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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
True once you experience their customer support you know what it is to interact with 100% pure cancer and brain damage
don’t blame customer service people for bad service. guess who deliberately trained them that way?
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Because it is a huge company and the service is good.
Only on /digitalnomad do I find so many criticisms of Airbnb. Almost everyone I talk to has no major problems.
Aside from the fact that it is OBVIOUSLY not intended for digital nomads, most people use it for tourism. But even so, I have been an Airbnb customer for years and I cannot complain, I have had better or worse experiences, of course, they are not hotels.
What, like Marriott?
Lmao. I chuckled. If I had gold, I’d give u one.
Whaaaat? I don’t see how you could compare the two. They are worlds apart.
I’ve got a brilliant idea.
What if, instead of having hundreds of individuals rent rooms of their house, we had a few people operate a large structure with hundreds of rooms in one space?
We could even offer ones with kitchens and multiple bedrooms for families and other larger groups?
Think of the savings on things like maid service! We wouldn’t need to charge Airbnb crazy cleaning fees.
We just need a name for these new multi-unit-short-term-rentals…
Honestly i find it hard to find hotels with a kitchen and most of the time airbnb still is cheaper in many regions of the world
Marriott’s residence inn brand, could be a fit!
Ho, tell me what you think a good name would be
Not sure eif just hotel joke, but Marriott does actually have an AirBNB competitor platform, but with stricter acceptence.
Amazing question
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
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
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.
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.
Good question OP. I think its a combination of two things. Airbnb has gotten market saturation so its very difficult to topple that. And secondly there is no alternative that will give the customer better prices or customer service. All the third party booking sites will leave you high and dry in the event of an issue because solving it costs them money.