airbnb, C or D?

burps

time to have an incredible day!

I too am interested in enjoying my day

didn't realise it was that easy #lifehacks

and where I'm from its tradition to give a foreign guest a shot of vodka.

So where's he from?

He is from Nigeria!

I had a little bit of it but most of the glass is now in the fridge for this evening. having said that, a little bit of a huge glass....isnt that much of a little bit, when i'm trying to do some work!

Very nice!

I have just arrived at another airbnb. the host has left me a bottle of wine in the room. there are two glasses

well if you break one

Drink both of course

that doesn't even make sense.

leave a review pointing out that the you've come to expect a Jon Bonham Breakfast and this wine nonsense is unacceptable

"All this wine nonsense! You get all these wine people don’t you? You know, wine this, wine that!. Let’s have a bit of red; let’s have a bit of white! Oooh that’s a snazzy bouquet! Oooh this smells of... I don’t know, basil! Sometimes you just want to say ‘sod all this wine just give me a pint of mineral water’."

had my first repeat AirBNB stay. there's one place for like $30 in Ybor City where they just give you codes to get in and out and the owners aren't there. good for when I'm going to get drunk at a show, Uber-able distance.

feel like I'm going to start leaving cryptic clues each time I stay there

"Detroit just banned Airbnb without anyone knowing it" https://detroit.curbed.com/2018/2/8/16991266/detroit-banned-airbnb-zoning

awesome!!

I wish I knew more about the legal issues and technological issues around information sharing of tax documents. I feel like it should be possible for cities to be able to get copies of the 1099 forms that Airbnb gives to its "hosts" and then develop better systems for collecting business tax from them. And if that enforcement and collection results in higher rates or less profits for Airbnb, then fine. But I feel like it's screwing cities out of hotel tax revenue and also creating unfair competition with actual hotels because Airbnb isn't paying its fair share of local business taxes.

i guess they aren't enforcing it https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/02/09/detroit-airbnb-ban/322991002/

just stayed on 49th and 8th in Times Square for $59 a night in a decent cramped apt. nice.

had a weird first at this latest stay in Atlanta - one I've often worried about! Renting one of those units which are owned by a guy who owns multiple properties and isn't on site - so they give you codes to access the door to the house and your room.

There's an upper lock that is no longer used per the owner. I went out for a while for food and came back. Some doofus (probably another AirBNBer) locked the top lock after they left, so I couldn't get into the house at 11:30 pm even when putting in the right code. lucky that someone in the house was up to let me in. He was a dick about it though, suggesting I was at the wrong house even as I insisted that a) all my shit was already upstairs and b) I had put in the right code and someone had clearly locked the top lock which I could clearly hear that idiot unlocking before he opened the door for me!

"after they left" should be "after they returned"

Booked 4 nights in London for my wife in July, just had an email to say that the flat isn't available on the first night and if we're ok for just the other 3 nights. As she and her sisters have booked air and planes not really so asked for her to cancel so we can get a refund.

Haven't heard back from her, so looking to cancel using the 'my host needs to cancel' option. It says it'll refund it minus the service fee of nearly £60. I haven't submitted it yet, but are we going to be £60 out of pocket through no fault of our own? Or will the fee be refunded when the landlord responds?

Get in touch with Airbnb direct and tell them the situation, should cancel without fee (that's been my experience)

I'll give her until tomorrow morning and if I don't hear anything will get in touch with Airbnb.

Got my refund, but she wanted me to cancel at first which I guess would have penalised me.

To what level are you experiencing price inflation? Going to go back to look at previous airbnbs stayed in and from even a year ago the change is eye-watering, some are double the price, some as much as 300% higher. Only place that seems to have relatively unchanged prices is Sarajevo

What is your native currency?

So one of my neighbours has taken it upon herself to rent out her flat on Airbnb, not to mention Booking.com and various others. Since it's a shared block (in London) we now have constant noise and disruption, plus lots of mail going missing where it's been left by the postie on the table downstairs - parcels, bank cards etc. So fuck you, Airbnb. Hotels need licenses for a reason.

If hotels weren't so prohibitively expensive, I'd be on board with Airbnb-bashing, but as it stands, I would have no way of travelling otherwise.

Update 11/1/19: The morning after this article was published, the FBI contacted VICE about the claims made above.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43k7z3/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb

oh yeah! that article was amazing!!

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

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

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

And now we are married.

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

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

Helps if you know how to cook steak with heavy cream

lol Yerac.

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

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

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

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

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

So far we've have exclusively good experiences.

how many hours of scanning per place booked do you employ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or an entire floor of their house