Author Archives: Joel

Airbnb Doesn’t Care if Hosts Lie and Mislead Guests

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Booked a house in Fish Hoek, Cape Town from one Sonny Naidoo. In his listing he claimed the property had 2 bedrooms and a steep flight of stairs. The picture in his listing was of a flight of stairs that looked fine – however when I got to the address I found that the picture was taken in front of another property all together. The actual house had multiple flights of steep stairs to climb in order to reach it. Upon the climb I found that the house actually didn’t have a second bedroom, only a sort of pseudo loft in the kitchen accessible only by climbing a ladder. No safety gate of any sort on the platform either, making it very unsafe for children (listing claimed to be child friendly) AIRBNB support told me the following: “I’ve reviewed the video Joel and while I understand that the staircase shown was not the same as the one you actually climb to the listing but the whole point of the picture was to show the view. It was stated in the description that there was a steep climb and that you would need to be able bodied but that is why porters were supplied. At this point as the description covered the basis of the fact there was a steep climb I would be unable to process a refund for the reservation besides what I have already given.” So – it seems a host can post a picture of another property – inferring that it is the actual property, and airbnb doesn’t care. A host can claim 2 bedrooms, while not describing it accurately, and AIRBNB doesn’t care. I’ve attached a screenshot taken from the listing, showing the staircase from a different property – a clear misdirection – then the actual listing and pictures of the ACTUAL climb property taken by myself.

Next time I’ll book a hotel

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In my experience, Airbnb is not at all better than a hotel. First of all airbnb gives you a price, and when you register to book the flat, suddenly the price increased 9 pounds, for no reason. We have booked a week in a “flat” cause we need temporary accommodation for a week. We just chose airbnb to have access to a kitchen. Well, here I am, in the house wearing a thick wool sweater an my jacket (I’d say it is around 16ºC), feet frozen, because the host only turns on the heating from 5pm to 10pm. The first day she told us that if we were cold we could switch on the gas “fireplace”. We used it for around 2 hours the first 2 days. The third day it was impossible to make it work, I guess somehow she has cut off the gas supply. (The flat is a kip adjacent to her house). And then, the kitchen…well I am pretty sure the oven has not been cleaned since the day it was bought. The glass is brown colour, I mean, it is all covered with grease, when I say all , I mean not a single spot in the glass that is clear (see the picture attached). The funny thing is that the price is the same than a hotel, but here first you need to be accepted by the host, which means in my case that I had to send a copy of my ID and a video of presentation or a link to my linkedin or my facebook account!!! WTF?? Plus we had to accept the rules of the house, that means that before leaving the place we’ll need to wash and clean everything. As soon as I am done with this rental, I will delete the account and never use them again.

Non existent apartment in Berlin

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I was traveling through Europe over Christmas with my wife, 2 children and my parents. Apartments in Vienna and Prague were wonderful. However, I got radio silence from our Berlin host once I had paid the deposit of $1000. Emails about location and arrival arrangements went unanswered. Contacted Airbnb through Twitter only to receive legal jargon and denials of liability in return. A day before our arrival in Berlin, I had to find a hotel ( 3 rooms) over the New year weekend, at huge expense. This was my first and last experience with Airbnb – never again.

Guests cook pot butter – Stench lingers a week later!

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New Years Eve we had guests arrive with a late night check in at 2 am… They were supposed to spend the next few days skiing…but instead they stayed inside and cooked pot butter! They invited 6 other guest who joined in the partying and at 3 AM we had several strangers smoking a huge bong, noisy, stinky mess! They left without one word. My beautiful guest house was trashed. Food, garbage, wet towels, pillows, blankets and 3 day old dirty dishes left for me to clean up. I was horrified by the level of mess left behind, but the worst part is the stench of the marijuana butter/oils they made and used to make brownies and cookies. Its been 4 days, windows open and the smell is just as bad. Several bottles of FreBreeze and its still beyond stinky and I cannot host other guests until the smell is gone. The carpet is new and they must have spilled this pot oil all around. My husband is beyond angry, disappointed and upset….I’m kicking myself for signing up for this airbnb…so NOT worth this heartache…our beautiful guest house was trashed…I don’t get why someone would destroy a beautiful home. Why not go to some cheap hotel in trashy area and do this type of crap?

AirBnB “Entire Home” Rental Nightmare

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I’ve used air bnb a couple of times to rent ‘entire homes’. One good experience in the UK and two in the US…and one very bad one in the US! The main thing I’d like to share is that air bnb does not monitor their listings in the way you would expect of an agency listings accommodation. Usually agencies/websites hosting hotels or apartments monitor these properties for accuracy of description etc. It was only after my unsatisfactory experience that I discovered this. I rented an ‘entire home’ which was not cheap. However upon staying there discovered that the entrance was shared, the heating could not be controlled by us, and it was basically a room in this person’s house, that upon entering the main door you the entered the room via a patio door. Due to many issues including cleanliness and noise, I only stayed 2 of 4 nights. I had no recourse except to write a negative review, which I had been debating whether to do as the host could simply write a nasty view on my profile in return (I have seen that he has done this to someone else as he doesn’t take kindly to negative reviews). And it seems his strategy works as I can mostly only see positive reviews which I find very hard to believe. Also, it felt as though this host treated me as a non-paying guest in terms of how I had to leave the property. And there were way too many restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do. Doubt very much I will use Airbnb again.

Rudest and least sympathetic host!!!

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I went to the snow and saved my little brother from hitting a tree, in doing so I suffered multiple rib contusions and could not go on my next Airbnb trip. I told the host ASAP, and she booked those nights the second I cancelled. She could’ve refunded in full with no harm to her, yet she was greedy and very rude. When a similar instance involving me getting in a crash happened last year, the host changed his policy and refunded me in full. She was not willing to do so, and so I had to contact airbnb and do this the long way WHILE recovering. She told me to contact airbnb and leave her alone. HORRIBLE customer service! I would not recommend this host to anyone and it makes airbnb look bad overall. I will probably just stick to hotels from now on so that I don’t have to deal with unpleasant hosts in the future!

Airbnb Deletes Negative Reviews, Favors Hosts

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Just finished reviewing a host yesterday after our stay in LasVegas( Henderson area), there are 3 parts to the review,

part 1) what you liked most about your stay

part 2) what you didn’t like about your stay

part 3) what improvements can the host make to raise your satisfaction.

All of the last two (negative) parts get deleted from the review and only what you LIKED gets shown on the Airbnb website, leaving dangerous, critical faults hidden from the future guests.  Airbnb says they pride themselves for transparency and free speech, so it is ironic that they dismiss the very motto they preach. Every false accusation and statement from the host gets to be shown though, and then when you write to Airbnb asking them to delete or edit to be fair, they say it does not violate their review policy and is the ‘perceived personal experience of the host’ although you have written communication proving of its falsehood.

The host can also change their cancellation and extra fee policy after the booking from easy to strict forcing you to loose most to all of your money or just stay even though you want to cancel! The pictures can include pools and other amenities even though they don’t disclose the closure and/or not having access to fitness room. This is fraudulent business and unethical. I will never book from this site again and will tell all my friends to never do so either.

Airbnb FRAUD cost me 1460 Euros, & it was preventable!

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Airbnb fraud cost me 1460 Euros! They aren’t doing enough to protect their community from fraudsters. I have had many happy trips with airbnb, but after this I will never use them again. They simply aren’t doing enough to protect their customers. I went to book accommodation in Amsterdam for new year, when I saw a message in the description of the listing offering 20% discount through ‘instant book’ (on the actual airbnb.co.uk site), I just had to email the host and they would enable instant booking to make the payment. ‘Fair enough’ I thought, they want to get people in quickly. Makes sense. So I emailed the host with the dates and a request to instant book. I then received an email from Herman (the host) with a link to instant book. The URL is still active https://www.airbnb.com.book.srl/instant/rooms/5913502?checkin=12292015&checkout=01022016&currency=&guests=8 You’ll notice the URL is airbnb.com.book.srl, which at the time i believed to be Airbnb, which it evidently is not. (these links are no longer active after I brought it to airbnbs attention!) So screenshots are attached. Once you click instant book and enter payment details the following page appears with a slightly confusing error message (images attached). https://www.airbnb.com.book.srl/instant/rooms/status?accepted=false&hosting_id=9652369 After a bit of back and forth with Herman (perfect English I might add) I requested the invoice to be sent. I then received the attached email (too long to put here) and stupidly made payment through transfer. I then received emails from a very a very convincing airbnb finance team representative (express@reply-airbnb.com). Emails written as though from one of Airbnb’s real employees, here’s the linked in profile… but i don’t think this poor guy has anything to do with it. At this moment, I started to realize I’d made a mistake! I called my bank who said you can’t stop a payment like this, also notified Barclays (where the money was being transferred to), seemingly to no avail. During this entire process Herman was continuing to email and reassure me that everything was OK and the payment hadn’t come through yet. I also contacted airbnb who said that they had removed his profile and very annoying then decided to tell me never to make a payment away from airbnb (which I didn’t think I had), until they specified bank transfer. I have now followed the link where the initial listing was and it’s still live, this is after airbnb said that Herman’s account has been blocked! It has the same reviews the same host, but different apartment pictures and is on the actual airbnb.co.uk site. So unfortunately it’s inevitable that this will happen again to someone else. https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1125879?checkin=29-12-2015&checkout=02-01-2016&guests=3&s=R92_NDn9 I really feel Airbnb could have done so much more to protect me during this absolute nightmare. Not only have they allowed the fraudulent account to continue, but make a bigger play on the fact that no payments should be done offline rather than display instant booking everywhere. They say “At Airbnb, we do everything we can to create a safe and trusted marketplace.” I don’t think this is true. I’m now completely skint 2 days before Christmas with a cancelled trip for the New Year. Thanks Airbnb, but NEVER EVER again.

