Since the Charlottesville incident, when AirBnB permanently banned an
unspecified list of people they identified as Nazis, I've always taken a
closer look at ToS and AUP for various cloud services, many of which claim
they will permanently and immediately ban you for transmitting or storing
things that are "offensive", with no further explanation given.

Bans like this are yet another transparent exercise of platforms' power. Where
does it stop? Amazon clearly has the technological ability to ban you from
Whole Foods if you returned too many items on their website or wrote some bad
things about them online; I'm just waiting for the first Medium post about it.
Can the phone company ban your number if they don't like who you're talking
to? Hell, even my apartment lease lets them terminate it if I "engage in
criminal activity", not requiring "criminal charges, arrest, or conviction",
but by a "preponderance of the evidence in our judgment".

~~~
kangnkodos
Amazon is currently banning people for making too many returns.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-
shoppers...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers-who-
make-too-many-returns-1526981401)

My guess is that they have an algorithm to automatically ban people who abuse
the return system. But if you are the unlucky person who gets one defective
item after another and returns them, then Amazon bans your account. You are
not allowed to buy anything else on Amazon's web site, ever. And it is
difficult or impossible to speak to a human to resolve the situation.

------
merinowool
It is not mandatory to use such companies and laws already exist in case
company has done trouble. Not sure what needs to be regulated here. Company
should have freedom to choose who it does business with. If you don't like it
you can start your own AirBNB.

~~~
s73v3r_
This is a terrible attitude. Deciding that companies should have free reign to
do whatever has had disastrous consequences in the past, and today would be no
different.

------
dandare
They rebranded to Airbnb some time ago, just saying.

------
dqpb
Looks like the US is creating a social credit system - it's just a distributed
one.

------
atomical
Airbnb isn't on your side as a guest. That's the reality. I had a situation
where the owner was lying in his listing and the person maintaining the house
told me Airbnb had warned him, but hadn't followed up to make sure he was in
compliance. Imagine driving 2,000 miles only to learn that Airbnb knew about
many serious issues plaguing a listing.

~~~
xeetuur
Your story is not unique, sadly. I flew all the way to Hong Kong just to find
my Airbnb was full of bed bugs, then had to fight them for 2 weeks to get a
(partial) refund.

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

------
pwaai
so I took AirBNB for the first time and I was shocked how little vetting
process there is. One particular place I had was awful....towels with dried
blood spots, pubic hair on blanket....

------
mr_spothawk
To me, the AirBNB product looks ripe for crypto-disruption.

------
billylindeman
I got lifebanned from getaround because my ex girlfriend smoked in a car we
rented. The penalty in the terms of service was a $250 cleaning fee (which I
got charged) but no where did it say you'd be banned (and iirc it _still_ does
not say that). I appealed it twice and both times they upheld the ban.

~~~
seattle_spring
Good. What a shitty thing to do.

------
cool-RR
_" It all feels very 1984. Or Black Mirror."_

Really? A private company deciding not to do business with you feels like your
basic human rights were taken away?

 _" After emailing AirBnB support and its founders multiple times, I’ve
finally given up."_

I've had a problem in Windows on my computer the other day and emailed Bill
Gates, could you believe he had other things to do except respond to my
problem?

------
superkuh
Sounds like the perfect time to stop using AirBnB. You are not required to do
so and they are not required to serve you. I don't see a problem other than
you being upset by their rudeness.

I only first used AirBnB 2 weeks ago. There's a single one in my town. I've
never seen an uber. I think many on hackernews overestimate how many people
use or depend on these kind (uber, airbnb, etc) services outside of high
population density areas.

~~~
mtarnovan
> I think many on hackernews overestimate how many people use or depend on
> these kind (uber, airbnb, etc) services outside of high population density
> areas.

Most people live in high population density areas. The USA is 80% urbanized.

