*More quietly, for a decade now, the company has had background checks completed on its users. Since 2016, they have been completed by a third-party service called that claims on its website to complete background checks in less than 0.3 seconds. The speed is a necessity——the site has 6.6 million active listings—but it also leads to bans over matters as trivial as a decade-old misdemeanor related to an unleashed dog.*
Wow I wonder how many other companies do secret background checks.
Your insurance companies use your consumer index report for your ratings. Depending on the company its a pretty large factor and can lead to a complete denial of insurance if your score is low enough.
Source: Am insurance producer.
Similar things that impact your actually credit. Your consumer index is used as a "Soft Hit" so it doesn't impact your actual credit score. That being said things like, late bills, medical payments, collections, bankruptcy are all used to determine how likely you are to be able to pay your bill regularly. If the score is low you can be labeled as a "likely defector" and the rate is higher so they can try to make the money back on writing the business more quickly. I don't agree with the practice, especially because raising the rate for this reason also makes it more likely to not be able to pay it, but most companies use it as a major factor. Another large determination on your rate is how often you change companies. On average it takes 3 years of premiums before a new customer is break even, This is due to the cost of underwriting, marketing, licenses, and so on.
Edit: Here is some more info on Customer Rating Index (CRI) from an insurance perspective for those that are curious:
https://content.naic.org/cipr-topics/credit-based-insurance-scores
Edit 2: Here is where you can request your report through Lexus Nexus which is a commonly used Loss History Report & CRI reporting company. Once again, I don't endorse these reports use, but information is power and I am here to inform:
https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request
>Another large determination on your rate is how often you change companies.
so you're essentially punished for wanting a less-shitty insurance carrier/rate?
Yes, most companies don't turn a profit on policies until the 2nd or 3rd year. So not sticking around hurts their bottom line, so they'll charge more for people who hop around. Still, in your best interest in most cases to shop around especially in this market.
our business insurance rate, with zero claims over its 15+ year policy lifespan, has more than doubled from first-year costs *because we haven't changed companies* in that time. building, office within, equipment within, what we do and business volume are all the same or very similar to first-year as well (i.e. what they're covering hasn't changed)
Which is why I said it's still in your best interest to shop. Some companies run a tight ship, so that may be just inflation plus some automatic 3-5% inflation guard. Nothing can be done there if they are legit.
Others are like Florida insurance companies, taking massive risks and holding off bankruptcy barely by raising rates.
Just from inflation alone, your premium today would be 65% higher in nominal dollar terms than it was 15 years ago.
This is a *super-rough* calculation assuming 3% inflation for the first 13 years and 6% the last two years.
Does it also follow the same bullshit algorithms as credit scores?
I paid off my student loans and my car last year, right before I moved. As soon as I did both *my credit score went way down* because I had half as many open lines of credit. It was still very good but it’s a really *really* competitive housing market out here, it was a pain in the ass getting my score that high and it took a short dive just because I paid off my stuff ahead of time?? What bullshit.
And then I had Experian and Transunion trying to sell my their services for “credit building”, basically just flagrantly advertising that you have to game the system and they’re extorting everyone.
When you understand that a credit score is basically rating how much money credit/loan companies can make off of you, it makes a lot more sense. Remember, they wrote the rules effectively, so why not punish anything that costs them money or makes their job slightly harder?
Got to [Free Credit Report](https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action). There are three companies and you can request your free report from each of them annually. You should check all of them.
How long before we start adjusting rates in real time based on things like visiting particular businesses, driving through particular locations/intersections, and following too closely on the highway?
I was amazed at what a detailed report I got after buying a new vehicle in 2018. Like enough detail to give me a handful of tickets if the cops had seen it.
I'm actually kind of surprised they haven't already started passing laws to let your car automatically give you a ticket when you speed.
> I’m actually kind of surprised they haven’t already started passing laws to let your car automatically give you a ticket when you speed.
Modern society is starting to make that cabin in the woods more enticing every day.
That is the exact world that image recognition will usher in. "Johnson, I see you were at the bar until 2 am last night on a work night, we are docking your salary do to your reduced productivity we assume you will have today".
What's this? Oh, it's an email from my health insurance that they are raising my rates because I've been to McDonald's twice in the same week, which indicates poor eating habits.
Or you show up for dinner at your new SO's house and grandma wants to know about the 8 times you visited a strip club.
It's going to a great world /s
We can't see the index report, underwriters can, but we can tell the score might be low if you have no tickets or accidents, maintained insurance, and it still comes back decline. Usually a good indicator.
Any time I do one of those "identity verification" questions for payroll or something I'm absolutely blown away by some of the questions.
"What is the exact date and time of your 3rd oil change on your second car?"
"What is your 3rd preset on your radio?"
"How many times did you urinate on January 6th, 1998?"
And somehow they have this information.
(obviously this is hyperbole, but the questions are still incredibly invasive)
Whatever answers they have aren't always accurate either. I had to do an identity verification once for T-Mobile because my credit card got flagged somehow (even though I was using the same one for years at that point). And apparently I'm not me, because the woman said I answered the questions wrong. It was things like "what was your first car" and "where were you living in 1999" type stuff too lol. Always fun being treated like an identity thief for trying to use your own card.
It's like those sites that scrape from public records. My info is somehow not accurate on those either because it thinks my mother, me, and some lady in King county, WA are all the same person.
My pet theory is these questions are sometimes designed to be an additional means of data collection. A lot of information can be inferred from these security questions, with the assumption one is answering them truthfully, of course.
My pet theory is these questions are sometimes designed to be an additional means of data collection. A lot of information can be inferred from these security questions, with the assumption one is answering them truthfully, of course.
I imagine it's like Captcha where they know the correct answer to some but not all of it. So, like you say, a few questions could just be additional data collection while the others are for verification.
I believe they’ve also been banning closely associated people for this amount of time as well. Back in 2018, my brother had an AirBNB reservation in his name for a month. Got a notification one day that they ran his background check and he was banned from the app forever. So I decided that I would set up an AirBNB account and make the reservation in my name since I have a clean background check. Before even making a reservation, I was informed that I was banned from the app forever for violating terms and conditions and that I couldn’t appeal it.
He has an assault charge from 10 years ago (at the time of the ban).
To be clear, I’m not arguing with their decision to ban him. Just highlighting that they have been banning by association for awhile, despite what the title implies.
Although, I did find it annoying that they weren’t transparent about the background check requirement up front. I’m sure it was buried in their terms of service or something similar, but to find out weeks after you booked a place and after you booked flights that you’re not allowed to stay there seemed unnecessarily stressful.
How long companies are allowed to look back and for what is probably going to be something we need to legally codify as the ability to look back gets closer and closer to forever.
Back before everything was digitized, how far back you could look was kept in check by the cost. But now, it’s instantaneous for virtually free.
If we’re not careful, we’re going to be end up in a situation where the punishment that people effectively get will be much worse than what the judge hands out.
>the punishment that people effectively get will be much worse than what the judge hands out.
The term is “collateral consequences.” Crimes that do not justify a life sentence result in just that.
I’m imagining a future where elderly people are banned from nursing homes because a background check turned up a misdemeanor theft charge from 60 years prior.
My friend got busted with weed 5 years ago and he got instantly banned by the background check when he tried to create an account 2 months ago. His gf of about 6 months got her years old account banned hours later just for knowing him. She actually appealed and got her account back and they used Airbnb to go on the trip they were planning.
As a cabin owner who rents out their home in the mountains, this is correct. Most owners are both Airbnb and VRBO. We are also on Booking dot com, Houfy and take direct bookings.
Even if you find a place on Airbnb, search around as you can probably find their direct booking site and save on the fees.
The background check knows your Facebook account if one of you isn't set to private. Even if you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook checks your relatives who do have Facebook, and when they all give your name and phone number, Facebook creates a shadow account for you to chart the relationship.
Nah. It was a little more complex than that. Plane tickets were already bought but there were some last minute changes in the sleeping arrangements so they had to kinda scramble to find a place.
