Comments on: Why AirBNB is NOT worth it anymore!

By: Dayne

Dayne — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 07:54:56 +0000

A few years ago, we were a host and also used Airbnb to book most of our travel. Generally, we travel to a lot of places where hotels are few and far between. Those days are over, we sold our guest cottage two years ago and will never use airbnb again. The false advertising kills me. A cabin in the mountains for $110/night. Then add in the $65 cleaning fee, the $67 “service fee”. Taxes are the same whether you stay in a hotel or an airbnb, so we won’t mention that. All of the sudden, you are at the cost of a very, very nice hotel. Nope. Won’t pay it. What a scam. It was great originally, now, it’s nothing but a high priced rip off.

By: Denis

Denis — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 14:49:52 +0000

Dear Author,

I cannot be agreed more!!! Here is my story.
We’ve been using Airbnbn service for 2 years and rented around 15 places around the world. The big issue came on our last reservation in Hawaii that we booked 7 months ahead.
We made a booking on July 30th 2019 for our stay for January 17-24 2020. On August 1st 2019, state of Hawaii had a bill 108 to came alive, that prevents short term rentals to rent with no license for less than 30 days. It’s becoming a common practice around the US and the world. However, our host waiting last minute to cancel on us and advised that their listing on Airbnb got cough by local authorities and advised them if they keep renting illegally they will get fined a lot of money. While I appreciate the host honesty, I don’t appreciate that host was well informed about upcoming laws and technically were running its own business illegally while Airbnb were paid, -also illegally! So the host cancelling 4 weeks before our check in. I’m reaching out to Airbnb and they advising us that they dont carry any responsibilities at all regarding local regulations its up to the host to decide if they want to do business legal or illegal. So we decide to re-book on the similar place but much more costly since we only have 4 weeks left before check in. According to the bill 108 in State of Hawaii, any short rental agent must provide license id or advise the customer if they property listed on legal terms. When I asked this question to my new host, the host ignored the question and kept it silent. I followed up on the next day asking same question, then host reach out saying that they wont rent this place to us and wished me good luck with extremely strip policy of no refund and refuses cancelling his place telling me that i have to cancel. Well, this was sound like a scam to us! We reach out to Airbnb with this situation and Airbnb also refusing to do anything on their part. After multiple hours of calling to them and asking fro manger they rudely advising us that they denying my request to talk to the manager and we on our own. My first though was, wow, just got scammed by Airbnb in real life. In 20 minutes of this disaster, manager calling me. I explained the situation to him, then he is telling me that he will reach out the host for clarifications and 10 minutes later reservation is cancelled with a full refund that we still have not received. We quiet shocked what actually happened and we probably would never use Airbnb anymore. We actually did some research and ended up booking a better option with a hotel. It also looks like that price-wise airbnb and hotel not that far apart, but if something goes wrong with Airbnb, you will regret any business with them in the past as well. Its actually a disaster dealing with Airbnb customer service.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:17:20 +0000

My friend, I know your post is from a long time ago so maybe you aren’t still crapping Airbnb’s bed but did you ever consider you’re also crapping innocent peoples beds when you bait them into contacting you? Something to think about. No malice whatsoever or offense intended. Thanks for listening

By: Steve Bricker

Steve Bricker — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 19:23:06 +0000

This comment is in response to Alida though I’m not sure it will reach you. I’m not a social media or tech guy in the least. I don’t normally get involved with these types of blogs but just happened to come across this one. Reading your story makes me feel like I have nothing to complain about. My main response is with regard to your Airbnb experience but would like to mention your vertigo briefly. I suffered from severe vertigo for years but fought through it & though it recurs occasionally, I’ve learned how to cope with & minimize it. I am glad I never took the medications offered by doctors who had no firm diagnosis of what was causing it. With extensive research I learned that besides all the negative side affects of medications, that certain types of vertigo caused mainly by Meneires disease or other like conditions are often adapted to by our brains though sometimes taking a long time. If we take the medications, our brains never learn to adapt. Don’t get me wrong, I know nothing about your situation so I am not suggesting you don’t take medication. I’m just giving you information. I feel incredibly bad for you & I cry with you about your experience. It isn’t fair or right. I hope you will one day receive your recompense from Airbnb. Though my experiences are bad enough, they are not near as traumatic as yours. Still I would like to relate them & my associated thoughts. I have several experiences both as a Superhost for Airbnb & a traveller through Airbnb. Fortunately there are many other vacation rental companies out there that Airbnb will eventually be forced to reckon with & if people like us push them, that may force them to do it before they eventually go bankrupt & leave millions who have made deposits on rentals with nothing. In the interim, I can still host with Airbnb costing Airbnb money while I host with others as well giving my preference to them. As a guest I don’t boycott Airbnb but I use alternatives including hotels WHENEVER possible & practical. Airbnb is absolutely by far the worst company I have ever dealt with in my entire life & I’ve dealt with a number of bad ones. Airbnb takes the worst company award in a landslide. Everything you described is what they are masters at. It seems they train their representatives that they can say or promise anything they like without needing or intending to honor their word. I have dealt with some fantastic reps from Airbnb but the majority have been the most arrogant brain dead group I’ve ever met. I think their first question required for their hire is Are you a major PRICK that loves to screw people around & ruin their day? That pretty much sums it up. They don’t enforce their written policies for their “community members” or worse yet even attempt to honor them themselves. It’s just a shell game. Their word means absolutely nothing, it is trash. They do whatever they THINK is best for them, but they are their own worst enemies & will likely self destruct one day as more & more people become aware of their tactics in addition to their problems with governments. They are the epitome of transactional based rather than moral or ethics based. When they need to resolve issues between host & guest, they make decisions based not on ethics & their policy which SOUNDS GOOD but on who is the most likely to bring them more business & income in the future. I’ve experienced that first hand a few times now. As a Superhost for Airbnb, I have only needed their help in resolving serious issues with a couple of guests out of the hundreds that I’ve hosted. The majority of our guests have been truly awesome & I attribute that in large part that I as a host try to be truly awesome. Though I am in it primarily to produce income, I also recognize that my guests are paying with the full expectation of having a great experience & I have an ethical responsibility to do my very best to ensure that. I also ENJOY doing that. Their is nothing more rewarding than earning income while at the same time making someones stay great & hearing their feedback on how satisfied they feel with the money they spent. Unfortunately Airbnb doesn’t differentiate between ethical hosts & slumlords. In fact, they encourage being slumlords by consistently sending messages suggesting hosts to cut their prices to compete with other hosts. This at first seems self defeating (& it is which I’ll discuss), but it seems to be from AIRBNB’s perspective that they want travelers to think of Airbnb as the ultimate for price while offering the ultimate for accommodations while not investing a dime in accommodations inventory or maintenance themselves. In partial response to other comments posted, I can’t speak as to the fees Airbnb charges. I personally couldn’t see Airbnb being able to survive on 3% with all their employees & other costs but truthfully, I have no idea. I’m a business owner so I know that no one truly knows a businesses operating costs until they walked a mile in those shoes. How a business arrives at their costs or charges them out doesn’t really matter as long as we are aware what we are agreeing to pay for their services offered, the most we can do is complain about price but no one forced us. It is not how they arrived at price but more total & final price that matters to us no matter what we are purchasing. As long as we had a choice short of life or death or other serious consequences & agreed to it without some sort of threat or repercussion against us. If we are exploiting peoples life sustaining & basic needs, that’s different. It is when they misrepresent what they are offering that it becomes FRAUD on their part & then we really have the right to complain. Returning to the slumlord issue, I personally refuse to be made that as a host but I don’t actually require the income to live a decent life or to live at all. While some places can be quite, or were quite lucrative to run an Airbnb, the unique characteristics & challenges of each area & Airbnb’s failure to recognize that can mean catastrophic losses for hard working oppressed people while Airbnb continues to exploit that & people for their bottom line. The sad part is what I witness as a self supporting volunteer in a country with a lot of corruption & nauseatingly rich people & a lot of poverty where the “peasants” work usually 7 days a week 12 hours a day just for a meager roof & a few scraps of food. There is a slowly growing middle class but it is incredibly tough for so many including ones that bought places to rent as Airbnb’s at incredibly high borrowing costs just to see their rental prices forced down by up to 70% over the past few years as Airbnb pits hosts against hosts. These “poor” people in every sense of the word are beautiful people that really WANT to be great hosts but can’t afford to as their incomes are cut while some guests ruin their furniture or take their things reasoning they paid for them. A side point, our top quality, very attractive & expensive furniture purchased 30 years ago that was still like brand new until 2 years ago when we became airbnb hosts is now all ruined & needing replacement. People are people with many different standards, moral & ethical viewpoints though likely most think their standard is acceptable & correct. These “poor” hosts who have had their income forced down to nothing waste countless hours more precious & valuable time & resources receiving the runaround with nothing to show but frustration from Airbnb. For ourselves, we can absorb those costs & still profit a little. For these people, they can’t & we don’t have the heart to complain that there were only a few old dishes or whatever. Out of desperation & losing money, they’re renting out a decent +-~$100,000 USD 2 or 3 bedroom apartment including AC for $37/night, $60/night less than 1 room for 2 people in a local hotel of like quality construction but without the accommodation capacity or amenities. I love the platform & concept of Airbnb & being a shameless optimist I still have hope they will come around. If they actually lived up to their commitment to develop a “community” where members are required to respect the noble ethics & principles Airbnb CLAIMS to follow but instead of compromises for short term profits, I believe it would actually be a successful & sustainable company. It certainly is much nicer to stay in a place where we can co-habit with friends & family, cook our own meals if we wish or sit up & watch TV, listen to music or read a book while our significant other(s) go to bed in a separate room(s). Personally I don’t like the commercial somewhat institutional atmosphere of hotels as much as the personal feel of an Airbnb. It is truly a shame because it is an excellent platform with the potential to become even so much better. It is only their people that prohibit that & that has to go to the highest levels of management. As for the community members, the majority of our guests in our residences have been awesome! The same for the majority of our hosts in whose residences we’ve stayed! Some of our guests have caused damages by negligence but of those, most have conscientiuosly paid. As always, there have been a few whose game plan from the start was to negotiate a free stay or substantially reduced stay based on frivolous claims. I am happy to report that Airbnb supported us, I believe fairly & impartially, & those guests did not win the game. On the other hand, we did have 2 large groups of associated guests stay in 2 separate stays within a short couple week period that both left our place extremely dirty & used an excessive amount of electricity beyond the stated allowance & when we requested Airbnb to assist to collect from them from our stipulated damage deposit within our allotted period of time, Airbnb told us they had cancelled both their accounts for breach of Airbnb’s terms so couldn’t help us resulting in the loss of hundreds of dollars. Worse yet, I lost hundreds more in unproductive wasted time in hours & hours of receiving the runaround being bounced or receiving unfulfilled promises of being bounced from one Airbnb rep to the next. As a businessman, I normally know when to cut my losses & move on but Airbnb is in a class all it’s own with their noble sounding written ethics promises & policies, & more promises made by their reps that lead to nowhere but absolute frustration & anger. I certainly don’t condone nor is there justification but I can comprehend how some mentally unstable people lose it & do horrendous things. That’s the sad reality of this world. Here are our experiences. We rented our beautiful 3 bedroom heavily invested condo in an exclusive area with free 5 minute beach shuttle & huge beautiful pool & courtyard out last December to guests though it meant we had to vacate for a few days which we were quite happy to do just for a little change. Through Airbnb, we rented a “studio” apartment close by but in a more touristy lively district. Immediately after reserving the place, as I was looking over the pictures again, I suspected the pictures to be misleading so contacted the host & confirmed that it was indeed NOT a “studio” apartment since though having a small attached kitchenette & bathroom, it had no sofa or sitting area as it at first looked in the pictures. The host suggested I could do my necessary business including banking on my computer at the table & chairs on the outside uncovered, unprotected patio subject to robbers in the touristy & much less secure area than ours, Caribbean sudden wind driven torrential rains even from a blue sky, sunshine, 4 types of dengue, malaria & chikungunya which BTW are carried only by one type of mosquito which happen to be daytime/dusk/dawn biters. If you get bitten after dark, it’s itchy but no worries. Our host, of a foreign nationality, gave me “permission” to cancel while feigning not fully understanding my language or the “strict” cancellation policy of Airbnb that he himself set for his listing. I wasted several hours trying to get a straight answer out of both host & airbnb that he was giving me permission to cancel without being subject to the strict cancellation policy meaning I lose all my money. I then officially