VICE writer gets scammed on Airbnb, discovers it's a major operation spanning several cities, gets ignored by Airbnb support, writes about it, FBI gets involved

Long, but very interesting read. Makes me miss the days when Vice regularly put out good content.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4...scam-on-airbnb


Cliffs:

- Author Allie Conti (longtime VICE writer) booked Airbnb in Chicago, got moved at last minute to "upgraded" unit due to supposed plumbing problem.

- Her unit was a complete dump and looked nothing like the picture. She checked out early after failing to get anything resolved.

- Property owner refused to give refund, Airbnb customer service was shit and gave only a small refund despite loads of evidence.

- Author investigated and found a ton of accounts in several cities with similar names and using similar stock pictures to advertise properties which didn't exist.

- Everyone who rented these properties got moved right before checkin to something "better", which was always a rundown dump.

- Airbnb customer service gave these fake accounts "verified" status despite being clearly phony.

- Scammer behind all of these accounts would blackmail people into giving 5-star reviews (or no reviews at all) with the threat of giving renter a bad rating. (Airbnb allows owners to rate renters, which fucks renters wanting to use Airbnb in the future if they get bad reviews.)

- Airbnb basically gave no fucks, would never issue full refunds, would never remove the retaliatory bad reviews given to renters, and would never terminate the offending scammer accounts.

- Author gathered all evidence and wrote this bombshell article.

- After seeing the article, Airbnb laughably gave the author a weird second partial refund like $241.88 with no explanation.

- FBI saw the article and decided to investigate both Airbnb and the scammers, who the author identified.


The scammers were Shray Goel and Shaun Raheja.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncat...ng?resize=1050


Goel and Raheja took down their Linkedin page and company website as soon as they realized this chick was onto them, even before the article was published.

Airbnb still hasn't deleted their accounts.

What a shady/incompetent piece of shit company. Makes me actually support the attempts by cities like San Francisco to highly regulate them. You let these tech behemoths run amok and self-regulate, this is the shit you get.

The only downside to this article is that the author is not particularly good at explaining complicated details, and it often gets confusing.

For example, she told the story of a guy who got scammed by Raheja/Goel. The guy got force-moved at the last minute, but then charged extra money because his party was large (huh?), and couldn't afford what he was moved to (huh?), and then incurred a $950 cancellation fee for cancelling. But then he decided to stay after all, as long as the scammer removed the cancellation fee, and was promised it would be removed, but it wasn't. Then Airbnb wouldn't give him back the cancellation fee. What?? How can Airbnb claim he cancelled but also stayed there? How could it even be billed that way? How was he charged extra in the first place if he booked a lower-priced property and was force-moved? The author doesn't explain any of this.

Some of the other victimization stories told were also poorly described.

I believe all of them, but the author (somehow a 5-year VICE writer) doesn't explain the details clearly.

But whatever.

Here's her Twitter: https://twitter.com/allie_conti

I have no interest in Airbnb, and I have even less interest after reading this article. Sounds like customer service is complete shit, and probably outsourced to third world monkeys following a script.

It's not just the US. Europe is a lot harder against AirBNB, with some cities completely banning it and others having restrictions (you can do short-term rent of your apartment for x days per year)

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Originally Posted by MrTickle

It's not just the US. Europe is a lot harder against AirBNB, with some cities completely banning it and others having restrictions (you can do short-term rent of your apartment for x days per year)

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I do like how it seems, at least in some cases, Europe comes down harder on shady-acting companies and forces them to stop their bullshit.

For example, I have read on cruise forums that American-based cruise lines like Norwegian still have to adhere to European rules/laws when serving European customers, which makes the entire cruise booking process more transparent and customer-friendly for Europeans only. If I remember right, they can't stuff in hidden fees, nor can they charge bullshit "mandatory gratuities" (which the cruise line keeps anyway), etc.

I'm not a big fan of overregulation, but when it comes to common-sense laws to prevent scamming or misleading behaviors, I'm all for governments stepping in and forcing some of these predatory/apathetic companies to act right.

