Airbnb and security camera disclosure
I&#x27;ve lived in Airbnbs full-time for about 18 months while traveling, and Airbnb has lost my trust repeatedly in terms of reliability, safety, and user-friendliness.<p>- Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it&#x27;s many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay.<p>- Airbnb support response times are horribly slow. They hide their phone number, then force you to go through a ticketing system for urgent issues. Then, they start assigning you a new &quot;case manager&quot; every few hours as their shifts change, which means the rep never is caught up on the issue. Sometimes, they forget to transfer you to a new rep before ending their shift, which could result in zero responses for days until the rep works again.<p>- When there is a problem, Airbnb supports the host and makes little to no effort to relocate users. For example, when our unit flooded, among other problems, the feedback was basically &quot;well we can book you into another available unit&quot;. The problem was that it was peak Summer in Barcelona, we were there for a long period of time, and the only available units were minimum 5x the price.<p>- We had an Airbnb burglarized. Again, we waited hours for a response, as a police forensics unit was dusting the unit for fingerprints. We suspect that the host was complicit after realizing that previous tenants were also burglarized. Airbnb&#x27;s insurance policy covered none of our losses ($10K+ in electronics, jewelry, watches, clothing, etc). We ended up feeling unsafe and canceling the reservation with 3 weeks remaining. As a &quot;courtesy&quot;, Airbnb support credited our account for less than the cost of one night at a local replacement unit. Because we accepted the credit, they considered the matter &quot;resolved&quot; and did nothing else.<p>I&#x27;ve spent $30K+ on Airbnb. It started as a great alternative to hotels. Now, I can no longer recommend it, and I prefer a hotel.