requested to cancel through Airbnb & the host officially refused so I requested an Airbnb resolution. Remember, this was same day within at most an hour or so of reserving upon realizing that the listing was NOT as represented. Short on time, I decided we’d acquiesce & try the place at least for that evening. It was an okay place but didn’t have a King bed as represented nor was a “studio” apartment. I decided to leave the next morning fully confident Airbnb would decide in my favor and refund our money for at least the 2 nights we didn’t stay at minimum. The end result, after months of the runaround wasting valuable productive time on an unproductive venture for tens of hours, a most arrogant Airbnb rep finally told me in a most disrespectful & condescending way, that in a nutshell, it didn’t matter what the listing actually said. It only mattered what the pictures showed. The partial picture of the bed from a different angle that looked like & I thought was a sofa didn’t matter. Seriously, so the physical word description didn’t matter but only the pictures mattered. I graduated from kindergarten but he obviously didn’t. I rely on word descriptions & representations as to what I am receiving. Pictures are not always reliable or representative nor do I look to them other than for a general impression. The kid said this guy was a Superhost so obviously he was a good host for a good property. He obviously failed to remember I am a Superhost too. He didn’t get that most guests visiting the Caribbean normally don’t need a workstation & only want to sleep & go to the beach so YES, most would be satisfied or at least live with the situation & enjoy their week or two even though the listing was misrepresented. A true “studio” apartment was the very least that we could make due & this certainly was not a “studio” apartment. His Superhost status means nothing other than to confirm that he was a scam artist feigning a bad understanding of English or Airbnb’s cancellation policy even though having several vacation rental properties on Airbnb & in trying to get us to cancel the reservation thinking that we were uninformed to Airbnb cancellation policy. His worker who met us also told us he’s a scam artist who speaks & understands English decent & pays his workers peasant wages while making a killing himself.
Our experience with several Airbnb reps is that they are as much double talkers & scam artists or more than this host was. I’ve literally talked to dozens over months & months & been falsely promised all kinds of things related to only a few incidences requiring airbnb’s involvement to resolve. Seriously I’ve never experienced such a dysfunctional group of liars in my entire life. One rep contacted me weeks after I’d just told myself to forget it. It was almost as if she or they were being antagonists dangling the carrot in front of the rabbit. She contacted me to tell me she’d be in touch with me & then never contacted me again. I finally contacted them after it ate at me for weeks. I regretted it since it led to nothing more than multiple more hours of frustration, anger & stress. Stupid rabbit.
Back to our experience, after deciding we were leaving his apartment & would take the chances of receiving a refund, we booked another Airbnb for the next 2 nights described as a few steps from the beach that the pictures made look bright, clean, cheery & modern. Only to arrive to a dark, dirty, dated place with sparse mismatched & dilapitated dishes & amenities a couple thousand steps from the beach. We immediately contacted the host & Airbnb to tell them the place was misrepresented & unacceptable & we were leaving as soon as my wife could get back from a meeting she was at. We contacted another host just steps from the beach & BEFORE booking went & looked at it. It was nice & as represented! So we booked it for 2 nights at least getting to partially enjoy the following day at the beach as I spent hours on the phone with Airbnb who agreed the 2nd place we went to had violated their standards & policies but still wouldn’t refund us the full amount for an unspecified reason. In summary, we rented our beautiful, comfortable, secure huge 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom 2 kitchen condo for 3 days to some really wonderful guests only to have to rent 3 places & spend almost the entire 3 days trying to negotiate to get what we had been promised causing us to lose all the joy we had anticipated from a few days of “change” & causing us to spend more money in total renting those 3 different places than we received for our place. These hosts are not the ‘poor” hosts I discussed previously. They are the ones that live off the backs of the hardworking people that they pay a peasants wage. We pay a living wage to all who work for us but many in this country who could more than afford to, do not. Though our experience is bad enough, we feel much more for you Alida & for many others like you than for ourselves. We certainly have just a small idea of what you went through, though it is impossible for us to appreciate that fully. My wife & I would like to somehow be able to offer you & your friends some free time in one of our places in Canada or the Dominican Republic. I’m not sure if this will reach you or not but if it does, please contact the publisher of this blog & if they can confirm you are who you say & connect us, we would be more than happy to do that. I hope that some smart lawyer figures out how to do a class action against airbnb so Airbnb can be forced to honor their promises & all us nobodies can see some sense of justice. Though the injustices many of us face pale in significance to those suffered by millions on this planet. We personally have confidence & look forward to a future, much brighter future, for earths inhabitants including those who have died & rest in sleep but that’s a whole different subject altogether. Still we do what we can now to make as many peoples days brighter as we can. We hope this makes yours & possibly others day a little brighter today. Kind regards, Steve & wife.

