> The problem was that it was peak Summer in Barcelona, we were there for a long period of time, and the only available units were minimum 5x the price.
I've never got this at all. Why should you pay 5x price for AirBnb's risk?
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Exactly. They take a huge cut, hold cash for months ahead of time (earning considerable float), preach the need to use their in-app messaging and platform for "safety", then just abandon ship when things go wrong.
If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. Airbnb just seems to say, "well, that's not our problem".
It makes me wish that there was a tenant bill of rights similar to EU Regulation 261/2004 about canceled flights.
"If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. "
Don't be so sure about that. I had a Marriott reservation but apparently they overbooked a whole bunch of us and tried to rebook us at Motel 8 without refunding any of our money. Luckily I had booked through Priceline.com and called their support and they rebooked us at the nearest hotel that's comparable to or better than Marriott, which ended up being a five start boutique hotel. I've been pretty loyal to Priceline every since.
Marriott is shit. Stayed three weeks in Cancun at a four and five start Marriott. No air conditioning. In the middle of the fucking summer. The lowest it'd go was 73. The first week, they were doing construction so there was a jackhammer literally outside our door every morning until we complained enough for them to move us to one of many empty rooms. Unfortunately, it was already booked so I couldn't get a refund or chargeback despite proof of all this. Marriott is just utter garbage and should be avoided at all costs.
It's not exactly fair to say "No air conditioning. In the middle of the fucking summer." When they had AC that goes down to a very chilly 73. I keep my AC at 77, and my wife is still cold half the time.
The construction issue was pretty valid and shitty of them.
Ah yes I should have said it had a shitty fucking broken air conditioner that they refused to fix. Their lies and refusal to fix it were even worse than the shitty fucking broken air conditioner and even worse than not having any air conditioning whatsoever. So you're right, it's not fair. I let them off too easy. The actual situation was much worse. Thanks for pointing that out.
77 degrees outside in the night could still be pretty warm inside.
I have had similar experiences with Airbnb, and problems as a host and a guest.
Why they have gotten away with these behaviours for so long is likely due to forced arbitration.
Their business plan is likely to show as much profit as possible, IPO/get on stock market, exit early investors and founders, and leave the mess and risk associated with their unconscionable protocols to the public markets - offloading it to society as what will inevitably be a loss, as they're not going to realize these nuances.
The forced arbitration is going to stop sooner or later, and cities are going to start to crack down heavily - going through the counter appeals of landlords and commercial hosts with many properties.
> If I showed up to a hotel and they didn't have a room available, they would rebook me at a different hotel. Airbnb just seems to say, "well, that's not our problem".
I believe this is rolled up in hotel pricing, and why Airbnb's are still overall cheaper.
>Why should you pay 5x price for AirBnb's risk?
Why should AirBnb have to not only waive their free but pay several times what they would have earned off the transaction to another party? It is wholly unreasonable for them to put you up in a place that costs 5x(+) as much.
They aren't a hotel chain, they are a booking agent. They don't own the properties, the connect a party that has a space and a party that wants a space. It's not like when you're at a hotel and a pipe bursts and they just put you in another unit that they already own. If the rental was 500 unitofcurrency and the only thing available in their system is 2500 unitofcurrency, they're now hemorrhaging money where a hotel would have virtually no extra expense moving you to another room.
If they made a practice of putting people in considerably more expensive places than they have agreed to pay for it would be absurdly easy to abuse the system from both ends. You could relatively easy manufacture a situation in which what you were renting was unusable getting you a free upgrade or property owners could potentially game the system during high peak times by listing a cheap space, having someone in on it get it, manufacture unusable conditions and then dump one or more properties into the system just under the price of the next cheapest unit and now they have 2 empty locations and are getting paid for the expensive one and can then dump both on vrbo/booking.com/flipkey etc.
At best they should refund your entire stay (unless you've already been there a considerable amount of time then prorate accordingly) and help you find a hotel.
I disagree - they're not a booking agent, they're a marketplace. They don't charge a flat fee for a booking - they take a substantial ongoing cut for the full term of a reservation, even if it's multiple payments over multiple months. They take on more risk than a booking agent and increase their cut proportionally.
What risk is Airbnb taking on? It seems like almost all of the risk is on the tenants and landlords.