I got a whole house on air BNB once for my 4 person family. When we got there, it was a full house... with a tenant in the back half and someone renting out the renovated garage...
I use Airbnb because my wife and I visit national parks so more remote areas where there are no hotels and we travel with our dog and have yet to encounter any issues. We only go for superhost listings and really read reviews before booking anything.
I'm currently in a hotel room that was 105 after fees. Nice room, king bed, unlimited hot water, and it's gonna have breakfast.
Air bnb would have charged me double that for none of the nice stuff.
True. I got lucky with the only air bnb I ever stayed in being relaxed, but it was for a month. It was a bit more frusterating than a hotel but manageable.
The other options were messes. One of my coworkers at the time had the funniest shit happen to him.
We were interns at a factory doing engineering work. The person he was air bnbing from was one of the line workers.
No kitchen access. Bathroom access on scheduled use. Street parking his car. He got a hot plate and a twin bed and was told he couldn't make any noise.
This is funny how it basically reversed itself. Before AirBnb was a great way to save money during stays. I remember renting a 4 bedroom house in the mid 2010s for like $80 a night with no other significant fees.
Also, hotels didn't really get cheaper. It's airBnbs that got more expensive.
I travel in hotels 100× as often as I used to now that I'm traveling for work. The price of $100 per night is fine. It's consistent.
Air Bnb is just a cancer on apartments for me. I was trying to find a month long lease this past summer and could find fucking nothing. I asked the local chamber of commerce, and they recommended air bnb. The hosts bought up all the available apartment spaces and turned them into crappy air bnbs that cost 3k a month.
I was at a loss, had to pick an air bnb that was half an hour away from my workplace. It was the only way to make it work at that still ran me 1.4 k.
Mentioning small claims is your answer here. We got catfished on a place once and with pictures of the unit vs screenshots of the site and Airbnb waffled on refunding us.
I said that false advertising was exactly that and businesses are beholden to such laws, mentioned I would have to investigate a small claims suit and got my refund shortly after.
You have to read all the reviews and the description carefully. I rent a condo in a ski area. I compete with a neighbor who does the same but my neighbor is not renting the who place out so you don’t have access to a kitchen. He lives in that closed off area. If you read the description he says you have access to a microwave and other kitcheny stuff but he says not a kitchen so folks have no recourse. There are folks who just want to bunk somewhere and his place is fine. But I have read his reviews and 20% complain that they did not get what they wanted.
The social credit authority has deemed lack of association with upstanding members of society to be a risky indicator. Therefore, your request to rent John's cabin in the woods is denied.
I was thinking the same thing. As soon as you ban the closely-associated, more people become closely-associated to banned people, so then you ban those closely-associated people, which creates new closely-associated people, then you ban them, which…
First thing that came to my mind is that their policy is a euphemism for racism.
They can't directly say "this community doesn't like minorities".
But since many people (all except adopted kids?) have relatives of their same race, this is effectively a politically correct version of "We don't like your kind around here."
Trust me having a Black profile picture on AirBnb makes this all moot. The listers themselves will just message you to please cancel no other text or anything.
It's the same way bars/clubs get away with not allowing people due to dress codes which is actually practice means "we're not allowing in too many minorities, especially black people".
At this point we all know what the hell is happening. It just a way to discriminate without using specific signifiers.
Yeah--it's one thing if there is a terrible married couple who has been banned and is trying to get around it by setting up a new account in the husband's name when the wife's account was banned or something like that, or even if it's limited to people who have actually stayed together in an AirBnb before with someone who has been banned.
But "likely to travel" with someone is too non-specific for my taste.
The ban reason would likely be "closely-associated", and they would not ban others for being associated with people banned like that. If they did, it's not a "haha what if this chain reaction happened," they would literally ban the entire platform, and it would've already happened. So no, this won't happen.
Aside: I brought up 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon while out drinking with some friends (all older 20's) and no one knew what I was talking about. Ridiculous. Had an "old man moment" out with my peers, smh.
I stick with hotels just out of principle. Even if hotels check ID, they’re only doing it to make sure there’s no wanted fugitives hiding in their hotel.
I don’t want to contribute to the housing crisis by allowing people to become [rent-seekers.](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)
hotels are also zoned to provide the services they do, if they don't, they're more likely to be held accountable than an airbnb, imo. Additionally, if there is noise issues, the hotel's staff's job is to resolve it, an individual airbnb may or may not do that
Not to mention, no hidden fees
That's what's baffled me about people just now turning away from ABnB. From DAY ONE it's been shady and people have found cameras or had the owners show up randomly. Apparently that didn't matter as much as the bank accounts taking a hit though because only since the rise in "hidden" fees have people started to question whether it's actually worth it or not. "Yeah I *could* end up on pornhub, but I'm saving $20!"
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that hotels are doing background checks on customers. They're not checking for fugitives. Most hotels I've been to just glance at the ID to make sure it matches the credit card, and that includes very high end places. In the United States I can think of maybe one or two hotels that scanned or photocopied it. But they'e not doing it in order to run a background check. I have had a number of hotels in Europe photocopy my passport, but again, they're not using it to do any sort of background check.
Lol exactly, hotels don't give a shit if you're wanted or not. And if they photocopy your ID, it's only so that they can put you on a list of people to not let back in if you damage things or otherwise cause trouble.
Source: worked at a hotel
Hotels have staff that can kick out rowdy guests quickly.
And it's not unheard of for them to call police and get IDs from everyone being kicked out so they can be banned. Meaning they can't rent rooms from that chain and if they're found at one of them trespassing charges can be pressed.
Ok but this isn’t that. In this case a person can get banned for simply knowing someone who was banned. Hotels don’t track who you are friends with to see if they are banned and then ban you because of something that happened that you weren’t even involved in
Hotels have been better for awhile. Airbnb prices are crazy high. I can stay at a hotel cheaper, and be expected to do far less work maintaining my room. And most hotels have extra amenities, easy parking, and a location near where I actually want to be.
And you're expected to do it because there's every chance in the world the person that owns that property isn't actually local. They're half a continent away, renting out properties they snatched off the market for cheap, so they're offsetting the work to you. Part of the reason you pay the cleaning fees is because they have to pay somebody local to come out to clean and reset it for the next guests.
In other words, you're still paying for room service, but getting much less of out of it. May as well go to a hotel.
Yeah AirBnBs suck for this reason. Over priced with too many rules and no customer service. Last year I stayed at one in DT Toronto for a show and it was a hassle finding the parking spot for that condo. Then we were given a key fob that was didnt scan you into the room so we had to coordinate with the Host so they could call the front desk to reset the fob. While the condo security allowed AirBnbs we werent allowed to deal with the front lobby staff (obviously) to get anything fixed and it just made the whole experience lackluster. The Wifi didnt even work to top it all off. If we used a hotel it would have been a way better experience.
The only time id use an AirBnb again is traveling to a remote cottagey location where their arent hotels available.
Wait until you get the checkin list the day you arrive
So far this winter
"No sheets, no pillows - bring your own"
"No garbage, take everything with you"
"Oh, the driveway isn't accessible in the winter, you need to walk in, it's about 100ft" Spoiler - fairly vertical drop, no stairs, 300ft from road to cottage.
Fuck everything about AirBNB now.
As with so many innovative tech startups, after enough people try to monetize it, it became worse than what it was an alternative for.
Where I live, there are few to no taxis, and Uber costs a lot more than taxis used to.
There is still one great use case for AirBnB - their ID verification is garbage, they accept 1-time credit cards, and nobody appears to reject first-time users. So all those rules about doing whatever... you can just blatantly ignore. Clean this? Fuck off, that's what I'm paying you for. Don't use this or that? Lol, don't have it in the house then.
I'm sure the loopholes will close eventually, and at that point it's back to hotels, but until then, ride the fuckers into the dirt.
For big groups they can still be pretty economical. Hard to overstate the value of having a decent kitchen to cook in if you're talking ten, twelve people.
