@Ephraim0 I don't know that you're missing something- it just seems by these type of reports we read, that the quality of guests that airbnb is now attracting seems to have gone down, and the level of customer service has gone down as the company has boomed. Whereas guests were formerly required to post an actual profile photo, now they can have a grey sillouette, a cartoon character, or their cat- they can make bookings without airbnb actually ensuring that their credit cards are valid and active, and support is farmed out to the Phillipines, with support staff being given inadequate training, or not being particularly fluent in English. It also seems like corporate attitude has changed- when they first started they were really big on promoting their concept of the "sharing economy" and how it can broaden everyone's experience, etc. etc. Now they only seem to be concerned with profits, and for some strange reason, which eludes me, don't appear to be at all concerned about all the "airbnb hell" stories circulating on the internet. I guess their finances are okay and growing, so why should they care? seems to be about it.
Also I think there's a lot of info going around on the internet about how guests can get a free stay- "Just complain about something and you'll get your money back". And a perception on the part of some that you can do whatever in an airbnb. A friend has a big airbnb vacation rental next to her with off-site host. It has lots of yahoo guests- yelling and screaming drunk in the pool until 3AM. She had asked the guests to tone it down one day- that it was a residencial neighborhood and they needed to be respectful. She's very soft spoken and polite and I happened to be standing there when she spoke to them. One guy's response was "It's an Airbnb rental !" as if that meant acting like animals was perfectly acceptable. His buddy looked embarrassed and said he'd talk to everyone and make sure it didn't happen again and apologized for the noise.
That said, like you, I've not had problem guests about whom I've had to involve airbnb ( I've actually had consistently lovely guests, but I host a room in my home, which is different than whole house listings) and the issues I have had, mostly tech issues, were resolved, albeit slower and more frustratingly ( "Yes, of course I've checked that my text message Inbox isn't full, and no, it has nothing to do with my phone provider- Airbnb has just stopped sending me my notifications- it's a tech glitch, please report it to your tech dept. ") than I would have liked. But I also understand how many hosts and guests they have to deal with and try to be patient.