Comment by tomas789 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomas789 | Hacker News Reader

AirBnB used to be a great option compared to hotels. This gap is probably reversed at this point and hotels are becoming once again the preferred choice for many. AirBnB's disadvantages are mostly about very high price on per-night basis, high cleaning fees and many (often unreasonable) requirements from the hosts. Mostly regarding cleanliness upon departure.

That being said I think from my personal experience that there is a bigger problem with the service. I got a very bad experience from a relatively new all-5-star host. The host lied to us and AirBnB, tried to get more than $1000 for various claims and so on. At the end AirBnB did a very poor job at mediating the claim. Then I wrote a review. I tried to be as objective as possible. AirBnB simply deleted the review. They didn't ask us to correct anything or anything. They straight out deleted it.

I believe that by doing so AirBnB is misleading both guests and their investors. This creates an impression that the service is better than it actually is. That is likely inflating their stock price. I personally believe that there should be a class action lawsuit or Hindenburg research paper about this for them to do anything about this.

I wonder if this is mostly a US problem. I've been staying exclusively in Airbnbs around Africa/Asia for the last 2 years (usually a month at a time) and have never had any of these problems. The prices were always _significantly_ cheaper than trying to stay a hotel suite or any other option. The only thing cheaper were long term rentals, but they are harder to find/organize, especially as a foreigner.

I never had any cleaning requirements. I didn't trash any places, but I didn't leave them spotless. Sometimes, if I was in a rush I wouldn't have time to take the trash out before leaving. I never had any complaints from hosts, and most of my reviews claim that I am extremely tidy/clean guest.

My biggest issue with Airbnb is that the filtering/search doesn't work well. There isn't a penalty for "lying" (stretching the truth?) about certain things. Too many people put "Dedicated workspace" despite having no dedicated workspace. Some people are too honest and don't put "dedicated workspace" despite having what I would consider a great dedicated workspace.

It means I have to manually sit and look through the pictures to figure out if I'd have anywhere to work or not. I know a lot of people like to work from cafe's, but personally I hate doing that.

You can barely even figure out how many beds there really are without donning your detective hat

My experience was from Spain.

I got scammed to pay for things that were run down in the Airbnb the same way.

Host had a white couch with a delicate fabric in a rental beach vacation rental, already a bad decision.

I get there and we all comment on what a pity it was they picked that color because it had a record of every little spill on it. Not even coffee, just water or drinks, multiple spots. But we moved on and enjoyed our stay.

When we left we got a terrible “do not rent” super dramatic review with pictures that were trying to Make it seem like we left a mess and stained the couch. The pictures were a chip on the floor, a torn trash bag trying to make it seem like we left it like that inside, you could tell they went to the trash bin outside to take the picture, the trash bins in the bathrooms with stuff in them (isn’t that what they are there for?), etc

They wanted $800!

Anyway I reply saying that the couch was like that and that the trash cans are there to have trash in them. Airbnb mediation made us pay half like they were doing us a favor, and left the bad review in our profile so now we can’t rent anywhere.

I’m back to hotels.

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