Quiet Escape for Motorcyclist Writer is Anything But

Posted on September 2, 2017

I’m done with Airbnb. I’ve done two extended stay vacation trips, one to New Mexico and, now, one to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Three of the five places I’ve stayed were excellent. Two were disasters; both of the awful “hosts” were older, single women. Both places were somewhat honestly described and priced about normal for equivalent facilities (including hotels) in the area. Honestly, I could have found decent, downtown hotel rooms with about the same accommodations for the price I paid for the Airbnb rentals. Looking at Hotels.com, I discovered I could have done as well in Thunder Bay and been walking distance from Lake Superior, downtown, and had a window.

After extracting ourselves from our New Mexico Airbnb disaster, I did find a really nice one-bedroom apartment for about 2/3rds of the Airbnb monthly rental price. It had a far better location and came with an all-access pass to a hot springs spa. I am a motorcycle rider and I’ve travelled all over North America and a good bit of western Mexico on a variety of motorcycles for the last 50 years. I have taught motorcycle safety classes for the last 17 years. I’ve owned motorcycles for most of my 70 years and have parked motorcycles on about every kind of surface imaginable without ever having a problem.

When I arrived in Thunder Bay for a week’s stay, I met the owner in her driveway. She suggested I park my motorcycle in an area to the side of her driveway so she could get her car out in the morning for work. I moved it to where she suggested. I’d ridden about 450 miles from home to Thunder Bay that day and was beat. So, I parked the bike, unloaded my stuff, and settled into the room for the night. Thanks to the plastic covered mattress, I got about two hours of uncomfortable sleep before I gave up and moved to the couch.

The next day, I loafed in the apartment and backyard for most of the day and hiked about a mile to a grocery store and to check out the immediate area. When I got back, I put away the groceries, made a late lunch for myself, and a little later I went out to the motorcycle to make it more secure for the next evening. I discovered that the side-stand had sunk about an inch into her driveway. The bike was leaning precariously, so I moved it a little and put the bike up on the center stand. This isn’t a big or a heavy motorcycle: 450 pounds, wet and loaded. It was late, almost dark, and I planned to talk to the host about the driveway damage in the morning.

I went back to the apartment to do some work. About 10:00 PM, the following exchange showed up via email: “Your bike has damaged my new driveway. Can you please put the plywood under your bike stands. It cost me $7000.00 for new driveway and don’t have funds to repair it.” This was followed by: “The asphalt is new… still sensation [sic] to weight and sharp objects. I am upset that you would ignore not telling me it happened and when I knocked on door to address the issue you ignored my knock. I leaned a plywood sheet against your bike so you can either put the sheet under the kick stands or possibly park it on the street. I will call the contractor tomorrow to provide an estimate on repairing. Hopefully he can reheat and level again. But I know there will be an expense to it. Please refrain from doing bike repairs on the driveway. As I said the asphalt is new and still very soft.”

I replied: “I’m sorry I missed you at the door. I’m trying to do that writing thing I mentioned when I got here and had headphones on, so I didn’t hear you. I wouldn’t ignore you and I’m sorry you think that’s who I am. Maybe this week isn’t going to work for either of us. I didn’t want to bother you with the driveway until I saw you next. If you had told me the driveway was new I might have thought to suggest a better place for me to park. It’s not like making it into an emergency would change either of our evenings. I apologize for the trouble. I have a lot of experience parking motorcycles and I have never seen a new or old driveway fail like that at 75 F. I had no way to predict it would happen.”

I dressed and went out in a rain storm to move the bike to the ¼” plywood she had leaned against my motorcycle. The next day, she seemed apologetic and I thought the weirdness had passed. She asked me how I’d slept and I told her the plastic-covered mattress was uncomfortable and I’d spent most of the night on the couch. She allowed that I could remove the plastic, which made the next night tolerable.

The “suite” she advertised was a small basement apartment, with the bathroom in a shared hallway. There were two tiny windows, one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, but neither will open. Cooking smells stayed in the room for hours. The kitchen was well-equipped and functional. The backyard had a nice semi-private area, which could have been an excellent place to write during the day. However, there were nearby neighbors who eliminate any feeling of privacy. My first day out there, I answered the “whatcha doin’?” question four times, when someone looked over the fence after hearing me typing on my computer. I quit and read a book for the rest of the afternoon.

