Well, I think I'll probably be switching to Vrbo, after a very short time and some horrible experiences as an AirBnB host. This place just gets shadier.
I started off as a cohost, working on the shadiest property imaginable; I was in a bad situation as I had just gotten out of the hospital after my roommates almost let me die of typhus. So I reluctantly took an offer to work 5 hours a day in exchange for no money—just a "free" bed in a hallway. I had to share the hallway with an old guy who snored like a battleship chugging through the Arctic. The old guy was supposed to be helping me clean, but he was a friend of the hosts, so they just let him live there for free, and I had to clean up after him AND ten paying, slobby guests packed into a 3-bed, with no help. The owners rarely appeared, and would not discipline my "coworker." It was absolutely foul. They agreed to give me the cleaning fees for a little while—which didn't help, because their filthy guests were mostly long-term—then quietly stopped giving me anything. But for some reason AirBnB lets them keep renting multiple properties while treating employees like indentured servants.
When I got my own studio apartment, I decided I wanted to make some money for myself. But it only got worse.
My very first guest, on his very first night, had a wild party in my tiny studio. They shattered a mirrored glass door in my apartment and punched a hole in my wall. It wasn't just a hole, though; they cracked the entire drywall panel. He left scattered glass everywhere and a huge mess.
This was less thatn 24 hours after I started hosting!
I had a $1000 security deposit, but what did AirBnB do?
Not only did they tell me I had to let him stay out the week in order to get the money for his stay—even though I was scared of the guy after he put a hole in my wall—they also refused to make him pay for the damage he caused.
He tried to fix the door, but it still doesn't work, and my entire closet (clothes and shoes) was full of broken glass. The dispute resolution employee—who was clearly on the violent guest's side, as they were both young men—googled "hole in drywall" and awarded me the first Google result--about $60!—for ALL the damage this person caused.
Then they let him write a fraudulent review of my place to defend himself, claiming that it was dirty. Yeah, it was dirty because he was in it! My cat pooped outside the box because he and his violent friends terrified her too badly to cross the floor and go to her litterbox. The ad clearly stated there are cats in the apartment, but his based his complaints on... the fact that there are cats in the apartment. I worked for hours to clean it up for him prior to his visit, and had to spend $120 just to clean up his filth and broken glass. He claimed my ad was "dishonest," when it just didn't say what he wanted it to say.
My next visitor said my place was "OK," then gave it a three star rating just because. He said it was too small for him. It's Los Angeles!
What does AirBnB do? Because of these two awful people, they not only left 90 percent of the repair and cleanup costs to me, THEY PAUSED MY LISTING.
Yep, they took my listing off the market due to two ratings, one which read "OK" and the other was from a violent drunk who wrecked my apartment. (I had provided them with extensive documentation of the damage and his lame attempts to save money by pretending to fix it; they didn't even look at the documentation, apparently, just talked to this creep and let him off the hook).
Going to Vrbo, and I suggest you do too. The guests there are not cheap, violent liars and the customer service doesn't favor the worst people. AirBnB is becoming a pigsty and they will NOT protect hosts from fraudulent and even volatile guests. (Unless they're awful hosts who treat their cohosts like unpaid indentured labor.)
