airbnb, C or D?

Massive dud from the POV of someone who lived in tourist town. Jacked up rents and depleted the already-small apartment/condo stock. I had to battle for a spot in laundry room with maids washing sheets and rugs every day. Ruined the community vibe of complexes. Forced me to leave the lil village I liked and move 20 miles away where the unintended side effects from this shit aren't an issue. Yet.

that was a really great article. I used airbnb the first couple of years it started and still look at listings every so often when traveling but it turned into such a hassle with bad owners, complicated key hand offs, cancellations, excessive cleaning fees/deposits.

I rented out a second bedroom in my old house about a dozen times and all guests were totally fine but I eventually just completely lost interest in hosting. I do recall one 60-70ish yr old Turkish guy who stayed with me, he was in town to "see nyc" and his wife sent some turkish bowls and turkish delight to bring as gifts for me. I noticed he was around a lot. Like all the time. Eventually he had to tell me he was really there because his son had been arrested for credit card theft and he was going to MCC (correction center) in the day to try to visit or coordinate a time to wave from outside. I think he felt a lot better after he told me. He ended up cooking me crazy dinners (like steak cooked in heavy cream???) and I would drink whiskey with him. We watched the Macys thanksgiving parade together and then I drove him to the airport.

And now we are married.

maybe everyone else is just terrible at airbnb but we never have anything other than excellent experiences

the key is a lengthy multiple-hour vetting process and an open mind about one's destination town

Helps if you know how to cook steak with heavy cream

lol Yerac.

I haven't used it in forever but it's always worth a chuckle to see the top line price compared with the bottom line whenever I do get curious (and then immediately book a hotel which is easier, more trustworthy and cheaper).

Before I swore off it I used airbnb maybe a ten times over the years and literally every time something super sketchy happened. Got pretty much one of each category of bad experience - hosts cancelling last minute leaving me stranded, disgusting places that were obvious scam/flophouses, scary hosts or fellow-renters, hosts trying to squeeze me for extra money, etc. I only ever used it travelling to big cities and each time the cost always seemed to be within 5% of nearby hotels anyway, which made it easy to decide it wasnt worth the hassle anymore.

The last straw was the lady who seemed normal over email & text, then upon my arrival tried to make it a condition of my stay that I have my phone on airplane mode when on the property at all times to protect her from "electric waves". After the 2nd time she woke me up in the night by banging on the door to remind me about the electric waves rule I split.

cook her a steak before I left though obv, just good manners

I think I've only successfully used this service a few times. Once in London, and the place was a bit shittier than I expected and in retrospect since work was paying for it I wish I'd just gotten a hotel, but I was trying to save them money. Once in Brooklyn and the place was excellent, zero problems. Once in Italy, and it turned out to actually be a hotel that was taking bookings through ABNB; there were some issues but we worked them out. The last place was the worst, it was in upstate NY, and their cancellation terms were not laid out well or well communicated, we had to cancel a whole month out and they still charged me about $200 and there was nothing I could do about it.

So far we've have exclusively good experiences.

how many hours of scanning per place booked do you employ

I've had a combo of good and bad experiences, airbnb are terrible at dealing with bad experiences/refunding money and you end up with a vindictive review from the shitty host that stays on your profile. Also yeah it destroys the rental market in lots of cities (good luck renting an apartment in shitty, boring, small city Edinburgh for anything like what it's worth to be living there for instance)

Not that I travel much, but I boycott the fuck out of airbnb -- it contributes to gentrification, homelessness, and it is set up to avoid paying the taxes many cities impose on hotels that pay for civic services. If I was a San Francisco resident, I would be FP-ing the fuck out of everyone on this thread that is an unrepentant AirBnB user/host. ... I live across the water, so I am just gonna shake my head and resent y'all and this fucked up company.

Sedona AZ passed a law that banned short term rentals...but it was overturned by the Republican-dominated state legislature. Turns out Republicans here don't actually give a shit about "govt that's closest to the ppl" or whatever their spiel is when they want states to have the power to overrule fed laws.

we no longer like airbnb, just bc of a couple of not-great experiences plus just the general "we disrupt, you fuck off" vibe of this company, and just so many rental places getting flipped once people move out, being turned into airbnb spots. it's happening all over the city and of course a lot of other big and not-big cities, too.