Three days later, at about 9:00 PM, I received the following email, via Airbnb’s server: “I had the paving company come by to give me estimate on heating and leveling the kick stand hole and it will cost $250.00. We need to discuss in person on payment options for repair. He will drop off a written quote tomorrow in mailbox.”

My reply to that was: “Julie, I’m in the apartment now, if you want to discuss this. However, I parked where you suggested. You did not warn me that the asphalt was either new or soft when I arrived. I had no way of knowing that your drive way would be different than any of the thousands of places I’ve parked a motorcycle over the last 50 years. Personally, I suspect your contractor used less aggregate than ideal for a strong surface. I’m no expert, but it’s pretty obvious that there isn’t much aggregate showing in the drive. The other side of not knowing the drive was not a stable place to park is that the failure of the surface integrity was about to allow my motorcycle to fall into your pavers, which would have caused a lot more damage to the motorcycle than $250. Monday’s high temperature was 24 C/75 F, hardly high enough to expect that sort of pavement failure under anything resembling normal conditions. The important aggregate qualities for your asphalt paving project are durability and angularity (fractured faces). To get the strongest pavement structure, larger aggregates are used for the base, with successively smaller dating sites reviews aggregates used for upper layers in the pavement. However, it’s also true that new asphalt driveways are supposed to be kept from everything from bicycle kickstands to high heeled shoes for as long as a year [I didn’t know that until I looked it up yesterday]. You’ll need to put a sign where anyone using that driveway can see it if you want to avoid future damage.”

Of course, she did not take me up on my offer to discuss her driveway problem in person. That evening, I’d decided my Airbnb experiences were a draw. Three out of five decent experiences is not good enough. If I were to use Airbnb again, I feel that I’d have to use what are obviously sexist filters for any hosts I’d consider renting from. It’s not worth the hassle or the moral issues. After discussing this experience with my wife over the phone, she decided that we’re just going to avoid the whole experience by cancelling our Airbnb account, which she did that evening. As for the Thunder Bay rental, I’d paid for Sunday to Sunday, seven days, but when we had a plumbing emergency at home Thursday night, I decided to pack it up either Friday morning and call it a wash. I’m a big believe in avoiding the Sunk Cost Fallacy and that writing getaway turned into a general gumption trap. In three days, I managed one good day of writing and two days of agonizing over BS with the host. I’d rather be home, wrestling with figuring out how to negotiate quiet periods with my wife or finding an office to rent than fooling with this stuff. Airbnb proved to be more of an unreliable hassle than a viable alternative to hotels and motels.

No Protection Against Deceptive Guests Breaking Rules

Posted on September 1, 2017

I had a group of five people book the minimum stay in my house for three nights and they ended up staying only one night, getting a refund for the others. I received a snotty email the next morning with a list of unbelievable reasons why they left. This was planned. They must have had another booking somewhere and needed just one night as a filler. My house is immaculate. I work very hard to make sure it is always so, but they managed to get a refund from Airbnb, because Airbnb does not care. My “case manager” never got back to me or answered any emails. They just let me get cheated by some rotten people who even were so low as to give me a one-star review, when everything was provided and spotless. I did everything I could: sent maps, was there to greet them… I told them if they needed me to just let me know. Never did they look me in the eye. They were fishy, because something was up. Had they communicated any problem whatsoever – there were no problems – I would have been able to act and would have done so immediately. Airbnb will not ever provide any means to contact them, so basically it’s a one-sided system. I am very upset about the fact that there is no protection against assholes.

Guests Trashed our Home, Airbnb Ignores us for Weeks

Posted on August 31, 2017

This guest and his family completely trashed our home. We came home after five weeks to a complete infestation of flies, fruit flies, maggots, bed bugs and lice. This guest never took their trash out in five weeks in July; they simply left it in the house and, as you can imagine, the condition of it was deplorable. We found piles of maggot-filled trash bags inside our home. The smell of rotting food and trash was overpowering. The swarms of flies required multiple treatments from a professional exterminator, who said he had never seen anything like it. They apparently ate in every room in the house (living room, bedrooms, bathroom) and left spilled food on the rugs, couches, and bathroom floor. I’m not talking about crumbs; these were chunks of meat, broccoli, and tomatoes on our furniture just surrounded in flies and maggots.

They broke our TV, refrigerator, and dishwasher, ripped our brand new bed sheets and bedspreads, put tables on top of bureaus (why?), left the mattresses on the floor (had taken off the bed frames), and clogged up the kitchen and bathroom sinks with god only knows what. Our home will never be the same. It’s been over two weeks and the stench of these disgusting people is still in our home. We had to have exterminators come back twice to eradicate the flies and eventually had to throw everything away: beds, couches, pillows, rugs, sheets, towels. We hired professional cleaners to remove the dead bugs not once but twice. These guests lived like complete animals but that does not explain how as human beings, they could completely disrespect and destroy another person’s home.

We have been going all through the proper channels with Airbnb for three weeks and we cannot even get anyone to contact us regarding our claim for over $20,000 worth of damage. They supposedly cover up to $1,000,000 but I don’t believe it. We’ve been waiting on hold for hours at a time, and sending multiple emails with no response. Customer service agents claim to have no authority to do anything except send an email to a supervisor say they will contact us but they never do. We sent 50+ pictures of the damage to our home, videos, receipts for everything, a copy of the police report, and there has been nothing from Airbnb.

Our family has been displaced from our home for three weeks, having to stay in hotels and pay for and replace our damaged items completely on our own. Our lives have been put on hold and this incident has caused our family great emotional and financial duress.

On Being Exiled from Airbnb, and What Follows

Posted on August 31, 2017

I’ve always wanted to be barred from something, maybe kicked out of a bar for participating in a drunken dust up, or driven to the edge of a small western town by the sheriff and told to never show my face in those parts again… or else. This could be because of all the great forced and unforced exiles throughout history. I think of Victor Hugo and Napoleon on their islands, or Nabokov in his hotel and there is always this opulence to their defiance — a protest and a point being made against a government, an ideology, but all couched in this luxurious righteousness. In my mind, this exile is the result of long perceived injustices. There is always one last straw, one line that can’t be crossed that gets crossed. However, never once in my life did I think that I would be banned from an app. It’s almost as cool as getting a cut above your eye not by jumping between rooftops chasing down a criminals or defending a beautiful woman from a catcall, but from something innocuous like touch football.

My wife and I were not banned from just any old app. We were banned from a very popular app that is looked at as a darling of the sharing economy. One that since it was founded has changed the way we travel and experience a city or place. An app we were considering to be the foundation of our upcoming trip around the world. Of course I’m talking about Airbnb. We had recently sold our house and 70–80% of our possessions and said farewell to Minneapolis and its beautiful winters, where we had lived for 14 years. The idea was that we would travel slowly around the globe, staying for extended periods in different countries so we could learn about culture and food and customs and really become ingrained in neighborhoods previously inaccessible to casual travelers. And we would do this by using Airbnb. We already had a history of using the site. A great one in fact.

Before getting exiled, we had successfully logged 13 stays in 5 countries and received very favorable reviews from all the homeowners we encountered. One in Seattle was even amazed that we took the time to set her clocks to daylight savings time. We are those people. The words used by these homeowners to describe us as guests ranged from “amazing” and “polite” to “extremely polite and educated, really quiet, and great to talk to.” In Louisville after a conversation with the owner, he described our interaction as “one of the best conversations… that I have ever had in the Pearl.”

We are polite and quiet. We are what they say. We like to leave things in a better place than we found them. We are conscientious to a fault. We even stack plates when we dine at a restaurant to make it easier for the staff to clear. It’s almost a sickness. It may seem like I’m living that song from Flight of the Conchords about the prettiest girl on the street, depending on the street.

While the review system on Airbnb is flawed like any review system online, we began to believe that we wouldn’t have a negative interaction with a homeowner — we were homeowners ourselves, after all. So it came as a surprise when received notice that the owner of the property we just visited was charging us $1,000 in damages for forcibly entering the house, and by doing so destroying his lock and door. What really happened is that we couldn’t get into the house using the key provided as somebody had thrown deadbolt from the inside and our key only worked on the bottom lock.