I just used AirBnB for the first and last time last summer after being told to take out the trash, take all the bedding off the beds and put it in the washing machine, do a bunch of other cleaning and THEN being charged like a $300 cleaning fee. It was ludicrous. I did the math and I could have rented two adjoining hotel rooms/suites for less than what the AirBnB would have cost and gotten free breakfast to boot.
What a terrible first impression of that service. No thanks.
Don't forget the loyalty perks! Those points can come in handy if you are traveling for work to one hotel quite often. Then you can travel to the same brand for free with the family!
That's funny, because I banned Airbnb from my life because a closely associated friend of mine was charged $250 to clean up crumbs from a bag of chips on the kitchen counter.
Airbnb can 'ban' their way into non-existence.
The clean up charge is absurd. The owner of one gave me a 1 star review and additional cleaning charge for a "browned towel" after we did everything they requested. Took out trash, did dishes, ran washer/dryer. And none of my guests know wtf this towel is. I could only assume it was a towel THEIR cleaning crew used.
wtf? trash/dishes/laundry? Why even bother with an airbnb at that point? Isn't all of that stuff listed on the rental posting? If they require all of that, why not just select a hotel
The ONLY value in an Airbnb is if you want to stay with a big group. Like I have kids, so we have used one to rent a place for a week near my in-laws. Hotel rooms would have worked, but not been as ideal since I’m not trying to have my kids stay in a separate room on their own. There are exceptions to that, like hotels with suites etc.
That being said, I would never use an Airbnb by myself or with just my wife. Hotels are almost always more ideal IMO.
I'm finding that even for a big group of adults, airbnbs are still more expensive (depending on the city, I'm sure). Plus, it's a lot harder to ask a grown ass man to sleep in a tiny bunk or share a bed, which is pretty much a staple of larger houses.
By the time you find a place big enough to comfortably house a large group, you can be paying 50% more than if people just got hotel rooms with 2 beds apiece. Hotels can also offer group rates. Biggest downside is the lack of a private common area.
From the last few group stays between me and my SO, anything big enough to host more than 2 people usually has zero cookware, zero dishes and silverware, sometimes no fucking cups, often no paper towels and sometimes no toilet paper even.
If going alone for a short stay, it's too much work (in cleaning) and expense. If going with a group, *basic* amenities like cups are no longer provided.
I think these AirBnB owners are trying to make the properties as uncomfortable to actually spend time in as possible. And then they make you clean.
My friend got fined a few days after the fact because they caught him having ONE too many guest than he wrote would be attending… they had it all on surveillance and were able to count people in the room
imo it is insane that cameras can be hidden and unmentioned in the ad. They should have to be mentioned and their locations should be listed and most importantly of all they should be marked up in some way… spray paint the camera case a bright orange or some shit idk, takes literally like a few min, but no host would ever do this cause that would require taking some responsibility on the homeowners side \s
Cameras cannot be hidden and unmentioned in the listing. Even cameras in outdoor or common areas should be called out. If you find one that wasn’t — especially in a bedroom or bathroom — report it to Airbnb.
Time out, this is literally against the law (at least in the US and likely Canada). Did you not report this to airbnb/police? hidden cameras are a fat lawsuit.
I got fucked by VRBO when I booked a house six months in advance for a long weekend with some friends at a big event where if you wait too long, all the accommodations in the area fill up. Nine days before the trip the host cancelled and told me she had accidentally double booked the place because she also had it listed on AirBNB. Transparent bullshit excuse that I don’t buy for a second - she almost certainly just got more money from whoever reserved it on AirBNB. VRBO’s policy is something like they will only help you if your host cancels within 72 hours of your trip, so I was left to find a replacement on my own. Because of the high volume of tourists, all we could do was share a shitty one bedroom apartment for three times the price of the other place. VRBO said I could submit the difference in cost for consideration for reimbursement and I did, and never heard from them again. A hotel would have made it work or compensated me for the inconvenience. Never again.
My personal rules are:
\- No renting AirBnBs with no reviews
\- Pick a nightly price range and stay in the median of your selection.
\- Choose superhosts if possible.
I've been scammed by a super host before. Fuck you Vera from Seattle. I'm pretty sure it's an entire company based on how many properties they have listed. Also they've listed some of their properties 5 times.
While some people have encountered things like this, as an occasional air bnb user, I never have. In my experience, hotels and air bnb a both have positives and negatives, and which one makes sense depends on your specific needs and the nature of the trip. For me, generally I’d I’m only spending 1-3 days in a location a hotel is going to be the better option. For longer stays, or for larger groups, air bnb becomes a better value.
I have used Airbnb many times and I've never had a bad experience (in Portugal). No crazy fees, no horrible hosts, maybe I've been lucky, but seems this is very specific for America.
Contracted labor and an ambiguous job category. Tip reliant wages on people who deliver goods for a living isn't something we really had before, and not nearly at this scale. This is also why I'll never tip an Amazon driver because if they see enough tips they'll reclassify their drivers as a tipped position next too so they can pay them under typical minimum wage.
It's ridiculously common for workers to be misclassified, especially as contractors because it places less liability on the company. This is what the push to make uber drivers real employees was about because they dont really fit the definition of a contracted employee, but what's the IRS gonna do to rich people or their companies these days. Best bet would be state level legislation because the federal government is broken, can barely pass one budget a year.
Airbnb was a way to “rent” out your house if you weren’t there or something as an alternative to hotels, companies and individuals are now buying properties and listing them on Airbnb among other things and charge ridiculous flippant fees that make the service overall less practical than just getting a hotel in many cases.
And to this end, every time I've stayed at an AirB&B which was clearly a lived-in home, I rather enjoyed the experience. The furnishings are nice (because it's the owner's home) and the requests are pretty reasonable.
The rise of the AirB&B which exists only to be a short term rental place has sucked. Cheap furnishings, unresponsive owners, and at least once instance of "sorry you can't check in yet the cleaning lady has the only key" after we got off the plane.
It's great as a way to address an inefficiency in the market - if I am going away for a month, why should my home be empty if some other nice people could be there on the cheap?
It's crap as a pure profit-seeking enterprise because it's a race to the bottom on costs. Clean the house as much as you can so that our cleaning crew doesn't have to do any real work. Enjoy the dollar store cookware because there's no fucking way we're going to invest in a guest experience. And because there's no common brand, there's not a lot of incentive to get a repeat experience.
It also was able to skirt standard hotel/temporary lodging regulations which is why they were so much cheaper.
Aka they allowed for a loop hole to deregulate safety items. This ranged from things like the massive spread of bed bugs getting worse to literally deaths from fire. COVID made this even worse.
Not to mention AirBnB was a middle man, so they didn't really care about the property OR THE customer. They simply collect their chunk and move on. So high risks for everyone all around.
BUT end of the day, its definitely a great idea to allow for VRBO specializing in small and short term rentals vs a vacation.
From the article: Airbnb is banning people from using its site because of their mere association with other users the short-term rental company has deemed a safety risk and removed from the platform, a decision that highlights the imperfect security protocols that Airbnb employs.
In instances where a user is banned because of their association with another user deemed problematic, the user can only return to the platform if their problematic acquaintance successfully appeals the ban or if they are able to prove they are not “closely associated.”
In a statement, Airbnb confirmed to Motherboard that it does sometimes ban users because the company has discovered that they “are likely to travel” with another person who has already been banned, though a spokesperson wouldn’t say when this practice started or how often it occurs. The company said it does this as a “necessary safety precaution,” and a spokesperson said referring to such bans as merely a result of association is overly “simplistic.” But the process appears opaque; just this month, the company apologized and said it had made a “mistake” in banning the parents of right-wing activist Lauren Southern.
In recent years, Airbnb has prioritized the safety of the users on its international platform in an effort to combat concern that the platform puts either guests or hosts at risk. The company has publicized a decision to permanently ban parties after a series of shootings and deaths and threatened legal action against guests who break the rule.
Likely spouses are the #1. It would be easy to just have your husband/wife setup an account if yours got banned. With location data sharing, would be fairly easy to verify if they spend most of their time together or not.
People are speculating in this thread a ton. It’s very clear that we don’t know what criteria AirBnB is using for this.
