Their customer service is HORRENDOUS. I Think it’s also mostly because they outsource to countries were the people, even though they might mean well, have absolutely no idea what customer service means or have a very different concept of it (which is just to apologies without really practically solving the problem or making things right. Their making things right is just being polite and apologizing).
But AirBnB knows this. They make exorbitant amount of money yet offer shi**y service. Why hasn’t another company taken over yet?
You must log in or register to comment.
You’re not really an AirBnB customer. You’re a customer of the host. Airbnb is just the middle-man marketplace that provides some protections for both parties. If you want good customer service, stay in hotels.
The only company I’ve seen really trying something different is https://livekindred.com/
It’s kind of like a really upscale couchsurfing. It’s like a members-only network where you have to be a host too.
It costs a lot more than couchsurfing because you’re getting a whole house and you pay for the cleaning, but since it’s all home swaps there are no “professional hosts” and it still ends up being way cheaper than an Airbnb or a hotel.
But you are a customer of Airbnb. There’s laws about this in the EU.
That’s why the EU is becoming more and more irrelevant, and very little innovation happens there
What kind of protection and is it really worth almost %20?
A lot of the legal and insurance protections I believe. But also, AirBNB is who brings in the people, just like Fiverr charges 20% because they connect the people to your services in a rather seamless platform.
What I understand is that Airbnb was profitable from almost the beginning, but they needed extra funding to grow as fast as possible. I agree with the rest that you wrote.
The customer service reps you’re running down are only implementing the policies as laid out by Airbnb. They do as they’re told or get fired They’re not just making it up as they go along lol.
Airbnb policy is the problem not the reps themselves. Basically it’s cheaper to screw you over then provide good service.
This isn’t true at all. Most of the policies are ok, trying to protect guests and hosts fairly. The problem is it’s a complete crapshoot getting a rep who knows the rules. I’m a host for 6 years with 1000s of reviews, and about 50 stays as a guest, I have never had a good interaction with support, where I don’t have to argue, send them screenshots of their own policy, then do that again 3-4 times when the chat person goes on vacation, I get a call from them, then an email. All from different supper people, all who don’t have to review what’s already been going on with the case. Their support is SO poorly trained and just gives platitudes but 90% of the reps don’t listen/ read/ understand the issue.
The call centers are in India. Morality is a luxury over there, they don’t give a fuck if you get screwed by a host.
It’s going to be. Check out Orcapass.com
A friend of mine is building it and moving fast. Tell him I sent you and you get a discount
$1,600 min for COLOMBIA?? Umm, i’ll pass.
Yeah it does seem a bit expensive. Don’t even look at the U.S. ones. Hopefully it will get cheaper though once he gets more hosts on board.
+1 for Orcapass. Great founder, too.
There are other services out there making headway. They just haven’t become household names yet.
For example I really like Flatio as a digital nomad. It’s geared towards short to mid-term stays. They mostly just have European listings so far but seem to be growing!
https://www.flatio.com/Check out https://thewirednomad.com. We’re actually partnered with Flatio and have all of their listings that possess internet speeds. You can search by speeds and/or location, wherever you’re interested in traveling in the world.
Because the next company will try to do the exact same. Any company will try to lower their cost to increase revenue, one of the tools to do so is outsourcing to lower-paid countries.
Honestly I think it was because for some reason, airbnbs were a decent level of quality before this recent burst of everyone trying to own one.
The owners have gone downhill and airbnb just doesn’t have a great quality assurance practice in place. Thus people go into 4.8+ rated properties that are infested with bats, etc.
You have to find local rental companies that have cleaners and maintenance people that travel to each property and understand proper procedure for high traffic cleaning and maintenance. Not an airbnb owned by a travel nurse who knows nothing about owning a vacation rental. The travel nurse owner who just sprays Lysol and changes sheets and doesn’t even check under the bed or behind the curtains for trash.
Amazing question
Customer service is horrendous? More like the owners are horrendous. I had an airbnb where the ‘mattress’ was actually just a thin duvet placed on top of a cheap wooden bed, and nothing else, and wrong check in instructions. The worst offenders are those ‘remote’ landlords who own multiple listings. They don’t give a fuck, and it shows.
What’s stopping you from starting a competitor to AirBNB?
Time.
Facebook market place, groups. If you start another competitor it will grow again and become a monster like Airbnb is now full of legal bsht and so big that it becomes so expensive to run - fees. Do it organically, directly with the owners via Facebook or local ads.
Airbnb for travellers, in exchange for their high fees, do not offer any protection or support - found out about it on multiple occasions when my host cancelled on me day before my month-stay or Internet, advertised as fast, was non-existent and caused me trouble at work. I may as well just deal with it directly with owner as Airbnb is useless in such cases.
Most of the time, I just book few nights and do business directly with the owner - Airbnb charges me and host, so generally you do it directly for 50-60% of what Airbnb would charge you for the reservation. After few years of travelling I generally have WhatsApp numbers of the hosts in place I generally travel to and book it with them directly.
The only thing Airbnb is good is the reviews of a place, maybe Facebook should add it somewhere, like a new feature or something. Or a little service for advertising apartments with reviews and giving you contact number or something max. Something very lean.
Ah and forgot about booking, in Europe I generally use booking com and filter search by apartments - way more apartments and way cheaper than Airbnb.
For a little while we were done with the weekly anti-AB crybaby posts. Seems like y’all got bored again during the slow season lmao.
How and why does this have anything to do with, you know, actual DNing? It doesn’t. Go post this in the AB sub if you are looking for an actual discussion, not dopamine fueled back-pats and upvotes from angry non-DNs sitting at home not doing shit.
Writing this from the toilet in my AirBnb in Medellin.
Lmao I’ve used Airbnb for 8 years and I’ve never had to contact customer support. What’s your situation??
Airbnb and all Airbnb competitors are drawing on the same housing inventory. There’s not something clever or cute a competitor can do to “hack” it because property owners are unlikely to move to a competitor that offers less compensation
Posted this somewhere else in the thread already, but I have seen one company doing it differently https://livekindred.com/
It’s a member’s only home swapping network, so it’s more like fancy couch surfing than Airbnb.
But property owners do routinely list units on multiple platforms, the same way one driver can work with both Uber and Lyft in the same car
Because in order to make something like Airbnb, you need to get a lot of hosts and guests. Hosts won’t sign up unless there are guests and guests won’t sign up unless there are hosts.
These kinds of marketplaces are very difficult to get any traction.
1st mover advantage
No. It’s the network effect.
No the network effect is what makes it difficult, the first mover advantage is what makes it near impossible for a competitor to compete, here.
If there’s nothing, the platform can start to exist without strong network and grow.
But if there is a paltform with the network, why would anyone use a different network?