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Yeap. Dealt with Airbnb mishandling my issue over a one night $50 stay.

Owner of room apparently leaves the door key in a mailbox. Previous renter apparently took it with him when he left leaving no way of getting in. Owner obviously did not live nearby. I eventually waited for someone to exit the complex so I could get in. The door to the apartment had a computerized lock but that basically meant I could not leave the room at all. Room of course was also not cleaned from the previous customer since all the towels didn't appear to be thoroughly washed if at all. After waking up at 4AM to bug bites I basically frantically made sure none of them got into my luggage for the last 3 hours or so I was there.

What did airbnb do? They "refunded" my cleaning bill and ended it at that. For 2 weeks I had to go through their support on the website only to be stonewalled or ignored. I sent them pictures of my hand that had bug bites, I sent them the text messages the owner sent, even though it was on the Airbnb platform. No dice. Finally I ended up getting through to someone via their Twitter account and was eventually able to get a refund for the night.

Of course I left a negative review on their page warning others about the possibility of being stranded if the previous guest forgets the key and also their lack of cleaning, but it got immediately buried by their algorithms.

That was about 4-5 years ago, never used Airbnb again.

This. Last summer, we rented a space due to wildfires going on and too much smoke in our area. We saw the pictures on the listing with more than 100 guests giving 4.5+ rating in total for cleanliness and that convinced us to stay there for a few days until the smoke clears up in our area. When we visited the apartment, we just put our stuff there and went out for dinner and spend evening out and when we came back slowly we realized how dirty, bug and mold infested that place was. After checking with Airbnb they kept telling us to deal with host and all they did at the end was...you guessed it right...refunded the cleaning fees ($20). terrible customer service!

One simple fact Airbnb does not understand is: vacation rental biz is built on repeat customers coming back to the platform often. If folks like us get such a bad experience in staying first and then dealing constantly for weeks with AirBnb customer reps, that experience would make sure we would never rent again on Airbnb. This is the biggest problem with their business right now...their customer service is just terrible.

Customer service doesn't matter to the FAANG-like companies. They've run the numbers and they know that if 10% of their customers never return it will cost them $x (which they'll make up for in new customers anyway), and keeping those 10% happy by hiring enough customer service reps will cost them $100x.

"Good customer service interferes with our exponential growth plans and makes our investors nervous, so we ain't gonna do it."

Where in the world could you have spent $5k on a temporary rental!? That's all of my money.

It was Columbus Ohio for an entire house (that allowed dogs), for a couple of weeks.

I guess even that kind of surprises me, unless Columbus is particularly expensive, but I suppose that sort of justifies the author's point. Should there be full houses on AirBnB for multiple weeks at a rate very favourable compared to a typical mortage?

Columbus is cheap compared to many places but not super cheap. It’s more so that’s just the going rate to rent a house that allows dogs for a few weeks. Go look at what a hotel costs each night.

If they rented for 21 days and paid $5,000 total, that’s $250/night which will get you a decent hotel in Columbus but no dogs, no yard, living in a hotel versus a house…

So I’d say the price is about spot on for what I’d expect.

Exactly--during the pandemic we've gotten used to traveling with our dog and can't imagine leaving him behind anymore. Its crazy how expensive places are when you bring the dog. And we want a yard and clothes washer.

Ya I don't have one, so that's a world I'm unaware of, but normally just sleep in a car or something anyway and skip renting a room entirely because it's too much.

Hotels are expensive, goddamn.

You can get a cheaper one and you can actually negotiate long-term rates too. But yea generally they’re not that cheap especially b/c the price shown never includes things like occupancy tax and “resort fees”.

Honestly, there shouldn't be full houses/empty apartments on AirBnB period. All that does is eat up local supply and force the externalities onto locals of the area, screwing them over for (in most cases) tourists. Like pretty much everything AirBnB does.

Three years ago this happened to us at midnight before the check-in day for an AirBnB in Bucharest. I had to spend a couple of hours in the middle of the night with AirBnB support messaging back and forth. But AirBnB handled it near perfectly for us, with an decent accepted place after a couple of hours, full refund, etc. Otherwise it would have really sucked to be on a bus the next day, out of both cell and wifi range.

The fact that they f'd this up in the US is... not good.

Well everything rots in the end. Thank you google for that pixel that I paid for on a CC that went 1:1 to AirBnB credit, we had a lot of fun burning through that.

Other than that we've had exactly one bummer AirBnB, in Queretaro MX. Our place on the penultimate floor of a very US looking apartment complex apparently was located under some sort of factory on the top floor, and produced vibrations all night long that I kid you not caused eg various phones to walk along whatever surface they were placed on.

I'm glad they straightened things out for you. We were furious at first, but were really glad that we had our car and spoke the language of the place we were. There's no way we can trust Airbnb in the future when visiting places where we CAN'T just turn around and drive home to our house.

The disparity is shocking, but exposure to outside viewpoints of those in other walks of life is so important. I've not sold a start-up (yet), but exposure to millionaires, and how they approach spending money (some thriftily, some with reckless abandon) has been fascinating. I didn't properly grock the phrase "penny-wise and pound foolish" until after I'd seen how expensive, in time, or emotional labor, or otherwise, some "free" options (eg borrowing someone's truck vs renting a uhaul) really are.

Agreed. There's an area of my city that I only recently visited for the first time, but have heard is quite wealthy. Well, everywhere in Vancouver is hilariously out of reach, so what could wealthy mean? It means that the average home spans half of an entire block, costs $10-30m dollars, and these people park their cars (if they're lazy) in a space that's twice the size of my home.

Pro tip: pay using a credit card with a good record of handling disputes. I only ever use my American Express card when traveling, because every single time I've had an issue I just call AMEX support and they put a hold on all charges and then figure this stuff out for me. Not once have I had to pay for something (hotel, rental car, whatever) that didn't do what it says on the tin, and since I'm not risking my own money I'm not in a hole if shit hits the fan.

I stayed at a supposedly four star hotel in Memphis once that not only gave me the wrong room where the faucets and most everything else was broken, and didn't care to change it, they also got in an accident with my rental car when the valet was going to park it. They didn't want to deduct any charges and didn't much care about any of it, so I called Amex and they put a hold on all charges. Four or five weeks later they told me I didn't have to pay for any of my stay, and since there was a hold on the charges I obviously didn't have to pay that part of the credit card bill either so I was never out of pocket in the meantime either.

Most of the time traveling I've never really had any issues, but when I have it's been a god send not to have to deal with any of it myself.

Fun question? What's the difference between the ABNB customer service and google's customer service, you know, a "real" corporation with massive and established revenue?

Oh right, google has no customer service. No one to call.

What does it mean that customer service is so terrible in the disruption/replacement companies? That it's hard? Or that customer service is soooo old economy?

I fear for when all companies with semi-functioning terrible customer service are replaced with even more "disruptive" dystopian service models.

Can it be? Is "Brazil" a documentary?

The reviews are public right? As in, you would have read them prior to paying $5,000?

Reviews are public. But some scams are elaborate and involve the posting of fake reviews.

Exactly. They had positive reviews. Again, we're not new to the Airbnb platform.

So by your account the reviews were positive, but also detailed many people being scammed. Right.

Don't blame the victim because someone was running a scam.

By that logic, no one can ever be blamed for anything.

I'm pretty sure we could still blame the scammers.

Airbnb customers shouldn't have to read reviews to detect scams. I mean, you can book some crappy hotels through, say, booking.com, but I think you'd have to try quite hard to book a hotel that didn't actually exist.