They said they have found an existing relationship between me and the host. Mind you have no social media accounts, this was my first stay at an Airbnb, I'm from USA and this was in Medellin Colombia, I usually stay at Marriott hotels and I only went with Airbnb because the girl I traveled with suggested using it because it was cheaper.

It was awesome place, host was great, so left a fantastic review. It was taken down and I was called a liar. When I asked to speak with someone about why I'm accused of being a liar in my review customer support promised me many times I would get a call back. Never once did I receive a call back from anyone at Airbnb instead I would get an email that they had conducted a thorough review and their position still stands that I am a liar. I'm not sure what thorough means in their mind but since they asked me zero questions or confirmed no information with me directly it's impossible that they conducted any kind of thorough review.

Airbnb is a horrendous company along with all of these gig economy companies. They need to be regulated in the same manner as they're non-gig counterparts are. I can't imagine that any Airbnb executive actually stays at Airbnb places not with the kind of customer service that Airbnb offers.

You also don't need a social account to login, so how would Airbnb even know that user named "John Smith" on Twitter is you?

OP was still able to use Airbnb, they just removed one positive review possibly because they have no online history making it hard to distinguish them from a bot or puppet.

> Since when is a social media account required to leave reviews?

It's just as absurd when written this way. But, please, show me the exact place where Airbnb (or any other big company) says that a social media presence is required to leave a review. I'm waiting.

Huh? Airbnb has the entire transaction history that matters – proving that this specific user paid a specific amount of money for staying in a specific place for a specific amount of time.

Thinking that you need to prove "online history" (how would you even track this?) as well is absurd.

My theory on this is the same as usual – Airbnb outsources or understaffs their customer service department as usual; some stressed out agent closed the case without even looking at it. Making some noise and opening a separate case will probably work if you're bothered enough.

In 2008-2011 on HN if someone worked at facebook you knew because they mentioned it so often.

Now you never hear anyone saying they work for Facebook because of all the negative externalities that Facebook and Instagram have had on the world that no one wants to be associated with them.

AirBnB is now in a similar situation.

When tehy first came out you would get lots of positive feedback from people about their service.

now that they allow whole home rentals and people are getting squeezed for living space and rising rents partially due to AirBnb taking those rentals off the market people have a far different opinion of the company.

Couple that with hosts are squeezing people with 100's of dollars in cleaning and other fees that dwarf the nightly rental costs.

Its hard to think of another company outside of Facebook that has blown all their good will so quickly and so completely.

You never hear someone claim to work at AirBnB anymore due to what the company has done to help ruin housing and rental markets.

Charitably I guess you could say that every company falls victim to the saying "You Either Die A Hero Or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain."

AirBnB really just provided a modern online interface with some customer service stuff that papered over the bad stuff for a while. But like with actual bad construction, you can't hide the stuff forever so sooner or later the magic disappears.

From what I've seen, short term rentals have negligible effects on the housing market. And restrictions on short term rentals have little to no effect on housing prices. It's just another scapegoat (like foreign owned housing) that people like to use because they can't accept the fact that the solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. (Reduce restrictions like exclusionary zoning and environmental/community reviews)

The city has passed laws to keep down the amount of temporary rentals so the balance has undoubtably shifted by now. A later analysis by the same bank (https://bnb-beheer.nl/blog/2019/03/06/prijseffect-airbnb-op-...) says as much.

If you live in a ski town or beach town then it probably has had far more effect than the locals looking to buy or rent would want. if you live in a small town with very little tourism then people may feel like you do that its a non factor.

New York city seems to think that 10,000 distinct places to live will come back to the market, is 10,000 units in New York "negligible" to use your wording?

I don't know but I'm guessing it will have some measurable effect.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/28/1145709106/nyc-could-lose-10-...

I've read people talking about how Airbnb screwed the host or the guest. But few people talk about how it screws the neighbors.

Our neighbors on the other side, unfortunately, own their home. This means I'm forced to live next to (depending on the day of the week), a live concert venue, a muscle car engine noise appreciation celebration, frat parties, and/or a farm (they had a goat for a week ?).

There's nothing anyone can (or will) do about any of these things, and no one's checking their papers to determine if ignoring the noise is your only recourse. The only way to attempt to improve the situation is show respect and hope it's eventually reciprocated. This is just part of living around other humans. The systems in place to mitigate these kinds of petty conflicts aren't taken seriously, whether the rental is long or short term, or the property tax kind.

What does having a say look like?

I lived in a town house association where the unit’s being rented were the source of noise, trash, crime, etc.

People renting often don’t care as much for the neighborhood/ locals and they can move on at will.

After the numbers of rentals were reduced (and background checks required) the neighborhood improved greatly.

People have been turned away when they show up by security as it’s not allowed but the people just try to sneak them in. When reporting this to airbnb they refuse to do anything. I’m getting fairly sick of the laissez faire stances these companies are taking. It’s not just that we don’t want airbnb its that people in this area regularly rent airbnb with false names and rob the apartment and the ones next to it once in the building. Airbnb could care less about our safety though.