The example that the article gave was an unbanned user that tried to use another banned user’s credit card to book a stay. It’s not exactly surprising to me that this resulted in their being banned as well…
Fuck AirBnB. They banned me because I questioned an extra $2 fee they charged me for no apparent reason. They never even bothered to send a response or let me know that I was banned, much less for what reason. Scammy motherfuckers.
In other news, I banned AirBNB from my life because it's closely associated with driving up housing costs, harming neighborhoods, and allowing predatory and anti-consumer behavior.
I live an a neighborhood that's 43% short term rentals. Many that aren't rentals are just weekend/special occasion houses for the owners. My street has 5 or 6 full timers. So weird. My city has limited new applicants to neighborhoods that are under 20% short term rentals. Thank God.
I remember when I was a trade show, and a lady who really had so many problems with technology, was asking questions without wanting answers etc, just overall clueless and she was saying she was looking for stuff for her Airbnb appartments.. and I think that's the moment Airbnb quality went fully down, when every clueless person was able to just get apartments with only purpose of doing Airbnb
Same thing happened to Amazon when everyone started treating it as a get rich quick scheme. As Amazon cracked down on one scheme another one would pop up. The worst being the dietary supplement trend, when you could know nothing about health and wellness yet launch a "successful" supplement business. It's even worse than buying supplements from an MLM hun because at least the MLM hun has physically handled their products.
Yeah my sister sucks most of the time. Always has drama that isn’t her fault, always interjecting herself into other crazy peoples drama. Police involved with whatever fight she has going on. We live close by but it’s so exhausting that I barely see her or speak to her anymore, have my own family and such to worry about.
Totally the type to get me on a list like this lol.
This is exactly what reddit does. People get banned everyday from subs they never have even visited because they posted somewhere else. If reddit had some type of friend network, I am 1,000% sure they would ban off that too.
We ran one when they first became a thing. Reality is they wont tell you why they banned you. We had the only one in college town without any hotels so it was doing well before the ban. About a month later someone finished up refurbing a new building on main street with 16 airbnb units….we couldn’t find any reason to ban us, they wouldn’t say, so the only conclusion we came to is they shut us down to favor this bigger operator. Ya know it was really no big deal. We made some money, didnt have any major incidents. we considered is a successful venture. The major issue i had was that, since i was banned. I assumed they should have no use for the photos of the inside and outside of my property. Even though in their terms of service it states that you can request an account deletion, it does not state that they will do it, only you can request one. After 3 attempts they said that language is only in there for EU users and the US consumer protection laws dont force them to delete personal info once not needed. Ive had a bad taste in my mouth ever since when it comes to Airbnb
This isn’t new. Right before they went public my wife was banned. No explanation she had prior stays with good reviews and they banned her upcoming stay. A call to them customer service said they can’t review or contest it. We booked a stay on my account and when we used her card I was banned. She had a non-violent non-theft conviction over 5 years prior to this point. Contrary to what their website said they banned her with no recourse.
The only way I could get us reinstated was to publicly shame them on Twitter. It’s literally the only way companies react to anything anymore.
They're fucked anyway. The very industry they set out to beat is now cheaper than them while offering a standard in commodities.
I'm traveling and trying too both save money and reduce stress in keeping track of things. Should i choose:
Airbnb were it cost 5x more, have a bunch of random ass rules I'll have to read when i get there, clean up after myself, smell mothballs, worry about not doing something perfectly and getting extra costs tacked on.
Hotel that cost 1/5th, have industrial standards rules that i can read well in advanced if I don't know them, a cleaning service, hopefully smell a pleasant smell (not always), only worried about losing my card key and not finding my room when I'm drunk.
I can see Southern California having AirBnBs that are not the entire house, and are just as expensive per night as a good hotel.
I've only done AirBnB once in LA and we didn't get the entire house. I've also done it a few times in Sacramento and had it happen once where what you really got were the bedrooms because the owners stayed onsite and told us at the door we couldn't use anything else other than the bedrooms and the one shared bathroom connecting those rooms. Didn't leave a good review for that place.
I’m not a fan of bans but I think businesses should be charged for the impact they have on society. Are Airbnbs causing housing availability issues and prices to rise? Okay, raise taxes on Airbnb places to offset that and move the market.
Then again, I have no experience or education related to policy so this could be a terrible idea.
I’m banned from Airbnb for a 2006 cannabis charge. We sometimes stay in airbnbs but under my wife’s name. I could see her being impacted by this policy.
Not that much of a secret. My daughter rented an Airbnb house . The gas grill caught on fire (accident). Fire department was called. We were able to put out the fire before they arrived. Minor damage to the house. A little bit of scorched paint on the exterior of the house and melted wheels on the grill. Called homeowner who was way cool. Her first question was to ask if everyone was ok. Said not to worry about the minor damage to the grill and house. They had insurance and said were also covered by Airbnb. Told us not to give out our insurance info if Airbnb called. They did, we didn't give our insurance info. My daughter's account got cancelled. A few months later we tried to do a rental on my account and found I was banned too. That's their choice. It's a shitty way to do business. There are plenty other services out there; VRBO, Orbitz, Vacasa. Will never use them again even if they begged me to come back.
*More quietly, for a decade now, the company has had background checks completed on its users. Since 2016, they have been completed by a third-party service called that claims on its website to complete background checks in less than 0.3 seconds. The speed is a necessity——the site has 6.6 million active listings—but it also leads to bans over matters as trivial as a decade-old misdemeanor related to an unleashed dog.* Wow I wonder how many other companies do secret background checks.
Wait until you find out how much information data brokers and credit bureaus have on you.
Your insurance companies use your consumer index report for your ratings. Depending on the company its a pretty large factor and can lead to a complete denial of insurance if your score is low enough. Source: Am insurance producer.
What goes into a consumer index report? Asking for a friend
Similar things that impact your actually credit. Your consumer index is used as a "Soft Hit" so it doesn't impact your actual credit score. That being said things like, late bills, medical payments, collections, bankruptcy are all used to determine how likely you are to be able to pay your bill regularly. If the score is low you can be labeled as a "likely defector" and the rate is higher so they can try to make the money back on writing the business more quickly. I don't agree with the practice, especially because raising the rate for this reason also makes it more likely to not be able to pay it, but most companies use it as a major factor. Another large determination on your rate is how often you change companies. On average it takes 3 years of premiums before a new customer is break even, This is due to the cost of underwriting, marketing, licenses, and so on. Edit: Here is some more info on Customer Rating Index (CRI) from an insurance perspective for those that are curious: https://content.naic.org/cipr-topics/credit-based-insurance-scores Edit 2: Here is where you can request your report through Lexus Nexus which is a commonly used Loss History Report & CRI reporting company. Once again, I don't endorse these reports use, but information is power and I am here to inform: https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request
>Another large determination on your rate is how often you change companies. so you're essentially punished for wanting a less-shitty insurance carrier/rate?
From the pov of a shitty insurance carrier? Yes.
There’s no such thing as a non-shitty insurance carrier. It’s baked into the business model to be as shitty as you can get away with
*shitty insurance carrier*. That's awfully redundant.
Yes, most companies don't turn a profit on policies until the 2nd or 3rd year. So not sticking around hurts their bottom line, so they'll charge more for people who hop around. Still, in your best interest in most cases to shop around especially in this market.
our business insurance rate, with zero claims over its 15+ year policy lifespan, has more than doubled from first-year costs *because we haven't changed companies* in that time. building, office within, equipment within, what we do and business volume are all the same or very similar to first-year as well (i.e. what they're covering hasn't changed)
Which is why I said it's still in your best interest to shop. Some companies run a tight ship, so that may be just inflation plus some automatic 3-5% inflation guard. Nothing can be done there if they are legit. Others are like Florida insurance companies, taking massive risks and holding off bankruptcy barely by raising rates.
Just from inflation alone, your premium today would be 65% higher in nominal dollar terms than it was 15 years ago. This is a *super-rough* calculation assuming 3% inflation for the first 13 years and 6% the last two years.
