It's towards the bottom, but there's a good quote that shows the perfect example of when this makes sense:
> “For example, if someone is removed for a serious safety incident during an Airbnb reservation and we need to remove them and cancel their future reservations, and we then find that someone re-books the exact same future reservation with the same credit card number, we will remove the second account,” the company said.
So I can see how this is absolutely necessary in some cases, but also how there's always going to be a confusing gray area no matter where you draw the line.
It feels particularly crazy because if you travel together with a romantic partner who damages a property, and then you basically have to convince AirBNB that the two of you have broken up, and that the two of you aren't just using your account now to escape the other's ban.
I remember reading the story about Lauren Southern a few days ago, they banned her parents because they didn't like Lauren's politics (shes a very polarizing figure). I totally get bans when a guest damages property or breaks rules, but the whole reason this got kicked up in the news because that ban was just so overtly political.
Imagine you send an employee to a place where they have to stay in a hotel. Then, they trash it. REALLY trash it. Trash it so bad that it takes actual time to repair.
The hotel will likely use the credit card as the identifier. They'll also probably blacklist the company itself until someone really high up calls them and tells them sorry.
Of course, AirBnB is a little different and not being a company makes this harder. However, the practice isn't exactly unusual. If you're strongly associated with someone chances are that someone will tag along. Easier to ban both (or all) of you than one of you and hope the people left over are responsible enough (they usually aren't with enough guilt tripping). Especially in the case of a romantic partner the only option probably is to ban both you strictly because it's a near certainty your malicious partner will travel with you or have the ability to guilt you into letting them. Good luck telling your girlfriend/boyfriend to go stay at the Holiday Inn while you sleep in luxury in an AirBnB.
Remember that recent case where a lawyer was denied access to Madison Square Garden, because their in-house facial recognition software recognized her being an employee of a law-firm that was litigating against another subsidiary / child company of the owner of MSG Entertainment?
Between this, and that case, I can't say I'm looking forward to the future (ab)use of tech.
Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart (or some subsidiary of Walmart). Or that you get checked every time you try to use their self-checkout machines.
With the number of people who strongly advocate for stealing from Walmart, with seemingly no repercussions at all, I'm not sure that'd be such a bad thing.
People love to pretend like stealing from "big companies" is some robin hood adventure where the C-Suite is going to look at the numbers at the end of the year and decide they all need to cut their annual bonus to make up for the loss. When in fact prices go up for the paying customers, and jobs that used to help everyone (attendants who help restock, locate items, etc.) get converted to more "Security" jobs, where the worker does nothing but "look mean".
Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart
Society was much more liveable when that was considered common sense.
This made a splash after conservative commentator Lauren Southern claimed her mom was banned without ever booking anything for her daughter. I'm not sure why Southern was banned though but i doubt it was because she was trashing the homes of hosts.
[Edit] Southern claims she was originally banned due to public affiliation with certain groups against Airbnb policies and community standards
Recently a host charged me a cleaning fee, left me a negative review about not cleaning. I requested that the cleaning fee be refunded, since it was clearly fraudulent. AirBnB declined to refund the cleaning fee. I will never use them again.
I wonder what can be done to prevent companies like AirBnB, PayPal from becoming so user-hostile over time.
What can be done is prevent them from becoming near-monopolies with a captured audience.
Cory Doctorow calls this "enshittification" - his term.
The basic idea is that in the beginning, new companies are all about their users, luring them away from competitors, providing the best experience for cheap, with great service. That captures them. Think amazon, underpricing everyone, shipping for free, taking all returns, making a loss for years until everyone just uses amazon to search for products.
Once you have their market, you shift gears, from serving users to serving your financiers, selling the user data/user attention/user experience to them: Amazon selling ranked listings in the search that all the captured customers now use as a default search engine. This makes every seller use amazon to sell. You have to, to reach the captured audience. And you have to pay amazon to be seen.
