Your experience with "Photo Verified by Airbnb"?

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hi everyone,

We are fairly new hosts, 1.5 weeks in, and when we were preparing our listing, we did tons of research on how to prepare our listing.

One article we came across cited a study from Carnegie-Mellon University in the US in which they had looked at over 16,000 listings to see which ones were having the most success. The most important point they noted from this study was that the hosts who had the "Photos Verified by Airbnb" watermark on their photos had a 22% higher booking rate than those without.

Naturally, this appealed to us, and so we contacted Airbnb to arrange a photographer, and she was scheduled to come at 2:00 pm on July 28. Our place is quite large and has several areas where you can dine and relax, and so the four of us spent two days buying food, drink, flowers and so on to try to replicate, in the photos, the actual experience we have when we stay there of spending time in these places.

Well, on July 28, the photographer showed up nearly 1/2 hour early, without warning. We were all in the process of setting up all of these props and were totally taken by surprise by this, and so we welcomed her in and asked her to take a seat and have a drink. But no, she said that she "had another photo shoot to do" and just started taking photos of anything: food in boxes, wine glasses clustered together next to a bottle of wine with no wine in them, and so on. We urged her to please wait a few minutes, but she refused.

At 2:02, exactly two minutes after the photo shoot was scheduled to start, she announced that she was finished--and left.

A few weeks later, we got the photos, and we were shocked by how bad they were. I mean, really, really bad. They were often not centered or tilted; they didn't capture key features that could appeal to our potential guests (such as our brand-new wood fireplace); and they had not had a bit of editing done to them, meaning that they were bland, colourless and lifeless for the most part.

In short, they were awful. So I contacted Airbnb, and while the woman who responded, E_ _ _ _, was actually quite nice and receptive, she basically told us that we were screwed. The payment would be taken off of our first hosting regardless, and if we tried to edit the photos in any external program such as Photoshop, then we would lose the "Photo Verified by Airbnb" watermark.

Knowing that, we decided to leave the photos on Airbnb and use their very basic brightness, contrast and cropping tools. But guess what? When we did that, we lost the "verified" watermark. Yes, even though this was on the Airbnb website and we used their tools, the very thing that we were paying for was erased.

So we contacted Airbnb again, and this time, we got a less-than-helpful agent, who didn't give us his or her name. The response was very generic, like, "If you edit Airbnb photos, you lose the watermark." We tried to explain that hey, we only edited these photos with YOUR tools, but they ignored us. And as to our complaints about the photographer, they said, "We will pass your comments on to the photographer." And we said, "Don't pass our comments on to the photographer--pass them on to her SUPERVISOR!"

After that, we never heard from them again.

So we were wondering if any of you had had any similar experiences. We don't know very many hosts personally, but I was speaking to one we know in Koh Samui, Thailand yesterday, and he said it is exactly the same way with the Airbnb photographer there. We were thus wondering if this is common, or if our two cases are the exception and not the rule.

Would love to hear from y'all on this. Cheers.  

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Stacey23 Thanks for your input, especially point 5, which is something for us to think about if we ever do this in future. 

As for the abysmal pay you mention for Airbnb photographers, this is something that we weren't aware of, nor would ever have had any reason to be aware of. It might have given us pause about using this service.

And yes, we do understand that a photographer may occasionally show up "a little early," as you worded it. But we're talking about someone who showed up more than 20 minutes before the appointed time, began shooting immediately, and was finished a mere two minutes after the time she was scheduled to start. And contrary to the impression you might have got from my initial post, almost all of the house was ready for shooting, and we asked her, politely, if she would please photograph those rooms first while we finished with the little bit that was remaining for us to set up. She ignored us and just shot whatever was in front of her, because she only had one thing on her mind: getting out the door.

Stacy, please understand that I'm also a professional who often works at appointed times and charges people based on this. If I were ever to try and pull something like this, I would never be hired again. That's how it works in the real world. But with this system, there is no accountability, which is a big part of the point that I was trying to make. The photographer can show up at a different time, be impolite, and then take absolutely horrible shots (and these were horrible, as I've stated--and no, she did not "straighten a blanket or adjust placement to highlight amenities" or anything like that). They do that because they CAN do it. 

So it is a lesson learned, and we have. But if you read the host forums, then you can see that a lot of hosts are frustrated by the increasingly high expectations Airbnb is having of them. I personally don't mind that, though, if it raises the professionalism of the platform. All I'm saying here is that they are asking that of us, then why aren't they asking that of the people who work directly for them?