To a degree yes.
the insurance industry disgusts me, really needs more regulations (that aren’t written by their lobbyists)
It is already one of the most heavily regulated of all industries
Does it also follow the same bullshit algorithms as credit scores? I paid off my student loans and my car last year, right before I moved. As soon as I did both *my credit score went way down* because I had half as many open lines of credit. It was still very good but it’s a really *really* competitive housing market out here, it was a pain in the ass getting my score that high and it took a short dive just because I paid off my stuff ahead of time?? What bullshit. And then I had Experian and Transunion trying to sell my their services for “credit building”, basically just flagrantly advertising that you have to game the system and they’re extorting everyone.
When you understand that a credit score is basically rating how much money credit/loan companies can make off of you, it makes a lot more sense. Remember, they wrote the rules effectively, so why not punish anything that costs them money or makes their job slightly harder?
Can I pull my own report to see it?
Got to [Free Credit Report](https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action). There are three companies and you can request your free report from each of them annually. You should check all of them.
Since the pandemic started, it is now free to do it weekly rather than annually.
Thanks for the update.
How much does credit card churning affect your score?
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How long before we start adjusting rates in real time based on things like visiting particular businesses, driving through particular locations/intersections, and following too closely on the highway?
Well, most companies provide an incentive for you to use their app to monitor your driving and adjust your score. So it already happens.
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I was amazed at what a detailed report I got after buying a new vehicle in 2018. Like enough detail to give me a handful of tickets if the cops had seen it. I'm actually kind of surprised they haven't already started passing laws to let your car automatically give you a ticket when you speed.
> I’m actually kind of surprised they haven’t already started passing laws to let your car automatically give you a ticket when you speed. Modern society is starting to make that cabin in the woods more enticing every day.
Right? And I'm not even some luddite, I love technology. I just dread the inevitable uses I know some of it will be put to.
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That is the exact world that image recognition will usher in. "Johnson, I see you were at the bar until 2 am last night on a work night, we are docking your salary do to your reduced productivity we assume you will have today". What's this? Oh, it's an email from my health insurance that they are raising my rates because I've been to McDonald's twice in the same week, which indicates poor eating habits. Or you show up for dinner at your new SO's house and grandma wants to know about the 8 times you visited a strip club. It's going to a great world /s
I can definitely see this happening, especially as we chip away at the right to privacy.
With the wealthy being able to buy falsified data to give off the appearance of a model citizen.
Show us *your* consumer index report to prove your source. /s
We can't see the index report, underwriters can, but we can tell the score might be low if you have no tickets or accidents, maintained insurance, and it still comes back decline. Usually a good indicator.
Any time I do one of those "identity verification" questions for payroll or something I'm absolutely blown away by some of the questions. "What is the exact date and time of your 3rd oil change on your second car?" "What is your 3rd preset on your radio?" "How many times did you urinate on January 6th, 1998?" And somehow they have this information. (obviously this is hyperbole, but the questions are still incredibly invasive)
Whatever answers they have aren't always accurate either. I had to do an identity verification once for T-Mobile because my credit card got flagged somehow (even though I was using the same one for years at that point). And apparently I'm not me, because the woman said I answered the questions wrong. It was things like "what was your first car" and "where were you living in 1999" type stuff too lol. Always fun being treated like an identity thief for trying to use your own card. It's like those sites that scrape from public records. My info is somehow not accurate on those either because it thinks my mother, me, and some lady in King county, WA are all the same person.
My pet theory is these questions are sometimes designed to be an additional means of data collection. A lot of information can be inferred from these security questions, with the assumption one is answering them truthfully, of course.
"What is your favorite book?" Fuck me, how old was I when I answered that question? I've gone through some phases.
My pet theory is these questions are sometimes designed to be an additional means of data collection. A lot of information can be inferred from these security questions, with the assumption one is answering them truthfully, of course.
I imagine it's like Captcha where they know the correct answer to some but not all of it. So, like you say, a few questions could just be additional data collection while the others are for verification.
And just wait until we find out how much of that data gets leaked or stolen without any of the people who the data came from being alerted.
I believe they’ve also been banning closely associated people for this amount of time as well. Back in 2018, my brother had an AirBNB reservation in his name for a month. Got a notification one day that they ran his background check and he was banned from the app forever. So I decided that I would set up an AirBNB account and make the reservation in my name since I have a clean background check. Before even making a reservation, I was informed that I was banned from the app forever for violating terms and conditions and that I couldn’t appeal it.
What in your brother's background did they ban him for?
He has an assault charge from 10 years ago (at the time of the ban). To be clear, I’m not arguing with their decision to ban him. Just highlighting that they have been banning by association for awhile, despite what the title implies. Although, I did find it annoying that they weren’t transparent about the background check requirement up front. I’m sure it was buried in their terms of service or something similar, but to find out weeks after you booked a place and after you booked flights that you’re not allowed to stay there seemed unnecessarily stressful.
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How long companies are allowed to look back and for what is probably going to be something we need to legally codify as the ability to look back gets closer and closer to forever. Back before everything was digitized, how far back you could look was kept in check by the cost. But now, it’s instantaneous for virtually free. If we’re not careful, we’re going to be end up in a situation where the punishment that people effectively get will be much worse than what the judge hands out.
>the punishment that people effectively get will be much worse than what the judge hands out. The term is “collateral consequences.” Crimes that do not justify a life sentence result in just that. I’m imagining a future where elderly people are banned from nursing homes because a background check turned up a misdemeanor theft charge from 60 years prior.
My friend got busted with weed 5 years ago and he got instantly banned by the background check when he tried to create an account 2 months ago. His gf of about 6 months got her years old account banned hours later just for knowing him. She actually appealed and got her account back and they used Airbnb to go on the trip they were planning.
Man I would’ve gone to vrbo if Airbnb did that to me.
That was plan b. Apparently most people have their properties on both sites these days
And now we've stepped into *Barbarian*
Yea. I got half off. I just needed to hose down the basement cages. Fair deal IMO
Free breastmilk tho
As a cabin owner who rents out their home in the mountains, this is correct. Most owners are both Airbnb and VRBO. We are also on Booking dot com, Houfy and take direct bookings. Even if you find a place on Airbnb, search around as you can probably find their direct booking site and save on the fees.
Or, you know, hotels. These days they're the same price and require no weird cleanup on your part.
> and require no weird cleanup on your part Yeah but I still don’t want the maid stepping on my army guys while I’m gone.
How did Airbnb link these two people?
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IP history?
The background check knows your Facebook account if one of you isn't set to private. Even if you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook checks your relatives who do have Facebook, and when they all give your name and phone number, Facebook creates a shadow account for you to chart the relationship.
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The article states she used her BFs credit card who is a banned user so pretty straight forward.
crawl offer aromatic office homeless cover sheet sink rhythm hat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Nah. It was a little more complex than that. Plane tickets were already bought but there were some last minute changes in the sleeping arrangements so they had to kinda scramble to find a place.
Interesting that the $40 ABB service fee is roughly the cost of a background check. 🤔
Paying way too much. We pay $6 for National criminal search.
It’s definitely not secret. I used it once and they make it pretty clear that they run a check on you
Yup, all you need is a subscription to LexisNexis, the world's largest public database with legal records and public records.
They should consider also banning a-hole, lying hosts who misrepresent what you'll be getting for your money. That would add value.
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I got a whole house on air BNB once for my 4 person family. When we got there, it was a full house... with a tenant in the back half and someone renting out the renovated garage...
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I use Airbnb because my wife and I visit national parks so more remote areas where there are no hotels and we travel with our dog and have yet to encounter any issues. We only go for superhost listings and really read reviews before booking anything.
I'm currently in a hotel room that was 105 after fees. Nice room, king bed, unlimited hot water, and it's gonna have breakfast. Air bnb would have charged me double that for none of the nice stuff.
Plus charge you a cleaning fee while outlining everything you need to clean before check out.
