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Comment by davidhariri | Hacker News Reader

I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I've ever had. Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. Oh also, over the time you email their customer experience reps, they assign you a NEW customer rep each time so you have no relationship with whoever you talk to next during a conversation. Some people are understanding, others are aholes. Such a terrible experience, overall. It's a wonder they're as big as they are.

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>Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability.

You did not leave a rating or review of your unfit rental on airbnb?

So that's great but then you are doing part of the work that airbnb should be doing.

>airbnb should be doing

According to you.

Paying in to something with zero or negative ratings on a reputation-based market always carries risk; it should be priced accordingly.

Your opinion on who should be vetting what aside, there is very clearly material accountability built into the core of their system.

File a chargeback with your credit card company. That will get their attention.

This works fine if you live in north america. If you have a card in other countries, you won't be refunded until your dispute is settled. I my country it can take 1-6months for a very opaque investigation about which you usually can't know much about. And this is from fairly decent bank - top 3.

So companies acting like this on global scale is not good. I would not book a place to stay for a large sum and bear a risk from possibly sketchy situation like this.

"It's a wonder they're as big as they are."

Not really. Part of getting big is not sweating small details like this when you have a constant stream of customers coming in the door and using you (to make up for the unhappy ones who never come back).

>Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability.

You don't say? I don't know what do airbnb users expect, honestly.

I imagine they expect Airbnb to know who their customer is and who their supplier is. Judging by the stories here, they don't.

I think his point was that you should expect less than stellar service from a less than stellar company. AirBnB isn't exactly known for their product. They're just really good at marketing.

I think this is a common expectation, but consider this: what did Airbnb get from you when you signed up to rent a room? Not much right? They only get very slightly more than that from the people renting the rooms.

Over time they can weed out bad actors, but there is very little chance that they are going to eliminate them upfront.

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