I actually don't think anything bad has ever happened at a place I rented on airbnb. Besides the normal private residences in some countries not having ac or a fan or screens in the windows and it's a heatwave. But all the places that I have rented in the past, i usually check on them, seem to no longer list or have increased prices to more than nearby hotels (like someone mentioned above). One of my favorite things to do in other locations is go to the grocery store so I really like to have a kitchen. But there are some pretty decent aparthotels now in some cities.

in oahu, i know they recently passed a thing where all rentals under 30 days need to apply for a license (of which there are not many?). so if they even see you listing on vrbo or airbnb without the registration number they will fine you.

but yeah airbnb started out ok and then like everything else, got corrupted.

all my airbnb stays are in small towns/the countryside so i do not consider myself part of the problem tbh...or at least, not part of this specific problem

Is Airbnb notably shittier than it’s competitors? I like to rent places with kitchens when I travel so that I don’t have to eat out so much. But I’ve only used Airbnb a couple of times, and not for five years I think. I usually use homeaway and have only had good experiences, renting whole houses usually. But going into it each time I worry that I’m gonna get the shaft. In big cities I just use hotels.

and almost all the time it isn't a second residence but a cabin in someone's garden

or an entire floor of their house

all my airbnb stays are in small towns/the countryside so i do not consider myself part of the problem tbh...or at least, not part of this specific problem

― imago, Friday, November 1, 2019 2:32 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

airbnb is definitely an issue in smaller places also, oh, i see your further caveates, nvm

A shooting at an Airbnb in Northern California killed four people and wounded several others during a Halloween party. The renter had falsely claimed she needed the home to escape wildfire smoke. https://t.co/oycXTgQQNN

— AP West Region (@APWestRegion) November 1, 2019

On my last trip to japan I needed a place for 4 weeks and tried to book through the local short lets agencies rather than Airbnb, hoping my Japanese was good enough. They all just pointed me back to Airbnb where they have the same places for a little more expensive (and then Airbnb adds their fees). I guess it is just easier for them to deal through the platform with automatic translation and stern warnings not to take the trash out, ever. It was fine but would have rather cut Airbnb out of the picture. I need to craft a more Japanese online persona, or at least one that looks resident in japan.

The only time I used it it worked out fine in the end but there were a hairy couple of hours where I thought I was in an unknown small town with a small child and nowhere to stay. The house didn't seem to exist where described and no-one was there and I couldn't seem to phone the owners - the AirBNB chat/interface was useless at actually connecting us with the owners (who afaict weren't doing anything shifty). I'd definitely be wary of it now.

The sudden collapse of AirBNB has been, legitimately, the funniest fucking thing I’ve watched play out this past month. pic.twitter.com/RxBTKLC8gC

— Ilhan's Berndam RX-46-2 (@taintberner) March 23, 2020

yessss

fantastic

Fuck this person, who was single-handedly responsible for taking 20+ families out of the city.
Vacant blocks, filled on weekends with tourists.

Without govt regulation this shit will just pop right back up when ppl resume traveling.
Please only stay at designated hotels/motels/hostels when traveling. Resist the temptation. It wreaks havoc on residents wherever it's prevalent.

The reverse is happening in Joshua Tree, where frightened Angelenos are trying to escape the city.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-22/californians-flee-cities-as-coronavirus-pandemic-spreads

And in googling this story I found a place out there that calls itself "The Gaslight."

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/42228923?source_impression_id=p3_1585102174_fWmUOnxm9QmMLvfs

San Bernardino County (which includes Joshua Tree) has ordered airbnb’s to shut down fyi

They could switch to long-term rentals now, I suppose. Even if it ends up being a short term situation.

coworker just moved out of a situation where her landlord decided (midway through her contract) to convert the vacant rooms in the house into airbnbs. every week there'd be a new set of random people roaming around, sharing amenities, complete nightmare

christ, I couldn't handle that. can barely handle the steady roommates

Yeah that's a nightmare. I could barely handle when other units in my complex turned into short term rentals. But at least I was only renting. Felt so bad for the retirees who bought condos in that complex years ago only to have it all go to shit due to rich fucks from Phoenix buying up all possible units and turning them into airbnbs.

Like for real I've had bad dreams where there's somehow strangers living in my home legally

I called them step-brothers.

Don't know why I expect more from a single room single night stay in london than a man wearing only shorts opening the door and communicating in little more than grunts that the room is upstairs.

So just a room in someone's house? I don't think I knew that was a thing!

Utter classic, the future of holidaying

― imago, Tuesday, 18 March 2014 16:25 (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

innocent days

Really? We occasionally let a room in our old 3 bed flat and maybe there a still a few friendly families out there doing that but this definitely looked like a 'landlord has converted property into short term rentals' deal, perhaps with a couple of long term tenants to do the most perfunctory 'check in'.

xp indeed.

still using it this weekend for a one-night stay in todmorden as there really wasn't much in the way of hotels

but in general, booking hotels is at this point both nicer and cheaper than even an ethical cabin-in-the-garden airbnb

my issue with AirBNBs is snafus that happen that could never happen in a hotel.

one time, it was a multi-room AirBNB that had a self-entry lock on the door, but I couldn't get in because one of the other idiot tenants had locked the door with the second lock that had "DO NOT LOCK" written on it in tape. then he berated me, suggesting I wasn't really a tenant when he answered and I had to get the actual host to message everyone to say do not lock the door that says do not lock.

a second time, I put some stuff in the room to go to a concert, and then when I came back, the code stopped working on the door. the host wouldn't answer the phone so I had to give up and leave. thankfully all I left in there was contact lens solution. I got a refund though by disputing with Paypal lol

My experience has generally been very good. A couple of kind of funny ones--I once rented a "room" in Beverly Hills that was essentially a balcony converted to a very narrow sleeping space--but overall good and interesting experiences.