And finally, using this machine you built, with captured customers and captured sellers to squeeze the most of it. Amazon copying the best-selling items and top-ranking their own products, without of course charging itself fees for either the listing or a cut of the sale, as the do with third parties.
I was traveling and hopping from one city to another in Europe, and when I went to rent my second Airbnb using a perfectly good American credit card, they blocked me for "fraud reasons". I booked a 5* hotel which was even cheaper than the Airbnb apartment and carried on with my trip. I suspect their anti-abuse system bites them pretty often.
I didn't get scammed but did find the service too annoying to want to use it again. Actual price is very different from quoted nightly rate. Can't tell the actual location of the place before I book, wtf. Got to the place and didn't know the combo to get in; isn't that something the booking email should say? Apparently supposed to log into the site again, go to a chat, and contact the host; it's not simply over SMS.
I get that I'm not paying the extra money for a hotel with 24/7 pro staff, but there's gotta be solid automation in place of that. To each their own, I'll just pay for the hotel.
I recently rented a house from booking.com and it was like night & day vs. airbnb. Other than a snafu on the door code (which was resolved in 5m), the place was in a quiet neighborhood, the place was very well appointed (mid-high end everything) and it was roomy. Also not a single thing to do when we left - we pre-paid a cleanup fee included in book price and there was no checkout list other than to text a number saying we had departed.
Left feeling quite impressed, almost like it was a hotel (but better, it was quiet).
I just logged into AirBNB after not using it for a few years (pandemic and all), only to find that my account was deactivated for not following their ToS and community standards. I only ever had great reviews from the places that I stayed, so I figured they just deactivated it because it was stale.
I requested that they reactivate it and got an automated response saying that they deactivated it because of information in my credit report, and until I dispute that information, their decision is final.
I went and pulled all three credit reports to find that I have no negative information in there at all. I have stellar credit, scores in the "very good" to "excellent" range, minimal debt, no collections, great ratios between available credit and current balances, no negative consumer information...so what's there to dispute?
I've asked them to reinstate my account, but as someone who reads HN and knows how these automated systems behave, I have minimal confidence that they'll do anything about it.
I also reported them to the FTC for misusing/abusing consumer credit information, and I encourage anyone who has been swept up in their Kafka-esque universe to do the same.
This is almost definitely not true. I don't particularly like Airbnb but I would be very surprised if most hotels don't use services that do the exact thing described in this article.
There are demographics where I would not want to take the risk of renting out my property to them. In the U.S. we tend to make things about race when it ought to be about class. Yes, I’m biased against certain economic classes of people (not based on race).
[+] [-] crazygringo|3 years ago|reply
> “For example, if someone is removed for a serious safety incident during an Airbnb reservation and we need to remove them and cancel their future reservations, and we then find that someone re-books the exact same future reservation with the same credit card number, we will remove the second account,” the company said.
So I can see how this is absolutely necessary in some cases, but also how there's always going to be a confusing gray area no matter where you draw the line.
It feels particularly crazy because if you travel together with a romantic partner who damages a property, and then you basically have to convince AirBNB that the two of you have broken up, and that the two of you aren't just using your account now to escape the other's ban.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blue039|3 years ago|reply
Imagine you send an employee to a place where they have to stay in a hotel. Then, they trash it. REALLY trash it. Trash it so bad that it takes actual time to repair.
The hotel will likely use the credit card as the identifier. They'll also probably blacklist the company itself until someone really high up calls them and tells them sorry.
Of course, AirBnB is a little different and not being a company makes this harder. However, the practice isn't exactly unusual. If you're strongly associated with someone chances are that someone will tag along. Easier to ban both (or all) of you than one of you and hope the people left over are responsible enough (they usually aren't with enough guilt tripping). Especially in the case of a romantic partner the only option probably is to ban both you strictly because it's a near certainty your malicious partner will travel with you or have the ability to guilt you into letting them. Good luck telling your girlfriend/boyfriend to go stay at the Holiday Inn while you sleep in luxury in an AirBnB.