I sent a few texts to the people in the house and shouted through some open windows and rang the doorbell before we were let in by one of the housemates. He assessed the situation and determined what we already knew — the key doesn’t work for the deadbolt. It was decided we would not use the door again. We retired to our room and in the morning checked out as planned and left through the front door. We became homeowners for the first time when we were 22 and 24 respectively, and have bought, remodeled and sold two more homes since then. We know how personal a home is, and we know how to care for one. That’s why we are so careful when we are invited as guests into another person’s home. It’s as close to a sacred space as we can imagine.

The homeowner in his opening statement said that he was willing to negotiate and would settle for a couple hundred bucks, which is way more than a broken deadbolt is worth. He was clearly just looking for money, and knew how to work Airbnb. Sadly we were not so experienced, but were about to get a crash course on how they arbitrate between two parties. I’ll save you some time: they hold up their hands, shrug, and say “you guys work it out.”

The owner submitted more of his investigations into the situation. He claimed to have reviewed messages between me and other housemates and interviewed the other guest staying there who said we were “paranoid” and disobeyed the house rules. He also claimed to review the “home security surveillance system”, but this failed to reveal anything. Nobody else was able to see these tapes, and given the state of the house, it’s doubtful they even existed. If they did, they would have revealed no more than me retreating a foot into the air when almost stepping on half a mouse near the garage. I’m sure it would make a lovely GIF.

Airbnb customer service was reviewing our case and had told us that if we didn’t reach some sort of consensus with the owner, we were risking having our account put on hold. Since we were on our way to our next stop on our road trip, this was alarming and we asked for more details. Once Airbnb found out that we were not going to negotiate and pay any of the fees, I received a notification that our booking for the very next night was cancelled and our money had been refunded. I couldn’t log into my account. We were formally exiled from Airbnb. We moved through the next few days in a ragged haze while making other plans for our immediate roadtrip needs while thinking about the next 10 months of our trip.

Does this mean we are relegated to using hotels again? That likely means no kitchen and eating every meal out. This means no laundry. This means we will have to stay in urban centers within easy reach of restaurants. This means our budget is shot. This means a big hole in the budget. Could we travel for so long when paying exponentially more per night for food and lodging?

Fast forward 8 months. We are Japan for a month before heading to Beijing and London. We’ve visited 13 countries since being exiled from Airbnb. We’ve stayed on olive farms in the hills of Croatia and apartments in the middle of urban centers found on sites with policies that actually consider the renter as an important part of their business foundation. We don’t consider ourselves exiles anymore, because let’s be honest, we would never go back to Airbnb.

Writing this won’t change the homeowner centric policy of Airbnb, and it won’t change their lousy customer service. The temptation is still there. We still get their emails despite trying to opt out numerous times. I’ve deleted the app from my phone, but am reminded of our exile every time there is an article about their greatness, or a friend posts pictures of their amazing kitchen in Oaxaca. It’s enough to make us consider trying to get back in, but only briefly. Because let’s be honest. The interface is great. Their stock is enormous. It would be easy. But their “guilty until proven innocent” stance on a platform that doesn’t allow you to properly defend yourself against unfounded and slanderous charges keeps us from trying too hard.

Airbnb Fraud: Someone Cancelled the Reservation For Host

Posted on August 31, 2017

We were contacted after midnight by a guest asking if we could take him and his family on such short notice and check in at 3:30 AM. We worked our butts off to get the house ready for him and his family and accommodate them on short notice. My husband was in the backyard cleaning up the pool at 3:30 when they arrived. We greeted them and welcomed them to Dallas; they checked in and then out at 11:00 AM. In the morning I discovered someone on Airbnb had posed as me, canceled the reservation, and without even so much as a phone call or message, the payment had been removed from our account.

We have a strict cancellation policy which doesn’t allow cancellation without 24 hours’ notice and at 50% of the cost. The guest had concerns about the Internet and TV, which he just needed to contact us to get access. Instead he went around our backs to Airbnb and then committed fraud by logging in as me and cancelling the reservation. Airbnb sent me a message three days later telling me that our Airbnb host status was in jeopardy due to the cancellation. We want our money back and the cancellation removed. This is not the first time Airbnb has interfered with payments in the past. A guest was looking for a cheaper stay and they refunded the reservation, even though they didn’t give us notice and broke Airbnb rules by having a friend make the reservation and not stay there. Third party reservations are against policy. They took money out of our future reservations to refund them.

