This is exactly what I'm talking about, @Helen427 - the more you look, the more you see. We're all over here, endlessly stressing about the 5-star win/4-star fail conundrum, while these chancers are running rampant all over every market worldwide, causing chaos and destruction in every neighbourhood they pitch up in with their unmonitored listings and their out-of-control, anti-social guests, hoovering up great swathes of local long-term rental stock, multiple accounts riddled with false reviews from fake profiles, clear evidence from their guests' real reviews of long histories of serious safety, security, privacy and host standard policy violations etc etc - yet somehow, all these swarms of "bad actors" are still managing to evade detection by Airbnb's super-duper risk-assessment technology? Really??
If we - with zero tools, training or technological tricks - can so easily see and isolate the identifying patterns that clearly indicate the high probability of fraudulent activity on a "host's" profile - why do Airbnb's safety and security systems seem to have such a hard time in tracking them down and eliminating them? And how are so many of these rogue hosts getting away with with their fraudulent activities for so long?
That would indicate that - at the very least - Airbnb's current system of internal checks and balances is abjectly failing to identify and shut down fraudulent hosts on their own platform. Given the sheer volume (and tone) of negative and seriously damaging PR the recent viral media articles have already whipped up for the company (and for each and every one of us) - and given that it's over 3 full months now since Airbnb was forced to amend its global policies and issue public statements in response to public outrage over this very issue - it should be of deep concern to us all, that more - a lot more - hasn't been done by the company to halt or eliminate the prolific rogue element, that's skirting dangerously close to putting us all out of business. Including Airbnb.
Airbnb will fail to swiftly and adequately put strong and appropriate measures in place to deal with this phenomenon, at their peril. On foot of the global media coverage, potential guests have now been made fully aware that there are quite significant risks associated with booking on the Airbnb platform, and understandably, they're showing clear signs of being a lot more wary of using Airbnb at all. All evidence is confirming that user confidence in the trustworthiness and authenticity of Airbnb listings and Airbnb hosts, has already plummeted to unprecedented lows in recent months (and because Airbnb insists on lumping us small independent hosts right in there in the same searches as the "pro's", with no distiction between the two - that consumer scepticism extends to us, and our listings, too)
Airbnb - you need to step up and be seen to be cleaning house - properly cleaning house - ASAP, because guests are really struggling to place any trust or faith in your hosts, or in your listings - and despite all your big promises, you're still not doing anything that comes even close to an acceptable job of weeding out the "bad actors".And until you do, more and more guests are going to get stung. And fewer and fewer guests are going to trust your service. Or your hosts.