By: Mickey

Mickey — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 13:03:37 +0000

AirBnB has no conflict resolution that benefits the host or tenant. It is especially awful for the 1 month tier, for those of us that like to travel for longer periods.

Consider:

29 below days:
If reservation cancelled with ample time you can recover 100% back [minus service fee]
If reservation cancelled with strict policy you can still recover about 50% back.

30 days
If reservation cancelled you will lose 100%.

30+ days
If reservation cancelled you will lose the first month.

Essentially either book 29 days and below OR 60 days and above. Never ever book 30 day bracket because you will lose 100% even if your host is willing to cancel the reservation. I had a case where a full trip was cancelled ~ while one host had to jump through hoops to cancel the reservation in such a way that I would get a partial refund, the other host couldn’t make the effort. I don’t fault him, its endless suffering explaining things to a new operator each time you finally each customer service.

So:
First host able to re-rent the place. I got a partial refund. Both sides got something. Fair.
Second host had an empty apartment that could have been re-rented. I lost 100% of my reservation. Terrible.

It doesn’t help the guest or host really when I’ve got a 30 day trip that next time I’ll just go ahead and book 60.90, 120 days etc because the cost of a date change is exactly the same.

By: Maksim

Maksim — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 06:31:31 +0000

For long stay AirBnb shows fantastic overprice, appartments can cost 7 times more than in reality. Airbnb is SCAM. You can rent much cheaper via direct contact with host.

By: Casayvonneka

Casayvonneka — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 11:04:14 +0000

Great blog. This blog is written in such a way that it every individual who read this get plenty of knowledge.

By: lissa

lissa — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 18:52:07 +0000

This is an excellent forum, and I agree with so much of what people are saying. Charging guest 12% of total price is just plain wrong…they already charge the host 3%, make do with that, everything else is complete extortion! Hosts all over the world need to wake up, and demand that airbnb stop charging the guests an extra 12%, afterall its your guests…airbnb just runs a website….3% is enough for them to take care of administration….its just extortion, get rich quick…Brian Chesky is worth 12 billion folks, yes he got your inventory for free, and turns around and charge you and your guests. wow this should be criminal! its like the numbers people, who run illegal gamble houses…they just sit and wait for the fools to come and play a number, whilst they get rich quick…none of them even have to labor and work from 9 to 5….this should be criminal…. only GOvernments should have lotteries, so the money goes back to the people, and certain protocols should be in place for people like brian chesky who rob people…

By: Alida Willow

Alida Willow — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 06:37:56 +0000