Mom Gets Hurt, Customer Service Couldn’t Care Less

Posted on August 30, 2017

I have used Airbnb before and had a wonderful time. I’m not blaming them, but my host and how things were handled were the problem. To make a long story short, my mom, my little nephew, and I went to Palm Springs and arrived at the Airbnb house. The pool stunk like fish or worse. The host gave me reasons why it smelled, but I didn’t want reasons for the odor, I just wanted it fixed. Granted , she sent someone over the next day.

Then my mom got hurt because ground that was not level in the car port had been covered with a carpet and we didn’t know this. She sprained her foot badly. However, things didn’t get any worse until 2:00 AM on the same day of our arrival. I had to call 911 to come get her because I had my nephew with me. The paramedics took her because she was in so much pain. We got back at 7:00 AM with a brace and walker.

I reached out to the host to let her know she should take care of this issue before it happens to someone else, and we thought we were hanging out in the car port. The last time I checked, when it’s blazing hot outside, the car port is a great place to park and let your family out, especially a diabetic 70-year-old mother and a 5-year-old nephew… I can use a parachute on my vacation to land at a house I rent if I want to. The host then asked us why we didn’t use the front door. Guess what? I didn’t want to. I just paid money to rent her house and took care of it like it was my own, even leaving it spotless (even after she talked to me like I was an idiot): I can use whatever door I want and I chose her carport door, so my family wouldn’t melt.

Her pool stunk, my mom got hurt, and everyone was miserable the whole time because she decided to cover a hole in the ground. Did it make the carport look better? What if something had happened to my nephew? The host is lucky my mom has health insurance to cover all expenses for the hospital and doctors. She is still in pain and has a brace on. Today is August 28th and I went on vacation August 7th (and injured the same day). It’s really sad that this has still not been addressed properly. I have had a few emails with Airbnb, but nothing has been done to refund my miserable vacation. I have called Airbnb a few times and asked for the people named on previous emails; the only response I have gotten is “he is not in today but will call you back as soon as possible.”

They didn’t call. They just emailed me telling me that I should go to the resolution center and deal with the same host that spoke to me like I was a moron. I don’t want to deal with the host. I want the Airbnb professional handling these cases to call me and tell me what I want to hear, not email me and give me the same disrespect I got from their host. I’m still waiting for their undivided attention.

Airbnb Knows My Postal Address And I Don’t?

Posted on August 30, 2017

I’m trying to post my property to rent on Airbnb. When I try to complete the postal address section, Airbnb won’t accept my address. It keeps saying “the address is not accurate enough – try adding a street or house number,” even though it already contains both . The end result is the Airbnb website substitutes another address, half a mile away, which is also a B&B, so my customers will be directed somewhere else. I know my own address. It has been confirmed by the local council authority. This is not good enough for Airbnb. There is nowhere on the Airbnb website that allows you to ask a question to a real person or make a phone call. I tried the number which I found on Airbnb Hell but, when you finally get through, the voice of the Airbnb employee is so scrambled and distorted, it’s totally unintelligible.

Account Hacked, Do Not Host Anyone on Airbnb

Posted on August 30, 2017

Before reading this story, quickly Google “Airbnb account hacked” and you will see this is a regular occurrence, happening to many people. Upon signing up for Airbnb, our account was hacked. Access was gained to our personal emails and even work accounts. We do not know exactly how this happened except that it was done through Airbnb. This by itself is scary and completely unacceptable. The hackers accessed and changed our bank details on the Airbnb website. Money was then stolen from us. Without getting into the details, customer service was terrible and infuriating. We fought for a month: phone calls, emails, the lot. Without our consent, Airbnb opted to close the investigation. This cut us off from replying to emails or talking to the customer service team. We never got our money back and ended up cancelling our account. I would strongly advise others to find alternatives. You have no security with Airbnb.