AirBnB Customer Service – Slow and Rarely Helpful!

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Each time I reach out to AirBnB, I lose great amounts of faith in their ability to realistically support their hosts on the expectations they set. They have INCREDIBLY dis-empowered customer service, proven from their resolutions and answers that provide pretty much no expectations and then a surprise outcome. None of their staff apparently have the power to do anything when helping you, and I’ve had several seemingly simple issues take over a month to resolve (3 times). From my understanding, they have only a few services that they provide that are crucial to a host’s success and integral to their role: – put your listing in front of interested travelers – manage guest/host refund and payment expectations – facilitate a good experience for hosts and guests. In these areas, they kind of suck. No, seriously they kind of suck. If it was out of 10, I’d give them a 4 or lower in each category. Here’s why:

“Put your listing in front of interested travelers” – I was one of the most searchable and highest ranking results in my area until a mystery shift happened about a month ago, and I suddenly went from top 3 results in a blind search, to almost being the 40th ranked result. No one could explain “why” this happened, and would only point me to their list of “improve your ranking” bullet points (which I easily satisfy and exceed all of them) and instruct me to share my listing on social media. After much prodding and time wasted on calls, I finally learned that brand new hosts get special treatment and a boost in rankings in their first month or two. So a successful acquisition campaign of new hosts in popular areas will push experienced and hard working hosts down in the rankings. Really!? This sounds like a horrible experience for guests and hosts. Push guests onto new hosts who have no experience, and punish good hosts for having experience and increased pricing. hmmmm

“Manage guest/host refund and payment expectations” I’ve had 3 issues in my 9 month history as a host get pushed to the resolution center and required AirBnB intervention. Both times it took over a month to resolve (a current one is now on a month). The current one, I recently discovered, froze a $650 payout and has been frozen for over a month with no understanding of why from anyone I speak to. They tell me it’s not protocol, it’s unusual, and that the “trip experience” team will have to look into it. If it’s unusual and not protocol, and AirBnB manages this portion of my business, it is their responsibility to fix it ASAP. This = disempowered employees who don’t even understand their own system but have no process to escalating potential technical issues that are impacting hosts tremendously. Imagine your job just taking $600 out of your paycheck and not understanding why it happened or helping you with it for a month?

“Facilitate a good experience for hosts and guests” They do a mixed bag of a job here. Lots of resources all over the place for guests and hosts, but they don’t focus on how important it is for guests and hosts to go through them. Should ANYONE just be allowed to host without any test/briefing on how to host well? Should all guests have to blindly fumble into the unique AirBnB’s without any expectations that these are small, 1-person run businesses sometimes but they expect it to be on par with hotels? AirBnB could do a tremendously better job here on creating quality filters for both host and guest, but I guess that would stifle their acquisition campaigns for new business. It will bite them in the butt in the long run, and a smarter competitor will surface to challenge them here and take market share…. and I will gladly join them 🙂 AirBnB is not a reliable business to count on for income, and I would not recommend anyone do it full time. At all. Only do a room in a house you live in, here and there maybe. Nothing more. For true vacation rental hosts, find alternatives or learn to market the listing yourself and compete.

Airbnb censorship is annoying

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I booked a house for 7 people on a trip to NZ, I haven’t been there yet, the trip is in a month but my actual experience on the airbnb website itself is not that good. I wanted to contact the host directly and the host also tried to give me 2 alternate contact methods, but airbnb keeps censoring everything, with a .com or an @ or extended numbers even if they aren’t phone numbers. We wanted to pay in cash to avoid the booking fee for credit cards if there are any. On their website: https://www.airbnb.com.au/help/article/694/how-will-my-email-address-look-to-other-people it says you can send attachments, I tried and I couldn’t. They don’t even allow a choice of payment methods, only different ones in different places and all are electronic, no cash. I don’t like paying over the internet and prefer cash after seeing the product. The censorship is extremely restrictive and I tried many times and they all didn’t work, even intentional misspelling.