That said, I did have one situation that freaked me out--it was an entire apartment that I was supposed to have for a few days. I walked in, and it was obvious that someone was already staying there. There was a bag of warm food on the coffee table, the bed was unmade, the toilet (which was not flushing) was full of piss. I noped out of there immediately. On my way out, I noticed for the first time (still not sure why I didn't notice on my way in) that someone had splashed red paint on the front door.

I messaged the landlord and she never responded. I did get my money back.

had you seen the movie Barbarian first, y/n

I still haven't seen it lol

I don't think I've told my horrible air bnb story here.

This was the first Christmas during the pandemic, and the kids were stir crazy and we had to be outside to see the grandparents and everything kind of sucked anyways. We decided to surprise the kids by booking a cabin in the woods not far from my parents. They would be somewhere new, my parents could come by for easy visits, it would be a nice long weekend getaway. The place got good reviews and I booked it.

Christmas eve morning we tell the kids and they're so damn excited. We've already packed their bags, we load up and go. We get there and outside of the house there are a couple of trash bins and they are overflowing with trash. There are some muddy boots by the front door. A couple of dogs from a neighbor's yard run under the fence and start barking at us, but not overly aggressively. Okay, this is fine, this will be fun!

We get in and try to get comfortable. Each of our kids has a bedroom and my wife and I have a separate room. One of the kid's window unit heaters is so noisy that we can't use it. There are holes in the walls that you can see daylight through. There's a weird cabinet thing in the living room that has remnants of dog food in it. As we start getting into the kitchen stuff we're finding mouse droppings *everywhere*. The house is grimy. We find a hypodermic needle in my youngest daughter's closet, on the floor. The oven was disgusting, like somebody cooked a frozen pizza upside down on the rack and it all melted into the bottom. Switch plates are missing on the light switches with wires poking out. No clothes hangers in the closets. muddy dog footprints on the windows. The mattress in our room is the worst thing I have ever laid down upon. STILL, the kids are having fun because they're kids. I message with the owner, SCOOTER, and she is sort of apologetic, although she says that mouse droppings are something that happens with country living. I let her know that I grew up in this area and my home was not covered in mouse feces. She offers a refund, I say no, my kids are having fun, this is a Christmas present, let's try to make it work. She says that a cleaning lady can come over at 11am.

So we wake up, wash everything that we need to make breakfast several times, then move our stuff out so the cleaning lady can come in. We don't want to be in the house with the cleaning lady because of covid. The rough looking cleaning lady shows up at 10:45. We ask her to wait while we get out. We get out at 11:02. I have a message from SCOOTER, from 11:00, saying that the cleaning is complaining that we will not let her in. Because of this, she insists that we get out and she will give us a full refund. For some reason, I'm still trying to make this work but SCOOTER is having none of it. Because we have some sort of standards, she wants us the fuck out of there. By now, my parents have shown up to open presents and everything. I tell SCOOTER that we're going to do that, and we'll leave.

We pack up and leave. While on the way to Houston we find another Airbnb in Galveston that is actually nice and the kids have fun but I'm kind of a shit the rest of the weekend because I want to burn down SCOOTER's shitty cabin. I still want to burn it down.

I leave a review that details everything I wrote above, with photos, in a professional tone. In a prior, review, someone mentioned the dogs that came over and they knew the names of the dogs and it was implied that the dogs belonged to SCOOTER. So, in my review I mentioned SCOOTER's dogs. I received a notice that my review was being removed because it contained information that was not true. I called them up and said what the fuck. They said that those dogs did not belong to SCOOTER, and because I had information that was not true, the entire review was deleted. I could not edit the review or write a new review. I said what the fuck. They said tough shit.

So, fuck SCOOTER, and fuck Airbnb, I hope they both burn in hell. I just checked out her listing and all of the reviews are uniformly positive. I do not understand.

still using it this weekend for a one-night stay in todmorden as there really wasn't much in the way of hotels

Oh, I stayed in a really nice holiday apartment in Todmorden for Torfest last year - I think it's on airbnb but it looked like you could also rent directly from them. Just in case you need one again.

I've only ever used airbnb a few times and never had a terrible experience, but they do seem awful tbh. My feeling is that 'gig economy' stuff works okay on a v small scale, but once it spreads and becomes a normalised way of working, it's exploitative and shit. I guess the selling point when uber and deliveroo and airbnb first came into existence was that they were supposed to be 'side hustle' jobs, and they literally had no plan for becoming primary jobs (except to fuck over everybody and run away with a load of money).