There are parties with hundreds of kids on the roof, weed smoked in the hall outside our apartment, a broken front door that can only be closed by smashing as hard as possible or not at all, stains all over the carpet outside the Airbnb, people breaking into our house because they're drunk, people buzzing every apartment because they've locked themselves out and it's 4AM. The place is a 365 day Airbnb, which is illegal, and Airbnb know that too and don't care.
AirBnB refuse to take any responsibility, even just to raise issues with the person running the BnB. They have even repeatedly said they can't find a listing by address - seriously, not that the address is wrong, but they they simply do not have the capability. We can't speak to the neighbor because they don't live there, they just rent out their apartment on Airbnb. They got journalists to write stories about how they'd soon have an app for neighbours last year - it still isn't rolled out in Europe despite all the press.
Love airBnB as a customer. 95% of guests are fine. 4% do stupid shit because they're drunk, which is understandable, but having continuously drunk 'neighbors' sucks. 1% are deliberately anti social. But the company absolutely does not give a damn about their impact on the people around them.
Tip for anyone else: call your police non-emergency number or your council. Avoid Airbnb support. They can't help and they won't take responsibility for the source of their income.
You can't know that and it by no means follows from what you've said. It's fine to describe your specific experiences, but not fine to cross into overgeneralized denunciation. Especially not to gin up indignation, which is pretty much the sole purpose of overgeneralized denunciation.
I have yet to see any proof that AirBnB cares for anything other than to expand their reach and profitability. They'll partner with local governments to support tax collection, as its in their best interests (and costs them little but engineering time, as the tax is passed through to the customer/host), but its also in their best interest to disregard externalities such as that caused by less than desirable AirBnB customers.
EDIT: They're the less abrasive version of Uber. Disruption needs to be balanced with societal benefits. Your startup does not exist in a vacuum, and you are one piece of legislation or court decision away from being regulated out of existence. Behave accordingly.
Like this guy, just a day ago, where someone made a fake listing for his house and they won't answer him. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/4h5yo0/fl_some...
Maybe it's the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Or it's just the New Economy. Twitter has 2300 employees. Microsoft, hardly the picture of perfect customer service, has almost 120,000. Guess which one you can get on the phone.
You can't get valuations of millions of dollars per employee if you have employees trying to do things like answer complaints. Dealing with complaints is money-losing business, not money-making business.
To me, I feel like you know you're in trouble on an HN thread when someone invokes that Upton Sinclair quote. There are very few conversations you can't shut down with it.