It would be nice if the companies could stop hiding behind stupid corporate policies and actually care about people.

Edit: to make things more sad when the building was sold as it’s brand new it was sold as no airbnbs and family only. Several couples moved in because they have been previously robbed in other buildings in the city and in nearby ones all from Airbnb rentals with false names.

“The platform does not have the capability to delist a whole community currently but our Friendly Buildings Program does allow you to have complete transparency and control over home-sharing activity in your community. You would be able to set minimums number of guests, blackout dates, amenity restrictions, or even create a waiting list if you want only a small number of homes to have the home-sharing amenity.

We understand in order to be able to control home-sharing, you would have to allow it in some capacity and change your CC&Rs, which is a process. Since our program establishes a partnership between Airbnb and your community, we would love to support in any way possible or even send someone to propose the idea to your board and fellow homeowners in person.”

So in other words, you either work with them or they let things happen anyway.

I'd been finding bags of rubbish in the corridor, or in a recycling bin, and was woken several times by wheely suitcases bump-bump-bumping down the stairs early on a Monday.

Denmark changing the tax laws to require AirBNB to report short-term rental income for tax also helped.

The governance is definitely poorly structured, though. In my (limited) experience I've seen a board that gets elected and then proceeds to abuse their power to advance their own financial positions.

I think there should be a 3rd party company that competes for the management contract and annual contracts are awarded based off democratic vote from all the owners.

That's being said, $&@# AirBnB.

I'm never trusting online reviews anymore. Especially when the companies pull BS like this.

Edit: I just revisited the original email that I got from Amazon. They rejected my review because I left feedback about the seller, so I went to their seller feedback portal and left a message and never got a response. I still feel like this is a dark practice though, a review highlighting the fact the seller is farming 5 star reviews should still be posted, even though it's about the seller and not the product.

Ideally Amazon would do something against this, but I think they just don‘t care.

Read all bad stuff about AirBnB on reddit, you see where airbnb is heading. People should stop using that platform, whenever you find an alternative.

The incentives are different at different levels of the business. There could be someone with a shorter-term outlook making these decisions, or (more likely imo) it was a very quick misapplication of the policy based on skimming the review. Acting as a first reviewer actually seems like a great application of LLMs, where attention won't flag + they can hopefully be tuned to only focus on the policy-relevant pieces.

If those reviews help you decide to buy from someplace other than Amazon... perhaps in short term or narrow circumstances it still helps Amazon (reduced refunds/etc).

AirBnB needs to immediately get rid of all fees for rentals and enforce that there's just 1 base price charged. The price you see on a listing should be the only price ever possibly charged. Between silly cleaning and toilet paper and checkin and other fees, there's too much of an opportunity for scummy people to try and take advantage of people that are tired and desperate after traveling.

Virtually all of the conflicts, scammy behavior, and confusion would be resolved if there was just 1 base price that was ever charged.

Unlike Airbnb, if users lose trust in their reviews, Yelp loses their entire business.

source: I am ex-yelper.

Yelp is worse than AirBNB.

(1) https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com (1.3/5)

For instance, I had a week long stay booked in a “waterfront, two bedroom” in London. I needed the two bedrooms to set up an office that wouldn’t disturb my partner. Arrived at the place, and it was a one bedroom, not waterfront but the building’s communal deck had a water view.

Host was obnoxious about it. Airbnb support couldn’t find me a suitable Airbnb and booked me a two bedroom suite at a VERY nice hotel, worth much much more than I had paid for the rental. I am pretty sure they ate the host’s payout too as the place didn’t re-appear as available.

"Reviews were stunning, the location was great, the price was reasonable".

Then, I went on explaining that I landed in front of a closed door, the host was not reachable, Booking.com support was not helpful, so I just drove on through the night and over mountains until I reached home 11 hours later.

After I made the review, Booking.com only kept the first sentence.

Since then, I try ordering directly from hosts or hotel chains.

I had an experience where, after arriving in town, the host denied me entry because they thought my negative COVID test result was faked.

That was bad. But what was completely insane was that Airbnb refused to refund my money. They only offered me $200 back on a $500 charge. Ridiculous.

I'm in the process of arbitration right now. Here's the guide: https://fairshake.com/airbnb/arbitrating-with-airbnb/

That policy falls short in instances like this where a guest cannot or will not check in due to issues with the host.

You might also try calling AirBnB again and see if you can convince them to put the review back up.

BTW, $300 cash deposit is absurd. AirBnB already has a security deposit mechanism that the host could use.

> But i didn't want to cave in and called AirBnB. Thankfully, airbnb fully refunded the payment and i was able to find another accomodation in the last minute. I don't recommend this host unless you want a stressful start for your vacation.