I suffer from middle ear issues which causes imbalance/vertigo, especially after long flights. I contacted a host prior to booking and asked if I could check-in early so I could lie down. She said that was fine. I booked at her place, but on arrival, she told me that someone was in my room and I couldn’t check-in. She wouldn’t even let me lie down in her house. Link to her room – https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/25340836?source_impression_id=p3_1563338167_%2FqpWrhVFg7WONI%2Bt
I was so dizzy I could barely walk. I had to leave my suitcase at her place and walk down and lie in an oval for 6 hours. While there, I had no water, food, and I was nearly mugged (I had my laptop out and a guy on a bicycle kept circling; I had to finally lie in the full sun because it was near a couple of other guys; I ended up sun burnt). Air bnb contacted me and promised they would help me find other accommodation. I needed somewhere close by because I’ll be catching up with friends in that area in a couple of days. I couldn’t find any nice cheap accommodation in that area, so I sent a link for something just a little more expensive (not much considering what I’d gone through). Air bnb stopped getting back to me and wouldn’t confirm if I could book. My phone was nearly flat and I didn’t know what to do, so I found another, cheaper, place in London and quickly booked (I didn’t have time to google the address because I had 2% battery). When I went back to get my suitcase, the host had locked me out of her house (I had a key, but she’d locked both locks). I then had to sit on her doorstep for long time. When she arrived she laughed in my face and said- because you asked me to cancel the booking, you can’t write a bad review. I began to cry. It got worse. My phone went flat and then I had to walk my suitcase up a steep road to a cafe, charge it, and then call a taxi from there. It was then that I found out that my new accommodation was 3 hours on public transport from where my friends live (also a 1 hour taxi ride which cost me $100.00 AU; I sent Air bnb the receipt asking for refund and they have manually removed the receipt from the conversation). I rang airbnb and they told me that they would help. The gentleman said he would personally fix this terrible thing that happened to me and move me closer to my friends. He promised me that Air bnb would make up any financial losses. He promised me he would take on my case personally until it was resolved. But then I received a message through air bnb, where he stated that he won’t take on my case, and that it was being passed back to the person who didn’t fix things last time and who left me stranded in an oval, spinning like a top. It has been hours and I still haven’t received any contact from air bnb. Now I’m stuck on the other side of London, 3 hours on public transport from where my friends are. The first week of my holiday is ruined; and worse still, air bnb are no longer answering my calls!!!! I just want to cry. I wish a booked a hotel room.

By: David

David — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 20:57:49 +0000

Very very good article! All over the world countries are tightening rental rules and the accounts practices of Airbnb. Cutting down seriously on Airbnb incomes and expansion. Several court cases are also ongoing in major cities in the USA. At least in Europe, I believe the next step will be court cases and rulings throughout the EU and hopefully from the EU High Court to improve customers/consumers interests and rights. The consumer position across Europe is very very strong. Airbnb will sooner or later regret their dubious policies and “guidelines”. They will simply be forced to follow common rules and laws on services and goods. The owners of Airbnb have lost complete control of their business and believe they can choose what rules apply or not for a consumer. Their initial idea is good but it seems they live in a parallel world of their own implementing their own distorted logic.This cannot go on.
Fortunately most guests and hosts are sensible enough to ensure satisfaction for both sides.

By: Ignatz

Ignatz — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 22:49:31 +0000

You suckers who still obsessively patronize “disruptive” industry players such as Airbnb and Uber, which abuse their “contractors” and clients alike while subverting local laws and regulations can go right on doing so…the more of you people who expose yourselves to such abuse, the more hotels will discount their empty rooms to people who want consistency and at least a measure of security.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 11:11:16 +0000

AIRBNB IS MASONIC!!!!

These are serious gangsters dog!

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 19:15:15 +0000

it was an american company. hustlers, and hucksters. Emptiness.

By: Evan

Evan — Sat, 24 Nov 2018 16:59:09 +0000

AirBnB is horrible. Their customer service is a disaster. And they do nothing to help if you need a deposit back for extenuating circumstances. I will never use the service again. Only Hilton or Marriott from now on.

By: justadude

justadude — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 22:51:42 +0000

@ Christopher Laine i think that is a terrific idea! their business model should constitute something akin to reckless endangerment, negligence, or something. if anything, a nice fat federal lawsuit should serve to slap them in the face and shake them up a good bit.