Domestic Horror at Airbnb Forces Guests to Call 911

Posted on August 29, 2017

My husband and I decided to use Airbnb for the first time because we were looking to spend a romantic weekend in the Poconos area of Pennsylvania. When we got to the house we were greeted by the hostess’ husband who informed us that his wife was delayed by a flight coming from Texas and he would go pick her up at midnight. My husband and I were offered beer and later this man asked my husband to go fishing. It all seemed wonderful and when they returned from their fishing trip we went to bed expecting that the man would go out around midnight to pick his wife up at the airport.

Sleep was difficult because the mattresses thrown on the floor were uncomfortable and squeaked at every turn. Nevertheless we had agreed to make the best of the one-night stay. Well, around 1:00 AM, I was awakened by loud cursing and yelling by a male voice, which I tied to ignore. Soon I heard more yelling and now a female voice was involved. I figured the hostess had been picked up from the airport and was settling home to go to bed. However, the voices got louder as did the cursing and it all seemed to be outside.

I looked outside our window and saw the hostess’ husband yelling at another man and later as the other man got back into his car the hostess’ husband kicked his car, which angered the man in the car (I later found out he was a taxi driver the hostess had used to get home). The man got out and the two men began to argue again, but eventually the taxi driver got in his vehicle and left. The issue did not end there as the hostess’ husband continue to argue with her, to the point of smashing her fingers on the door. This caused her to scream which caused us to come down.

We offered the hostess to call 911 as she told us that he smashed her fingers and also poured beer all over her luggage which was still outside the house in the driveway. We offered to assist bringing it in, but her husband would not allow it. When she tried to go get it, he tried to lock her out of the home. He escalated in his loud verbal attacks and threats to the point where we had to call 911 at around 2:00 AM. Once police arrived we waited to get the okay from them to be allowed to leave. We left around 3:30 AM and had to sleep in our car. While this ordeal was going on, we found out that the husband was never consulted by the hostess about her plan to make their home into an Airbnb, which he disagreed with. He informed us that he had assaulted another guest who arrived at the house around 10:00 PM on a night when the hostess’ husband was expected to work the next day. We found out from the hostess that her husband was on parole and has a criminal record. What a night.

“Personality Conflict” Excuse for not Publishing Reviews?

Posted on August 29, 2017

We recently used Airbnb to rent a chalet in Tahoe City, California. We were charged for the entire week immediately upon booking, four months before our visit. Several days before our visit I had to contact the owners twice in order to get the address and entry information for the house. When we arrived the house was neat, clean, and attractive; however, it lacked numerous conveniences that we normally expect from homes that we have rented over the past few years. There was no information booklet or binder explaining how various things worked in the house, e.g. electric lights that came on intermittently but would not go off even at night in the bedroom.

There was no microwave in the kitchen and no closets in the entire house, or hooks, or racks on which to hang clothes. There was no shelf or dresser in three of the four bedrooms in which to place clothes. Everything had to be left on the floor. There was not a single shelf in any of the three bathrooms so all personal items had to be left on the floor. The master bathroom shower did not have a shower curtain so water went all over the floor and cool air surrounded you when you showered.

I communicated via text politely with the owners who did respond but they lived six hours away; they claimed that no one had ever asked about these items. We returned home and I wrote a polite but accurate review on the Airbnb website about the missing items. I stated that the house was lovely but that many common conveniences were missing. Weeks passed and my review was not posted on Airbnb. I finally tracked down a phone number. The Airbnb agent read my review and said that she did not see anything in the review that was against their regulations for reviews. She forwarded my inquiry to the Trust and Safety Department.

I received an email stating that the owner had been contacted and he claimed that we had a “personality conflict”; therefore, my review would not be published. I asked for documentation of the “personality conflict”. The second response from Airbnb did not offer documentation or comments in any way about the “personality conflict” but they did offer me a coupon for my next visit. I emailed back with my own documentation which was a complete thread of my texts with the owner during our visit that show there was no personality conflict; all of my contacts with the owner were polite inquiries. The third, and final email, from Airbnb was to to tell me that they considered the manner closed that that they would not respond to further inquiries from me. It appears that Airbnb handles any reviews other than positive reviews as a personality conflict and that this is their excuse for refusing to publish any negative reviews.