Allegro.cc - Online Community

Allegro.cc Forums » Off-Topic Ordeals » Airbnb admits that they knowingly mislead customers

This thread is locked; no one can reply to it. rss feed Print
Airbnb admits that they knowingly mislead customers
Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

See attached file for an excerpt of a chat I had with support...

There were mice at the last Airbnb I stayed at. I alerted the host, and he set more traps the next day. It didn't really do anything of course, and I saw mice every evening.

I mentioned it in my review in a factual way. He responded with the expected "sometimes it happens and we do what we can" but ended with a lie that he had refunded me the cleaning fee. In reality that was never requested or offered.

So I alerted Airbnb that the statement was erroneous, which is something they could easily verify from within their own system, and something I believe the host confirmed when he separately responded to Airbnb. I only did so as a courtesy to future guests who might think the host is a reasonable person.

So Airbnb's line is essentially that they don't care that they knowingly host patently false information that could mislead their future customers.

I understand in general not to get involved in "he said she said" arguments that have no proof. But they take it to the extreme level when they refuse to respond accordingly when all the information and communication is on their own platform.

This is another instance of where hiding behind section 230 makes no sense. This isn't a simple platform where people are exchanging ideas. They're running an e-commerce marketplace where they control the communication. I'm not allowed to respond to the host response. So in essence they are acting as an interested editor while simultaneously claiming they have no liability over the accuracy of the published comments of their hosts.

So in short I would pay very close attention to negative guest reviews on Airbnb and ignore any type of response the host gives because Airbnb doesn't care if it's not true.

There's a lot of little things they could do such as simply tagging a response as in dispute or marking whenever a refund was given etc. It's the stuff that makes me just really hate corporations because they quite frankly just don't care.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

I put the mice in there because Allegro.CC was down.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

You are going to need a lot of mice. ;D

Go to: