airbnb, C or D?

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).

xpost jesus christ. maybe she is getting ALL of the bad reviews taken down on 'misinformation'.

I am imagining Cow_Art's story being about HP Baxxter from Scooter, it's a bit more fun that way.

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

otm

SCOOTER: Those are rat droppings not mouse droppings. Please remove this review as it contains untrue information.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/46087930?source_impression_id=p3_1702480399_ceES%2BIjmOdGM90VI

Here's the place. Pretty sure those are the same photos from three years ago. It looks nice from the listing! Even the tetherball was gone when we were there. Just a rope dangling from a pole.

there was one time I stayed at a place as I was going to a Judas Priest show, and I was only at the place very shortly before the show. so I came back drunk, and the house was pitch black, and I was stumbling along with my phone flashlight (since I couldn't find the light switches), got to what I thought was my room, opened the door, to find another female guest lying in bed asleep. was fairly surprised because the listing had mentioned nothing of this being a shared space with other roommates, I had thought I had the place to myself.

I quickly backed out and shut the door, startled, then found my room. the next day, the Host asked me about it, as the guest had mentioned it to them (understandably!). I apologized for scaring the guest and said it was dark and thought it was my room but I'd accidentally opened the wrong door. He responded "Or maybe you were looking for some action?".

I said "you didn't even fucking indicate in the listing or in your email to me there'd be other guests, how could I have done it on purpose? I completely understand why the other guest was startled, I would be too if a complete stranger walked into my room. But you didn't tell either of us there would be other guests staying!"

he was apologetic.

xpost oh no re: tetherball!

One of my favorites was the carriage house in Sacramento that was completely decorated in a log cabin, Twin Peaks theme.

omg. would want to stay there. themed places can be great.

apparently lots of people rent via AirBNB that shouldn't/aren't allowed to? I stayed one place that was built like a hostel in Miami, and the owner wrote many times on the front page "don't ask about or mention Airbnb or ask neighbors where the Airbnb is, or I will put you off the proprety", and I didn't get why he'd be saying that, but then it seemed like maybe he lived somewhere where it was a violation to do Airbnb and he was afraid of getting shut down. but why write it so prominently on your listing? easy way to get caught, more discreet way of ensuring nobody asks about your Airbnb is making your home and parking instructions easy to follow.

"I'll do my best to make you feel very good here..if you want we'll go out together to events, etc.😊,"

The place only has one review, though it is a positive (and real-seeming) one

I get nervous about first time or relatively new hosts, but one of the best AirBnb experiences I had was renting a small apartment room smack in the middle of Times Square for like $90 a night. I showed up and the hosts handed me a glass of Shiraz and said "let's do a toast" on arrival

Cos I was their first ever guest

Wish I could find the old Spy Magazine article where the author stays at an under-the-table New York B & B where the host is doing naked yoga (this is long before Air B & B).

This place now has a second review, positive but uninformative.. Then I checked his review of the guest

"i enjoyed my time with Victor.. i showed him the place around and we were together in canyon, he loved it and he appreciated so much that i spent my day with him.."

I also enjoy being in canyon with my air b& b host

I canceled this as my work plans changed.

But separately we've just had a host cancel on us, or try to - she's asking us to cancel (so theres no penalty for her) due to something unforeseen happening with the apartment (and used the phrase force majeure), though its not for another 3 months

Despite the supposed unavailability of it he calendar both sides of our booking is still free to book and the price is now 2.5x what we paid. Pulling a fast one to free up the calendar to get bookings at 2.5x what we paid? But there are no bookings in the 6 weeks prior to ours, and no bookings at all afterwards, so no one is paying for it at that rate

Is there some event at the destination that would now allow for a 2.5x rate?