I don't mind professional listings, really; but I do mind fraudulent ones. And AirBNB isn't setup to encourage honest feedback.
My singular experience with AirBNB was a listing where they advertised a NYC address 2 avenues from the real address; they lied about details; they used a multitude of names; they told me to lie about who I was to a superintendent who might stop by. The place was a pit.
But my recourse was limited, because I didn't feel like getting into a fight with fraudsters who knew my real identity but who'd hid their own, and AirBNB doesn't give a shit. So I just recognized that AirBNB is a haven for crime, realized that their review policies are designed to protect the criminals, and I stopped using it, and became an anti-airbnb advocate.
I hope I meet Brian Chesky someday, because PG loves to go on about what a great guy he is, but as near as I can tell he's a sociopathic asshole who made purposeful design decisions specifically to enable fraud that happens to increase his profits. This makes sense, given that he built the whole damned thing by being a spammer (and lying about it). I'm genuinely curious if he's not the completely worthless piece of shit that he absolutely appears to be from a customer standpoint.
Big companies turn a blind eye to bad stuff, in part because it is really hard to manage and because truly cracking down may remove all revenue growth for a while. I don't need to list the specifics, but both Google and Amazon are certainly guilty of the same thing.
Some interesting things I don't hear mentioned often:
a) prostitutes have been shifting away from hotels to airbnb ~ at some point this could be a serious safety concern
b) there is nothing in place to prevent racial discrimination
I haven't had any terrible experiences with Airbnb. I've used it just a few times. I have noticed a tendency for places to look good in pictures but you don't know if like the mattress is horrible.
Realistically cities may need to have an additional zoning category for short term residential rentals. Buildings/condos/apartments/co-ops most certainly have a right to aggressively enforce rules if something like airbnb is prohibited. If an airbnb host is either breaking the rules of the property or the city, they should be on the hook to refund all booking fees from day one.
Akamai has done this to me; with their salesmen making material changes to terms and conditions without redlining (and without any related discussion), despite redlining other changes in the doc.
Akamai's abuse on this front is the reason that we stopped trusting 'track changes' and started doing full-text diffs.
My singular experience with AirBNB was a listing where they advertised a NYC address 2 avenues from the real address; they lied about details; they used a multitude of names; they told me to lie about who I was to a superintendent who might stop by. The place was a pit.
But my recourse was limited, because I didn't feel like getting into a fight with fraudsters who knew my real identity but who'd hid their own, and AirBNB doesn't give a shit. So I just recognized that AirBNB is a haven for crime, realized that their review policies are designed to protect the criminals, and I stopped using it, and became an anti-airbnb advocate.
I hope I meet Brian Chesky someday, because PG loves to go on about what a great guy he is, but as near as I can tell he's a sociopathic asshole who made purposeful design decisions specifically to enable fraud that happens to increase his profits. This makes sense, given that he built the whole damned thing by being a spammer (and lying about it). I'm genuinely curious if he's not the completely worthless piece of shit that he absolutely appears to be from a customer standpoint.