Is it the regular practice? Bait and switch?

[Gil1952]

I rented, well I was thinking I was renting the entire house as it was mentioned: "You’ll have the chalet to yourself". The description was nice and met my needs. However, at the bottom of the page, there is a section "during your stay", which is next to the footer. In that section that is partially hidden, was added that there are parents of the owner who will be staying in the basement of the house.

I didn't see that until my wife mentioned it to me. So I reached out to the owner and asked what is going on? The response was, that indeed there will be another couple staying in the house as well.  At this point, I mentioned that "You’ll have the chalet to yourself". This however didn't make any difference to the owner, and I was told to read more carefully next time.

Airbnb support was on the side of the owner as he generates them revenue, not me. I was told that a separate entrance is considered an entire home. Apparently in eyes of Airbnb homes and basements are not part of the same structure.  The basement can divorce the rest of the house at any time and be on its way to Florida.

The refund for this property was only 50%. So my question is what should I have done? Is it fair practices of Airbnb to support incomplete and misleading listings? By helping them, after all, they help themself, but the reputation in my eyes is gone. I am a comedian, so I take it with a rub of salt, but regardless it is in my opinion an organization that supports such behavior, only lasts so long. What do you think? What would you have done? Have you had similar issues?

[Sarah977]

@Gil1952  Hosts have consistently given Airbnb feedback about this for years. It falls on deaf ears.

BTW, listings didn't used to be displayed like they are now- the house rules used to be displayed near the top, in their entirety, and there was much more visible text description without anyone having to click on "Read More". Every time they have proudly announced a new site update, it gets progressively worse.

All that stuff under the heading, like "You'll have the entire chalet to yourself",  "This listing features a fireplace", etc, is inserted by Airbnb, not hosts. It takes up valuable space, which then led to truncated info with "Read more"(Plus the techies at Airbnb seem to be in love with clicks- the more the better.  You should see the hosting pages- we have to click through 3 times to get to info we need to access daily in order to get to where they've buried it).

Another thing to be aware of is that while many guests presume that Airbnb favors hosts, simply because the guest didn't get the refund they wanted, etc, the reality is that they listen to guest feedback far more than host feedback. The bulk of Airbnb's income is derived from guest fees, so they consider it financially advantageous to implement suggestions from guests. Hosts are expendable as far as they are concerned- there are far more listings than guests to fill them, and always more starry-eyed hosts wanting to sign up to list a rental.

So send feedback to Airbnb about how difficult they make the listing info to read for guests and get anyone else you know who has a guest account to, as well.  Maybe they'll listen to guest complaints in this regard- they sure haven't listened to hosts.

[Basha0 · Accepted solution]

I suggest you stay at the chalet and hopefully have a nice stay. If the people staying in the basement are clogging well into the night or yodeling, mention it in your review 

[Sarah977]

@Basha0  🙂  They're the host's parents- they probably go to bed at 9pm and the loudest thing they do is gargle some Listerine before turning in for the night.

[Ann72]

@Basha0  I have a friend in New York who legit had to move out of her apartment because the people upstairs actually were clog-dancers  😂😂😂

[Sandra126]

I do tap dancing and play cornet and trumpet. Then I spend the rest of the day with music on working with power tools. @Ann72 , lucky I'm not in a flat. But I at least stick to civil hours, and if I see any neighbours relaxing on balconies etc I might skip being noisy outside to give them a bit of a breather.

[Sarah977]

I had a neighbor right behind me who was a professional sax player and I actually really enjoyed hearing his live music. He never practiced at unreasonable hours, so it was a treat rather than an annoyance.