Airbnb Arvostelua 

We booked 3 nights at "Freebird II-1 min to Ximen MRT" in Taipei for April 4-7, 2014 through Airbnb. The host was very slow to respond to our inquiries for details and did not give us the address of the place before we departed for Taipei. We arrived assuming we could call or email the host on arrival and get the details on the address/location. Over 5 phone calls, 5 emails, and 7 hours later on the day of arrival we had yet to receive a response, and were forced to scramble for a last minute stay at a local hotel. We cancelled our booking and later the host acknowledged that the confusion was partially his fault, but refused to refund our 3 night fee ($177US), and also even refused to refund the cleaning fee ($18) even though we never set foot in the place. Airbnb was useless and says everything is between you and the host, and not their problem.

Review integrity is unique @Airbnb. All pay per booking Airbnb competitors are scam operations or inadequate. Airbnb protects guests well.

This review applies to Airbnb US and HQ. However since many international guests use Airbnb when they travel in the US, this applies to them as well and the platform is the same around the world anyway.

Review integrity is unique at Airbnb, not only in its industry but also among all internet companies. This is a huge win for guests as any intelligent person who is risk averse will select a host with many good reviews and be fairly sure that they will get a good experience. This is because on average Airbnb reviews are very accurate. Possibly only Ebay can compare with Airbnb as far as Review integriy. Many other internet companies like Yelp and Tripadvisor cannot compare with Airbnb and pose severe risks to users and guests. From my experience Yelp and Tripadvisor are corrupt and unreliable and their reviews are junk on average and/or do not have the right people and right systems to handle what they try to sell to the public.

Airbnb invests massive resources and very smart and nice people to ensure the integrity and accuracy of reviews. They keep improving although there is still room for improvement. I would like to see Airbnb add star reviews for guests too not just hosts; similarly to what Ebay does where both buyers and sellers are star rated (not just description rated). This would ensure that each Airbnb transaction is smooth for both guests and hosts and that Airbnb would succeed even more.

Airbnb has no competition; all its competitors do not have the resources, ethics, integrity, people and systems that Airbnb has. In fact some of Airbnb competitors, including well recognized names such as Tripadvisor, are essentially scam operations. I am not familiar with VBRO and other non pay per booking operations so I cannot rate them but if VBRO and other were smart they would switch to a pay per booking model so that hosts do not have to pay a huge fee upfront.

In essence many of the recent reviews of angry guests about Airbnb are either fake or the guests did not take the appropriate precautions such as choosing a host with many positive reviews so they get what they ask for.

Another area of improvement for Airbnb would be adding the ability for hosts to include special amenities such as indoor pool vs outdoor pool, private garage etc because many guests do actively look for special amenities but the current Airbnb menu does not allow for that search while many of Airbnb competitors do allow more options in search.

Airbnb has made huge improvements recently. I had an old Truspilot review of Airbnb with 2 stars