Title: Today our host cancelled a place we booked 6 month ago with zero communication, at time of check-in.<p>We landed at our destination and ready to check into our Airbnb that we booked almost 6 month ago, for an entire month.<p>The airbnb is managed by a company, who I assume manages the entire building.<p>The host promptly tells us it&#x27;s no longer available, and that we should accept their offer of either refund or another listing that&#x27;s in a completely different location,  with no picture or reviews, but promised that it&#x27;s &quot;similar&quot;<p>Of course, being hesitant, we said no thanks, we&#x27;re happy with just a refund.<p>They proceeds to tells us to contact airbnb, and then ghosts us.<p>We open a ticket with Airbnb, calls them, and they proceed to give us the run around and tell us to just book another stay.<p>So what else are we going to do? be homeless for a night in foreign city?<p>So of course we try to book, except it&#x27;s last minute and the only listings available are the once you must contact the hosts first.<p>Good thing we arrived at 11am and not 6pm. or we&#x27;d be literally f*cked for the night.<p>Why am I complaining?<p>Airbnb, you should do better.<p>I am a startup founder, I understand these types of situations has probably zero affect on your bottom line. So you probably never prioritized the need to spend engineering time &quot;fixing&quot; it.<p>You also probably look at your metrics and say, well these situations happen to &lt;1% of our overall bookings, it&#x27;s not a problem.<p>But PG says, the best startups are the ones who solve intense immediate pain for a small number of people.<p>Well, my confidence in you is absolutely shaken, and now I&#x27;m not so sure your position in the space is so infallible anymore. Because eventually this will happen often enough that &quot;the small number of users with intense pain&quot; will give arise to a newer and better version of you, and you will be legacy.<p>In the end, we booked another place last minute, had to spend 2x the amount and received a refund (well let&#x27;s see in 10 days).<p>If I was in a much lesser able financial situation, I might not have been able to float a few thousands of dollars on my credit card, and may have literally ended up homeless.
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