Why not pay for a hotel? You are paying for staff who usually answer the phone (unlike Airbnb hosts), maids who might bring spare towels without having to take a picture of a bathroom with no towels, and dispute resolutions that are face to face, not a parade of characters who bounce in and out and come up with an ever-changing list of requirements to get a miserly refund. My favorite was the request that I take a picture of the Airbnb website to prove many of the advertised amenities were missing and it had the wrong address listed.
I was told I should have videotaped the standing host who spoke no English and closed all the windows while ratcheting up the heat in 95 degree weather. How could I prove the sheets on the bed were soaking wet? Easy in a hotel but impossible even by the Airbnb customer service standards. My contact with customer service ended with an email to which I couldn’t reply and a refusal to allow me to post a review. After spending $4100/week I guess I shouldn’t have scrimped on the private detective/videographer that customer service demands but really how many nights could I have luxuriated in actual functioning AC at a motel?
Someone brilliant posted awhile ago that Airbnb is Craigslist for house trading. There is NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. I’ve read several times that the founders/owners of Airbnb never saw reason to provide this because “the rating system would work it out” or some such ridiculousness. But that’s the reality. My only request from Airbnb: be completely upfront with hosts & guests: “This is all at your own risk. No one is here to mediate, rectify or do anything more than answer a call and waste hours of your time.”
It’s a crapshoot. I’ve had good luck and bad with Airbnb and didn’t bother to call after they wasted hours of my time and then told me to stuff it (not in so many words but you get the idea) after a guest caused my neighbors to alert me to massive noise and probable drug activity.