<story><title>Why Airbnb is dead to me</title><url>http://drupaler.drupalgardens.com/content/why-airbnb-dead-me</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deveac</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn&amp;#x27;t even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting &amp;quot;no, it&amp;#x27;s cool, I know them&amp;quot;), and furthermore didn&amp;#x27;t even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s nice that they were &amp;quot;all cool&amp;quot; with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and &lt;i&gt;severely limited Airbnb&amp;#x27;s ability to quickly and effectively&lt;/i&gt; sort through the issue. A customer that didn&amp;#x27;t even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a &amp;quot;handshake&amp;quot; from the host to resolve it instead.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s walk through the alternate scenario.&lt;p&gt;Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB.&lt;p&gt;Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly.&lt;p&gt;No driving around in a strange city to a place you&amp;#x27;ve never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Elessar</author><text>Have you ever travelled to a foreign country where you don&amp;#x27;t speak the language?&lt;p&gt;You really need to put yourself in the tourist&amp;#x27;s shoes. If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that&amp;#x27;s all I can do. You rely on their ability to communicate, and if they&amp;#x27;re being kind and doing their best to make your stay comfortable, then that&amp;#x27;s fantastic.&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re suggesting is that you&amp;#x27;re going to start making international calls with some website&amp;#x27;s support staff while you have luggage on the street, no place to stay, in a foreign city and completely on your own. You&amp;#x27;re also going to blow off the only person (the host) who cares at all about your situation. Are you kidding me?</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Airbnb is dead to me</title><url>http://drupaler.drupalgardens.com/content/why-airbnb-dead-me</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deveac</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn&amp;#x27;t even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting &amp;quot;no, it&amp;#x27;s cool, I know them&amp;quot;), and furthermore didn&amp;#x27;t even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s nice that they were &amp;quot;all cool&amp;quot; with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and &lt;i&gt;severely limited Airbnb&amp;#x27;s ability to quickly and effectively&lt;/i&gt; sort through the issue. A customer that didn&amp;#x27;t even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a &amp;quot;handshake&amp;quot; from the host to resolve it instead.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s walk through the alternate scenario.&lt;p&gt;Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB.&lt;p&gt;Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly.&lt;p&gt;No driving around in a strange city to a place you&amp;#x27;ve never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghaff</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really blame the renters here although, in retrospect, they&amp;#x27;d obviously have been better doing things differently.&lt;p&gt;At the same time, in the grand scheme of bad customer service from big Internet companies, Airbnb doesn&amp;#x27;t look like a huge offender here. Photos from balconies notwithstanding, there is apparently a lot of he-said, she-said to sort through here and it&amp;#x27;s really hard for an Airbnb (or an eBay etc.) to sort through that. What usually evolves over time (to the dissatisfaction of one side of transactions or another) is policies that strongly default to favor the buyer or the seller.</text></comment>