I'm pretty sure your review got removed because you didn't actually check in. I'm actually surprised the system even let you write a review given the circumstances you've outlined.

Another issue I have found is that many of the listings on Airbnb are not by the owner, but by some person acting independently as a broker. I have found this in many different countries. This may explain why, when I tried to request a booking, it was not available. The actual property owner had already rented it to someone else. Further, once the broker/host gives the owner the rent, there is no way to get any kind of a refund if there is an issue. The owner has no affiliation with Airbnb. The 'host' no longer has the money. And, Airbnb does not want to pay the expense. So, the guest is left hanging. Maybe they, too, can submit a review that the host will have removed. It's disgusting.

If risking the use of Airbnb, be very careful when a 'host' says a property is not available, but provides a link to a different property. It may have a very different cancellation policy than the original property.

Airbnb claims in their FAQ pages they want to be authentic. But, they seem to be authentic only in the support of their bottom line, even if that requires dishonesty in other areas to achieve.

Because of the combination of different issues, I have decided Airbnb can no longer be trusted. I now prefer to book hotels or apartments through competitor sites. I encourage others to do the same.

I'm fully open to this possibility, we shouldn't take them at their word, but it may also have been a half truth (they couldn't see your review but they could see their average go down).

I ended up being able to negotiate a partial refund, but I still lost around $800.

The same place was listed on agoda.com which is fully refundable up to 24 hours prior to checkin and I've always had good experience with agoda support.

I'll never, NEVER, use airbnb again. It's a scam company.

Her negative review was removed after a complaint by the host, and then the host proceeded to libel her in the review they made with false statements. It took a battle and sending loads of pictures to AirBNB to get them to remove the false review of her and restore the negative review of the place.

Needless to say, I lost of a lot of trust in AirBNB that day. The "air cover" guarantee isn't worth the paper it's printed on. We've gone from 50:50 hotels:airbnb to hotels only, outside of extremely specific cases.

But it had damn near a five-star rating and the reviews were like "great place for my family!" et c. Something shady was going on, both with the host and with AirBnB, to make that happen, I'd say. It was shockingly bad.

One scammy place I stayed had 3 listing for the same place.

I was not allowed to even post a review.

It has convinced a whole generation of travelers to look for Airbnbs before hotels.

Nowadays, whenever I manage to convince my friends to stay at hotels, they are always taken aback by the concept of cheap hotels and how hassle free the whole experience is.

How did Airbnb accomplish this feat?

Easy refund right? I had videos AND pictures of the whole thing (multiple kitchen cabinets, about 5-10 roaches on their backs each. smallish 1/2cm german roaches). Submitted it to AirBnB. What happened after was a complete shitshow that I never want to go through again and is the reason I will never use this service.

* Automated customer service kept closing our case because we were traveling and did not respond immediately to their questions in 12-24 hours (got basic questions like CAN YOU PLEASE DESCRIBE THE ISSUE? despite having submitted 10 images of ROACHES). Each time your case closes you get a different representative so we had to re-iterate the same story.

* AirBnB passed responsibility of refunding off to the host, who was playing dumb with us and was basically non-responsive for a week and pretended like nothing was off. They (host) later admitted to the airbnb rep that they did pay for regular pest control services.

* AirBnB told us we were not eligible for a refund because there were not obvious signs that it was a health hazard (such as bed bugs). What? This was extremely puzzling.So if you can't find proof of bed bugs you're SOL?

* Unrelated to the pests, but the host charged us an additional $100 as part of our stay for cleaning fee despite the fact that we left immediately and the only things that were out of place were the kitchen cabinets opened containing dozens of roach carcasses. Try making sense of that.

All in all after some pretty heated exchanges with the reps at airbnb and threats to publish the images online to expose the host they relented and gave me my refund. Will never go through this again with them.

Airbnb doesn't treat the hosts great either... They auto set new listings to auto approve...

Awful experience, and I've sworn them off ever since. Very stereotypical "friendly but can't do anything" human customer support.

Uber, AirBnB, Netflix, Facebook come to mind.

Content that some people dislike is way different than [0]driving taxis out of business, [1]contributing to housing crunch, and [3]driving civil wars/genocide.

Then when I left the review, I get a message a day later that VRBO took down the message. Cool, last time I ever use your service.

The “property” I rented was just some of the space of the original house, like 30% of it. There was a door from “my area” to the living room on the other side that was nailed or caulked shut, and the walls were paper thin. They were right next door and I could hear every word of foreplay. It was fucking gross.

AirBnB removed the review and would not say what guideline it’s broken so I couldn’t amend the review.

So take your money elsewhere.

10 years ago (or more) the "hey, we're getting a neat little off-the-beaten path house experience for a great deal!"... probably was a selling point. Today, abnb/vrbo/etc is just a corporatized juggernaut.

The abuse will continue until prospective victims wisen up. There is A LOT of momentum in Airbnb.