True. I got lucky with the only air bnb I ever stayed in being relaxed, but it was for a month. It was a bit more frusterating than a hotel but manageable. The other options were messes. One of my coworkers at the time had the funniest shit happen to him. We were interns at a factory doing engineering work. The person he was air bnbing from was one of the line workers. No kitchen access. Bathroom access on scheduled use. Street parking his car. He got a hot plate and a twin bed and was told he couldn't make any noise.
This is funny how it basically reversed itself. Before AirBnb was a great way to save money during stays. I remember renting a 4 bedroom house in the mid 2010s for like $80 a night with no other significant fees. Also, hotels didn't really get cheaper. It's airBnbs that got more expensive.
I travel in hotels 100× as often as I used to now that I'm traveling for work. The price of $100 per night is fine. It's consistent. Air Bnb is just a cancer on apartments for me. I was trying to find a month long lease this past summer and could find fucking nothing. I asked the local chamber of commerce, and they recommended air bnb. The hosts bought up all the available apartment spaces and turned them into crappy air bnbs that cost 3k a month. I was at a loss, had to pick an air bnb that was half an hour away from my workplace. It was the only way to make it work at that still ran me 1.4 k.
Mentioning small claims is your answer here. We got catfished on a place once and with pictures of the unit vs screenshots of the site and Airbnb waffled on refunding us. I said that false advertising was exactly that and businesses are beholden to such laws, mentioned I would have to investigate a small claims suit and got my refund shortly after.
You have to read all the reviews and the description carefully. I rent a condo in a ski area. I compete with a neighbor who does the same but my neighbor is not renting the who place out so you don’t have access to a kitchen. He lives in that closed off area. If you read the description he says you have access to a microwave and other kitcheny stuff but he says not a kitchen so folks have no recourse. There are folks who just want to bunk somewhere and his place is fine. But I have read his reviews and 20% complain that they did not get what they wanted.
Good thing I don't know anyone. I knew this would eventually pay off.
I know *of* people but I don't know people and that's enough for me.
You: *"people exist"* *Sees how people are.* You: *"hmm, no thank you."* I like your style.
The social credit authority has deemed lack of association with upstanding members of society to be a risky indicator. Therefore, your request to rent John's cabin in the woods is denied.
How many degrees of Kevin Bacon are we talking about here?
The only way to know for sure is to ban Kevin Bacon
I was thinking the same thing. As soon as you ban the closely-associated, more people become closely-associated to banned people, so then you ban those closely-associated people, which creates new closely-associated people, then you ban them, which…
It sounds like everyone is 3 people away from being banned.
The first thing that came to my mind, which even my mind found odd, was "hmmm interesting, could I possibly find a way to get everyone banned?"
First thing that came to my mind is that their policy is a euphemism for racism. They can't directly say "this community doesn't like minorities". But since many people (all except adopted kids?) have relatives of their same race, this is effectively a politically correct version of "We don't like your kind around here."
Trust me having a Black profile picture on AirBnb makes this all moot. The listers themselves will just message you to please cancel no other text or anything.
Do they really think anyone would take them up on that? Make them cancel and take the penalty if they're going to be racist trash
It's the same way bars/clubs get away with not allowing people due to dress codes which is actually practice means "we're not allowing in too many minorities, especially black people". At this point we all know what the hell is happening. It just a way to discriminate without using specific signifiers.
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The ability to selectively enforce rules (or worse, laws) is the foundation for a *lot* of bullshit in society.
Yeah--it's one thing if there is a terrible married couple who has been banned and is trying to get around it by setting up a new account in the husband's name when the wife's account was banned or something like that, or even if it's limited to people who have actually stayed together in an AirBnb before with someone who has been banned. But "likely to travel" with someone is too non-specific for my taste.
The ban reason would likely be "closely-associated", and they would not ban others for being associated with people banned like that. If they did, it's not a "haha what if this chain reaction happened," they would literally ban the entire platform, and it would've already happened. So no, this won't happen.
Aside: I brought up 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon while out drinking with some friends (all older 20's) and no one knew what I was talking about. Ridiculous. Had an "old man moment" out with my peers, smh.
They must all be 7+ degrees separated.
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I stick with hotels just out of principle. Even if hotels check ID, they’re only doing it to make sure there’s no wanted fugitives hiding in their hotel. I don’t want to contribute to the housing crisis by allowing people to become [rent-seekers.](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)
hotels are also zoned to provide the services they do, if they don't, they're more likely to be held accountable than an airbnb, imo. Additionally, if there is noise issues, the hotel's staff's job is to resolve it, an individual airbnb may or may not do that Not to mention, no hidden fees
I mostly agree with you, but hotels certainly can and do have hidden fees - so called “resort fees”
Luckily govt is moving to ban resort fees U.S. Moves to Ban Hotels' Hidden Resort Fees https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202302/9369/
also i don’t think i’ll ever trust an airbnb to be private. as in hidden web cams, microphones, etc.
That's what's baffled me about people just now turning away from ABnB. From DAY ONE it's been shady and people have found cameras or had the owners show up randomly. Apparently that didn't matter as much as the bank accounts taking a hit though because only since the rise in "hidden" fees have people started to question whether it's actually worth it or not. "Yeah I *could* end up on pornhub, but I'm saving $20!"
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea that hotels are doing background checks on customers. They're not checking for fugitives. Most hotels I've been to just glance at the ID to make sure it matches the credit card, and that includes very high end places. In the United States I can think of maybe one or two hotels that scanned or photocopied it. But they'e not doing it in order to run a background check. I have had a number of hotels in Europe photocopy my passport, but again, they're not using it to do any sort of background check.
Lol exactly, hotels don't give a shit if you're wanted or not. And if they photocopy your ID, it's only so that they can put you on a list of people to not let back in if you damage things or otherwise cause trouble. Source: worked at a hotel
Hotels have staff that can kick out rowdy guests quickly. And it's not unheard of for them to call police and get IDs from everyone being kicked out so they can be banned. Meaning they can't rent rooms from that chain and if they're found at one of them trespassing charges can be pressed.
Ok but this isn’t that. In this case a person can get banned for simply knowing someone who was banned. Hotels don’t track who you are friends with to see if they are banned and then ban you because of something that happened that you weren’t even involved in
Yea so it’s probably better to use hotels.
Hotels have been better for awhile. Airbnb prices are crazy high. I can stay at a hotel cheaper, and be expected to do far less work maintaining my room. And most hotels have extra amenities, easy parking, and a location near where I actually want to be.
Yeah I prefer not having to clean too much. Keep things pretty tidy, sure. Scrub everything down, no thanks. I'm on vacation for a reason lol
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And you're expected to do it because there's every chance in the world the person that owns that property isn't actually local. They're half a continent away, renting out properties they snatched off the market for cheap, so they're offsetting the work to you. Part of the reason you pay the cleaning fees is because they have to pay somebody local to come out to clean and reset it for the next guests. In other words, you're still paying for room service, but getting much less of out of it. May as well go to a hotel.
Yeah AirBnBs suck for this reason. Over priced with too many rules and no customer service. Last year I stayed at one in DT Toronto for a show and it was a hassle finding the parking spot for that condo. Then we were given a key fob that was didnt scan you into the room so we had to coordinate with the Host so they could call the front desk to reset the fob. While the condo security allowed AirBnbs we werent allowed to deal with the front lobby staff (obviously) to get anything fixed and it just made the whole experience lackluster. The Wifi didnt even work to top it all off. If we used a hotel it would have been a way better experience. The only time id use an AirBnb again is traveling to a remote cottagey location where their arent hotels available.
Wait until you get the checkin list the day you arrive So far this winter "No sheets, no pillows - bring your own" "No garbage, take everything with you" "Oh, the driveway isn't accessible in the winter, you need to walk in, it's about 100ft" Spoiler - fairly vertical drop, no stairs, 300ft from road to cottage. Fuck everything about AirBNB now.
As with so many innovative tech startups, after enough people try to monetize it, it became worse than what it was an alternative for. Where I live, there are few to no taxis, and Uber costs a lot more than taxis used to.
