Host with 14 rentals, almost all with identical pictures!

[David6576]

Link to the rentals

I submitted a request to rent a house in Oakland, CA that did not have any reviews yet. The listing stated that the host has 97 reviews from his other listings. I decided to investigate. Out of the 97 reviews, 9 guests complained that the photos were "misleading" at best, with several guests claiming "scam!" I reviewed the host's other listings and found 8 of his other listings had the exact same cover photo. Scrolling through the photos I found most had the same bedroom pictures, living room, and kitchen pictures. This did not seem right.

I called AirBnb to tell them about my discovery. The first rep seemed uninterested and told me that "lots of AirBnb hosts post similar photos." I told him that this felt fraudulent to me. He didn't see why. I asked to speak to someone else that might be able to help. I got transferred and ran into the same brick wall of non-caring. They said, "AirBnb is a community and therefore the community members police themselves." I said that is what I am doing, I am reporting to you fraudulent photos. This means that the places being listed are not an accurate representation of the listing. She said I would need to visit the place and take pictures to prove that it was not accurate. I replied that maybe one of the listings is accurate, but the other 13 can not be since they share the exact same photos. I asked to speak to her boss. I am still waiting for a callback.

[Sarah977]

@David6576  These listings are indeed strange. Hard to figure out what's going on there. I did read through the reviews, and the ones who say it was misrepresented, not clean, or other negatives got responses from the host that make it appear that the guest was just leaving a retaliatory review. Yet when I cross-referenced and looked at those guests' reviews from other hosts, they are competely opposite- guests who were accused by this host of leaving the place filthy were reviewed by past hosts as being lovely guests who left it clean and tidy. And the host left nice reviews for the guests who he later accused in his responses of bad behavior.

Yet there are an overwhelming number of reviews from guests who were happy with the listings, so again, it's all quite odd.

[Emilia42]

@David6576 

The host's response rate is 100%. I would contact him and ask him what the difference is between his 'houses' if they are in fact separate places. Contacting him won't do any harm and it will be interesting to see what he says. I wouldn't book with him just based the listings lack of reviews. I am always skeptical of hosts who have a large number of reviews (97) but their active listings show a significantly smaller number of reviews (44.) Sure, it's true that he could have sold properties or retired listings. But it's also highly possible that the inactive listings were deactivated/shut down and he quickly created new ones to 'start over' from scratch. I've seen this done before; hosts will duplicate listings as a standby in case one is removed. 

[Sandra856]

I also think he just dublicated his listings - those with reviews got horrible ratings. I would never book with that host. 

[Sarah977]

Even if this host's listings weren't duplicated, I wouldn't book with a host like this because of what I discovered by reading the reviews. He appears to be one of "those" hosts who is really nice with guests if all goes well, but if a guest dares complain about something not right, he becomes rude and defensive/aggressive.

This is one reason it's one of the good features about Airbnb that the reviews for all of a host's properties, even though they may no longer list one or more properties, stay on the host's profile.