That was an interesting article. I've used VRBO before a couple times and had really good results, but have not used airbnb before. Makes me really want to double and triple check everything before booking in the future, but wouldn't prevent me from using those sites.

It seems like the scammers choose to do the whole "there's a problem with your unit and we need to move you" thing rather than just posting fake pics of their real units because there is a loophole in the airbnb terms and conditions that says if you agree to be moved to a different unit and stay there even one night then basically you have no recourse. Whereas if you showed up directly to the place and it wasn't anything as pictured, you could take photos showing the differences, send them to airbnb, and maybe they would actually do something about your complaint. Is that accurate?

Either way, the airbnb support definitely sounds like the third-world outsourced type that you described...

One thing I will say though is I will never go to a rental like this without getting written confirmation beforehand, and I would put it on a credit card so that there would be a chargeback dispute possible if needed. And now after reading this I would also never accept any alternative accommodations offered by an owner unless I saw them in person first. It is rare that you go anywhere and the city is so booked that you really can't find a hotel room. I would rather stay at a hotel for a few nights and sort out an airbnb refund later than just take some dump and feel like a sucker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mdj1980

That was an interesting article. I've used VRBO before a couple times and had really good results, but have not used airbnb before. Makes me really want to double and triple check everything before booking in the future, but wouldn't prevent me from using those sites.

It seems like the scammers choose to do the whole "there's a problem with your unit and we need to move you" thing rather than just posting fake pics of their real units because there is a loophole in the airbnb terms and conditions that says if you agree to be moved to a different unit and stay there even one night then basically you have no recourse. Whereas if you showed up directly to the place and it wasn't anything as pictured, you could take photos showing the differences, send them to airbnb, and maybe they would actually do something about your complaint. Is that accurate?

Either way, the airbnb support definitely sounds like the third-world outsourced type that you described...

One thing I will say though is I will never go to a rental like this without getting written confirmation beforehand, and I would put it on a credit card so that there would be a chargeback dispute possible if needed. And now after reading this I would also never accept any alternative accommodations offered by an owner unless I saw them in person first. It is rare that you go anywhere and the city is so booked that you really can't find a hotel room. I would rather stay at a hotel for a few nights and sort out an airbnb refund later than just take some dump and feel like a sucker.

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Yes, you're correct about how the scammers were operating. They were indeed exploiting the "move you due to an emergency" loophole, thus getting out of any possible problems with the unit not looking like the pictures. Amazing how Airbnb wouldn't clamp down on them after countless complaints though, and how Airbnb would never give a full refund.

I agree that most of these people made a mistake by toughing it out for one night at these dump "replacement units" before finally giving up and abandoning the reservation, which also probably caused enough confusion to the monkeys at Airbnb to where it looked like fault on both ends. (Not defending Airbnb though, as these asshole scammers should have been shut down ages ago.)

If my "replacement" unit was shit, I would have immediately refused it, called Airbnb, and then moved to a hotel. Pain in the ass, but necessary. Apparently anyone who did this was likely able to get out of the scam (aside from the hassle and last-minute necessity to book a hotel), because Airbb will refund people if they refuse the replacement. But once you accept the replacement for one night, you're mostly fucked, even if the owner doesn't come through with various improvements or fixes he promises.

I have a feeling that Airbnb gets so many complaints about so many units for rent that they felt overwhelmed, outsourced customer service to the aforementioned third world monkeys, and had them follow a rigid set of rules regarding how refunds are to be given. In most cases, they are probably instructed to give partials unless there's super glaring fault on one end, and the scammers are probably able to bullshit their way into making the fault at least look two ways.

Still, for there to be so many complaints about this shit occurring involving the same owners, and nothing happening (even after this article's author put it all together and informed them of the scam), it shows that there's a complete lack of giving a shit regarding their platform being used for scamming. They just want to churn, churn, churn those rentals and keep collecting those commissions.

The ones I feel worst for are the students and poor people who save up for a long time to take what they think is a dream vacation, only to have it ruined by asshole scammers.

When you are more financially secure, you can take a lot of vacations, and a shit vacation is a frustration but not soul-crushing. To save up for a long time in preparation for the vacation you always wanted, only to have it turned into a stressful mess where you don't get anywhere near what you paid for, it's just heartbreaking and makes you lose faith in humanity.

