Airbnb and security camera disclosure
I'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.- Host listing quality has gone consistently downhill. Now, it's many slumlords just trying to make a quick buck rather than support the original community idea or provide a great stay.- 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 "case manager" 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.- 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 "well we can book you into another available unit". 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.- 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'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 "courtesy", 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 "resolved" and did nothing else.I'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.