[+] [-] TrackerFF|3 years ago|reply
Between this, and that case, I can't say I'm looking forward to the future (ab)use of tech.
Imagine walking into a Walmart, only to get escorted out by security because someone you've been associated with caused a brawl, or shoplifted at Walmart (or some subsidiary of Walmart). Or that you get checked every time you try to use their self-checkout machines.
[+] [-] paulmd|3 years ago|reply
Kind of like the credit scores we already have.
Oh I'm sorry you're on the Moody's blacklist, there's nothing we can do. Corporate policy, we can't make exceptions, maybe try somewhere else.
[+] [-] impalallama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] explaininjs|3 years ago|reply
People love to pretend like stealing from "big companies" is some robin hood adventure where the C-Suite is going to look at the numbers at the end of the year and decide they all need to cut their annual bonus to make up for the loss. When in fact prices go up for the paying customers, and jobs that used to help everyone (attendants who help restock, locate items, etc.) get converted to more "Security" jobs, where the worker does nothing but "look mean".
[+] [-] hot_gril|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiahura|3 years ago|reply
Society was much more liveable when that was considered common sense.
[+] [-] bko|3 years ago|reply
[Edit] Southern claims she was originally banned due to public affiliation with certain groups against Airbnb policies and community standards
https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/16231034418444369...
[+] [-] hot_gril|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgorman|3 years ago|reply
Recently a host charged me a cleaning fee, left me a negative review about not cleaning. I requested that the cleaning fee be refunded, since it was clearly fraudulent. AirBnB declined to refund the cleaning fee. I will never use them again.
I wonder what can be done to prevent companies like AirBnB, PayPal from becoming so user-hostile over time.
[+] [-] bigger_inside|3 years ago|reply
The basic idea is that in the beginning, new companies are all about their users, luring them away from competitors, providing the best experience for cheap, with great service. That captures them. Think amazon, underpricing everyone, shipping for free, taking all returns, making a loss for years until everyone just uses amazon to search for products.
Once you have their market, you shift gears, from serving users to serving your financiers, selling the user data/user attention/user experience to them: Amazon selling ranked listings in the search that all the captured customers now use as a default search engine. This makes every seller use amazon to sell. You have to, to reach the captured audience. And you have to pay amazon to be seen.
And finally, using this machine you built, with captured customers and captured sellers to squeeze the most of it. Amazon copying the best-selling items and top-ranking their own products, without of course charging itself fees for either the listing or a cut of the sale, as the do with third parties.
[+] [-] asdadsdad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hot_gril|3 years ago|reply
I get that I'm not paying the extra money for a hotel with 24/7 pro staff, but there's gotta be solid automation in place of that. To each their own, I'll just pay for the hotel.
[+] [-] r00fus|3 years ago|reply
Left feeling quite impressed, almost like it was a hotel (but better, it was quiet).
[+] [-] kaczordon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oskapt|3 years ago|reply
I requested that they reactivate it and got an automated response saying that they deactivated it because of information in my credit report, and until I dispute that information, their decision is final.
I went and pulled all three credit reports to find that I have no negative information in there at all. I have stellar credit, scores in the "very good" to "excellent" range, minimal debt, no collections, great ratios between available credit and current balances, no negative consumer information...so what's there to dispute?
I've asked them to reinstate my account, but as someone who reads HN and knows how these automated systems behave, I have minimal confidence that they'll do anything about it.
I also reported them to the FTC for misusing/abusing consumer credit information, and I encourage anyone who has been swept up in their Kafka-esque universe to do the same.
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] qbrass|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lampshades|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leemelone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laweijfmvo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burkaman|3 years ago|reply
15 year old article about hotels using a centralized datamining blacklist service: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25243594
Hyatt banning hate groups: https://skift.com/2018/09/27/hyatt-ceo-says-hotels-will-ban-...
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notch898a|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] syzarian|3 years ago|reply