I felt worst for that kid who saved up all that time and then ran into the bullshit upcharge and the ridiculous cancellation fee. Looks like he was charged $2750 for the whole thing, and only got $700 BACK. Though maybe that's wrong because the author was really bad at describing this particular incident. Whatever it was, I felt awful for the guy, and felt like punching the scammers in the face.

I'm very close friends with a couple that use AirBnB all the time & I'm waiting for the inevitable bad experience like this. They've been lucky so far.

This is what late stage free market capitalism looks like.

semi related; was reading about something similar recently where someone got into a very weird but semi laughable conflict with an airbnb host and it illustrated how shitty things can go if you rub someone wrong.

basically a few incredibly minor incidents took place while she was there; a lamp stopped working, requiring the owner fixing/replacing it, she asked if she could remove curtains from a sky light and was told no, she broke a dish and never apparently told the owner until they mentioned it (very dumb imo), and the unit required some very basic cleaning when she left because she had been wearing a lot of glitter and some of it fell off and apparently there was no vacuum or broom to sweep it up with.

so basically she left a 5 star review and got on with her life, only to find out the airbnb owner one-starred her and low key accused her of all the above PLUS being a cam whore (she was not) because of how she dressed/looked (she's basically a lesbian drag queen). like his review was just a totally catty hit piece.

she has no recourse, whatsoever, which isnt a big deal until you consider that it totally fucks up her ability to use airbnb in the future. she reached out to support and was like 'uhhh this guys trashing my personal appearance and basically slandering me' and airbnb told her that was within his rights as a host.

not a great look imo.

This sounded very familiar and realized that I herd a Story on CBC radio a few months back, here is the article from CBC Montreal...

Airbnb quietly shut down a top host amid scathing reviews, but hundreds of guests were left to stay with him

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5252233

There's a massive campaign war going on in Jersey City right now over the election next week where some Short Term Rental Regulations are on the ballot. Over $5 million ($33 per registered voter) has been spent in total by Air BnB and some Hotel related company trying to persuade everyone to vote one way or the other. Tons of bulky glossy fliers every day in the mail, pretty much every other commercial is telling you to "Vote Yes (or No) on Question #1", can't get on the subway without being approached by someone asking you if you were aware of the vote, it's nuts.

Check out this blog from last month (the blog exists to convince people to vote Yes to regulations)
https://jerseycityairbnb.com/airbnb-...-fire-victims/

The author figured out that a twitter account @jennycity was actually Arun Goel (the guy mentioned in the Vice article) and he had over 80 properties in Jersey city. He was using the twitter account to subtly make pro AirBnB statements.

Lol at tine trolling sex worker Twitter for air bnb stories

Although I would take 10 tines over any of you clowns

I like how they supposedly plan on launching an IPO and going public next year.

Tards

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Originally Posted by lol wow

Lol at tine trolling sex worker Twitter for air bnb stories

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https://media.giphy.com/media/WRcYCf...ERwW/giphy.gif

LOL at blaming this on "San Francisco" Like who exactly? the people of SF? The Mayor?
This didn't even happen in SF, but "they" (I say they, but I have no idea who he talking about)
are supposed to be on top of every landlord scam?

Someones needs to get Druff away from Fox "news". He brings his politics into every story.
His tin foil MAGA hat is taking over his life, he has obviously lost something on his fastball over the Trump era.
Now he seeing Nancy Pelosi in his sleep, apparently.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

What a shady/incompetent piece of shit company. Makes me actually support the attempts by cities like San Francisco to highly regulate them. You let these tech behemoths run amok and self-regulate, this is the shit you get.

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http://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/amp...n-14804643.php

Well damn.

Also, fuck an AirBnb.

I hope their IPO goes as well as We Work's.

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Originally Posted by Walter Sobchak

I hope their IPO goes as well as We Work's.

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dude its highly unlikely their ipo isnt going to be a massive success. they are profitable and their competition are trash like expedia and booking.com.

further more they have survived all the legal challenges to their business model and come out entirely unscathed.

dont get shut out, imo.