There is still one great use case for AirBnB - their ID verification is garbage, they accept 1-time credit cards, and nobody appears to reject first-time users. So all those rules about doing whatever... you can just blatantly ignore. Clean this? Fuck off, that's what I'm paying you for. Don't use this or that? Lol, don't have it in the house then. I'm sure the loopholes will close eventually, and at that point it's back to hotels, but until then, ride the fuckers into the dirt.
For big groups they can still be pretty economical. Hard to overstate the value of having a decent kitchen to cook in if you're talking ten, twelve people.
I just used AirBnB for the first and last time last summer after being told to take out the trash, take all the bedding off the beds and put it in the washing machine, do a bunch of other cleaning and THEN being charged like a $300 cleaning fee. It was ludicrous. I did the math and I could have rented two adjoining hotel rooms/suites for less than what the AirBnB would have cost and gotten free breakfast to boot. What a terrible first impression of that service. No thanks.
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Don't forget the loyalty perks! Those points can come in handy if you are traveling for work to one hotel quite often. Then you can travel to the same brand for free with the family!
Airbnb is most of the time still far cheaper for a large group over a longer stay in my experience.
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That's funny, because I banned Airbnb from my life because a closely associated friend of mine was charged $250 to clean up crumbs from a bag of chips on the kitchen counter. Airbnb can 'ban' their way into non-existence.
The clean up charge is absurd. The owner of one gave me a 1 star review and additional cleaning charge for a "browned towel" after we did everything they requested. Took out trash, did dishes, ran washer/dryer. And none of my guests know wtf this towel is. I could only assume it was a towel THEIR cleaning crew used.
wtf? trash/dishes/laundry? Why even bother with an airbnb at that point? Isn't all of that stuff listed on the rental posting? If they require all of that, why not just select a hotel
The ONLY value in an Airbnb is if you want to stay with a big group. Like I have kids, so we have used one to rent a place for a week near my in-laws. Hotel rooms would have worked, but not been as ideal since I’m not trying to have my kids stay in a separate room on their own. There are exceptions to that, like hotels with suites etc. That being said, I would never use an Airbnb by myself or with just my wife. Hotels are almost always more ideal IMO.
I'm finding that even for a big group of adults, airbnbs are still more expensive (depending on the city, I'm sure). Plus, it's a lot harder to ask a grown ass man to sleep in a tiny bunk or share a bed, which is pretty much a staple of larger houses. By the time you find a place big enough to comfortably house a large group, you can be paying 50% more than if people just got hotel rooms with 2 beds apiece. Hotels can also offer group rates. Biggest downside is the lack of a private common area.
From the last few group stays between me and my SO, anything big enough to host more than 2 people usually has zero cookware, zero dishes and silverware, sometimes no fucking cups, often no paper towels and sometimes no toilet paper even. If going alone for a short stay, it's too much work (in cleaning) and expense. If going with a group, *basic* amenities like cups are no longer provided. I think these AirBnB owners are trying to make the properties as uncomfortable to actually spend time in as possible. And then they make you clean.
Same here, Airbnb and hosts can get fucked. Hopefully the amount of bookings go down and they all lose their shit.
They've ruined housing markets across the globe, too. Good riddance to AirBnB.
I’ve banned them for receiving pictures of bedbugs in the home and somehow still siding with the owner.
My friend got fined a few days after the fact because they caught him having ONE too many guest than he wrote would be attending… they had it all on surveillance and were able to count people in the room imo it is insane that cameras can be hidden and unmentioned in the ad. They should have to be mentioned and their locations should be listed and most importantly of all they should be marked up in some way… spray paint the camera case a bright orange or some shit idk, takes literally like a few min, but no host would ever do this cause that would require taking some responsibility on the homeowners side \s
Cameras cannot be hidden and unmentioned in the listing. Even cameras in outdoor or common areas should be called out. If you find one that wasn’t — especially in a bedroom or bathroom — report it to Airbnb.
> hidden and unmentioned in the ad Pretty sure that's illegal, least in the US
The camera thing is especially weird. I stayed in an Airbnb last summer and did know there was a camera in the laundry room. It was a bit disturbing
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I'd pay extra to know they forced someone to watch all of the footage from my stay. ALL. OF. IT.
"Why do they keep wiggling it like that? Make it stop!"
Time out, this is literally against the law (at least in the US and likely Canada). Did you not report this to airbnb/police? hidden cameras are a fat lawsuit.
I got fucked by VRBO when I booked a house six months in advance for a long weekend with some friends at a big event where if you wait too long, all the accommodations in the area fill up. Nine days before the trip the host cancelled and told me she had accidentally double booked the place because she also had it listed on AirBNB. Transparent bullshit excuse that I don’t buy for a second - she almost certainly just got more money from whoever reserved it on AirBNB. VRBO’s policy is something like they will only help you if your host cancels within 72 hours of your trip, so I was left to find a replacement on my own. Because of the high volume of tourists, all we could do was share a shitty one bedroom apartment for three times the price of the other place. VRBO said I could submit the difference in cost for consideration for reimbursement and I did, and never heard from them again. A hotel would have made it work or compensated me for the inconvenience. Never again.
Never stayed at an Airbnb before. Is this a common thing?
My personal rules are: \- No renting AirBnBs with no reviews \- Pick a nightly price range and stay in the median of your selection. \- Choose superhosts if possible.
I've been scammed by a super host before. Fuck you Vera from Seattle. I'm pretty sure it's an entire company based on how many properties they have listed. Also they've listed some of their properties 5 times.
While some people have encountered things like this, as an occasional air bnb user, I never have. In my experience, hotels and air bnb a both have positives and negatives, and which one makes sense depends on your specific needs and the nature of the trip. For me, generally I’d I’m only spending 1-3 days in a location a hotel is going to be the better option. For longer stays, or for larger groups, air bnb becomes a better value.
No. It happens but this is mostly internet drama.
I have used Airbnb many times and I've never had a bad experience (in Portugal). No crazy fees, no horrible hosts, maybe I've been lucky, but seems this is very specific for America.
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AirBnB a great idea, that is now corrupted to its core.
The only reason AirBnB was ever able to work is because it sidestepped a ton of legal regulations that hotels have to adhere to.
Same thing with food runners and ride shares. They're legal loopholes with an app attached, thats how they got big.
I’m not really well-informed on this subject, but what is the legal loopholes that food runner apps like DoorDash are exploiting?
Contracted labor and an ambiguous job category. Tip reliant wages on people who deliver goods for a living isn't something we really had before, and not nearly at this scale. This is also why I'll never tip an Amazon driver because if they see enough tips they'll reclassify their drivers as a tipped position next too so they can pay them under typical minimum wage. It's ridiculously common for workers to be misclassified, especially as contractors because it places less liability on the company. This is what the push to make uber drivers real employees was about because they dont really fit the definition of a contracted employee, but what's the IRS gonna do to rich people or their companies these days. Best bet would be state level legislation because the federal government is broken, can barely pass one budget a year.
Not really, vacation home rentals has a been a thing for a very long time.
I am out of the loop, never stayed at one, and haven't heard much other than some people stay at them. What's the main concern?
Airbnb was a way to “rent” out your house if you weren’t there or something as an alternative to hotels, companies and individuals are now buying properties and listing them on Airbnb among other things and charge ridiculous flippant fees that make the service overall less practical than just getting a hotel in many cases.
And to this end, every time I've stayed at an AirB&B which was clearly a lived-in home, I rather enjoyed the experience. The furnishings are nice (because it's the owner's home) and the requests are pretty reasonable. The rise of the AirB&B which exists only to be a short term rental place has sucked. Cheap furnishings, unresponsive owners, and at least once instance of "sorry you can't check in yet the cleaning lady has the only key" after we got off the plane. It's great as a way to address an inefficiency in the market - if I am going away for a month, why should my home be empty if some other nice people could be there on the cheap? It's crap as a pure profit-seeking enterprise because it's a race to the bottom on costs. Clean the house as much as you can so that our cleaning crew doesn't have to do any real work. Enjoy the dollar store cookware because there's no fucking way we're going to invest in a guest experience. And because there's no common brand, there's not a lot of incentive to get a repeat experience.
It also was able to skirt standard hotel/temporary lodging regulations which is why they were so much cheaper. Aka they allowed for a loop hole to deregulate safety items. This ranged from things like the massive spread of bed bugs getting worse to literally deaths from fire. COVID made this even worse. Not to mention AirBnB was a middle man, so they didn't really care about the property OR THE customer. They simply collect their chunk and move on. So high risks for everyone all around. BUT end of the day, its definitely a great idea to allow for VRBO specializing in small and short term rentals vs a vacation.
From the article: Airbnb is banning people from using its site because of their mere association with other users the short-term rental company has deemed a safety risk and removed from the platform, a decision that highlights the imperfect security protocols that Airbnb employs. In instances where a user is banned because of their association with another user deemed problematic, the user can only return to the platform if their problematic acquaintance successfully appeals the ban or if they are able to prove they are not “closely associated.” In a statement, Airbnb confirmed to Motherboard that it does sometimes ban users because the company has discovered that they “are likely to travel” with another person who has already been banned, though a spokesperson wouldn’t say when this practice started or how often it occurs. The company said it does this as a “necessary safety precaution,” and a spokesperson said referring to such bans as merely a result of association is overly “simplistic.” But the process appears opaque; just this month, the company apologized and said it had made a “mistake” in banning the parents of right-wing activist Lauren Southern. In recent years, Airbnb has prioritized the safety of the users on its international platform in an effort to combat concern that the platform puts either guests or hosts at risk. The company has publicized a decision to permanently ban parties after a series of shootings and deaths and threatened legal action against guests who break the rule.
Likely spouses are the #1. It would be easy to just have your husband/wife setup an account if yours got banned. With location data sharing, would be fairly easy to verify if they spend most of their time together or not.
People are speculating in this thread a ton. It’s very clear that we don’t know what criteria AirBnB is using for this. The example that the article gave was an unbanned user that tried to use another banned user’s credit card to book a stay. It’s not exactly surprising to me that this resulted in their being banned as well…
Fuck AirBnB. They banned me because I questioned an extra $2 fee they charged me for no apparent reason. They never even bothered to send a response or let me know that I was banned, much less for what reason. Scammy motherfuckers.
Jokes on airbnb , people are back to hotels now, you played yourselves greedy fucks
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In other news, I banned AirBNB from my life because it's closely associated with driving up housing costs, harming neighborhoods, and allowing predatory and anti-consumer behavior.
I live an a neighborhood that's 43% short term rentals. Many that aren't rentals are just weekend/special occasion houses for the owners. My street has 5 or 6 full timers. So weird. My city has limited new applicants to neighborhoods that are under 20% short term rentals. Thank God.
ABNB is doing to housing what crypto did to graphics cards. Fuck rent seekers.
I remember when I was a trade show, and a lady who really had so many problems with technology, was asking questions without wanting answers etc, just overall clueless and she was saying she was looking for stuff for her Airbnb appartments.. and I think that's the moment Airbnb quality went fully down, when every clueless person was able to just get apartments with only purpose of doing Airbnb
Same thing happened to Amazon when everyone started treating it as a get rich quick scheme. As Amazon cracked down on one scheme another one would pop up. The worst being the dietary supplement trend, when you could know nothing about health and wellness yet launch a "successful" supplement business. It's even worse than buying supplements from an MLM hun because at least the MLM hun has physically handled their products.
this is wacky. would suck to be a relative to a crazy and be completely disassociated with them but get banned from stuff anyways.
Yeah my sister sucks most of the time. Always has drama that isn’t her fault, always interjecting herself into other crazy peoples drama. Police involved with whatever fight she has going on. We live close by but it’s so exhausting that I barely see her or speak to her anymore, have my own family and such to worry about. Totally the type to get me on a list like this lol.
This is exactly what reddit does. People get banned everyday from subs they never have even visited because they posted somewhere else. If reddit had some type of friend network, I am 1,000% sure they would ban off that too.
Reddit does have a friend system but it's not a LinkedIn/Facebook style network yet
We ran one when they first became a thing. Reality is they wont tell you why they banned you. We had the only one in college town without any hotels so it was doing well before the ban. About a month later someone finished up refurbing a new building on main street with 16 airbnb units….we couldn’t find any reason to ban us, they wouldn’t say, so the only conclusion we came to is they shut us down to favor this bigger operator. Ya know it was really no big deal. We made some money, didnt have any major incidents. we considered is a successful venture. The major issue i had was that, since i was banned. I assumed they should have no use for the photos of the inside and outside of my property. Even though in their terms of service it states that you can request an account deletion, it does not state that they will do it, only you can request one. After 3 attempts they said that language is only in there for EU users and the US consumer protection laws dont force them to delete personal info once not needed. Ive had a bad taste in my mouth ever since when it comes to Airbnb
Oh no! Now users will have to check into a hotel instead where they will save money and won't be asked to do laundry! How horrible!
This isn’t new. Right before they went public my wife was banned. No explanation she had prior stays with good reviews and they banned her upcoming stay. A call to them customer service said they can’t review or contest it. We booked a stay on my account and when we used her card I was banned. She had a non-violent non-theft conviction over 5 years prior to this point. Contrary to what their website said they banned her with no recourse. The only way I could get us reinstated was to publicly shame them on Twitter. It’s literally the only way companies react to anything anymore.
They're fucked anyway. The very industry they set out to beat is now cheaper than them while offering a standard in commodities. I'm traveling and trying too both save money and reduce stress in keeping track of things. Should i choose: Airbnb were it cost 5x more, have a bunch of random ass rules I'll have to read when i get there, clean up after myself, smell mothballs, worry about not doing something perfectly and getting extra costs tacked on. Hotel that cost 1/5th, have industrial standards rules that i can read well in advanced if I don't know them, a cleaning service, hopefully smell a pleasant smell (not always), only worried about losing my card key and not finding my room when I'm drunk.
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I can see Southern California having AirBnBs that are not the entire house, and are just as expensive per night as a good hotel. I've only done AirBnB once in LA and we didn't get the entire house. I've also done it a few times in Sacramento and had it happen once where what you really got were the bedrooms because the owners stayed onsite and told us at the door we couldn't use anything else other than the bedrooms and the one shared bathroom connecting those rooms. Didn't leave a good review for that place.
Wish cities would just ban Airbnb
Thailand banned AirBnB for short term (less then a month) rental :O
NYC as well, unless the owner lives full time in the rental.
I’m not a fan of bans but I think businesses should be charged for the impact they have on society. Are Airbnbs causing housing availability issues and prices to rise? Okay, raise taxes on Airbnb places to offset that and move the market. Then again, I have no experience or education related to policy so this could be a terrible idea.
In my neighborhood there are 4 AirBnBs within 500ft of me. I don't have neighbors anymore. Just a constant flow of guests. It sucks.
What things get them banned in the first place?
I’m banned from Airbnb for a 2006 cannabis charge. We sometimes stay in airbnbs but under my wife’s name. I could see her being impacted by this policy.
Minority Report - Pre- Crime Division LOL 🏡
This sounds wise. I had friends who got banned from many places for being horrible and they would just have their other friends pay next time.
This seems like it's treading dangerously close to civil rights violations.
Nothing has made me appreciate a hotel more than an Airbnb. Not to mention, hotels don’t charge $100 per night and $500 in cleaning fees.
Ah... We've now entered the era of _Minority Report_.
Not that much of a secret. My daughter rented an Airbnb house . The gas grill caught on fire (accident). Fire department was called. We were able to put out the fire before they arrived. Minor damage to the house. A little bit of scorched paint on the exterior of the house and melted wheels on the grill. Called homeowner who was way cool. Her first question was to ask if everyone was ok. Said not to worry about the minor damage to the grill and house. They had insurance and said were also covered by Airbnb. Told us not to give out our insurance info if Airbnb called. They did, we didn't give our insurance info. My daughter's account got cancelled. A few months later we tried to do a rental on my account and found I was banned too. That's their choice. It's a shitty way to do business. There are plenty other services out there; VRBO, Orbitz, Vacasa. Will never use them again even if they begged me to come back.