zlacker

Y’all keep learning the hard way that these unicorns are built without any concern towards these experiences. They don’t care, the rev keeps flowing. They only understand regulations and penalties. They will not improve these gaps on their own because it doesn’t move the needle.

No offense to you OP whatsoever. AirBnB is not a startup. It’s a public company with a $56B market cap that is optimizing for profit above all else, and your shitty experience unfortunately doesn’t matter to them. They won’t fix the problem until not doing so materially impacts their financials (or incurs regulatory wrath).

Stay at a hotel in the short term, push for more regulation in the long term. If this is innovation, ignore startup celebrities and start taking notes from Comcast.

>>toomuc+(OP)
Weirdly, one time in Paris we thought this was happening to us, but they place they stuck us was in a completely awesome location - heart of the Latin Quarter and clearly pricier than what we had paid for.

>>toomuc+(OP)
The inverse of this is that in the early days, you’re getting amazing value while these unicorns burn through billions scaling up. Airbnb 5+ years ago have incredible value for money, as did Uber and more recently some of the eBike/scooter companies.

>>smugma+O6
Enjoy the freebies, just recognize when it’s time to move on because the org is played out and everyone has cashed out.

(Also consider that the value you mention is occasionally driven by ZIRP monetary policy leading to VC capital infusions we may never see again at the scale previously seen; WeWork, Uber, etc)

>>smugma+O6
True, I only had good experiences with Airbnb, but last time I used it was summer 2019. With the post-pandemic travel and remote work boom, as well as the tech market downturn, the risk for bad experiences likely has increased a lot.

>>smugma+O6
You might get some VC subsidised cheap rides or a lower cost stay. But zooming out, what is the wider effect on our economy of allocating billions of capital in the attempt to build virtual monopolies?

This money could and should be better spent elsewhere, on actual productive assets and activities, rather than pushing for digital rentiership.