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The EU Would Very Much Like Airbnb To Know That the Rules Are Different in Europe (fortune.com)
Airbnb is facing fresh regulatory pressure in Europe. But this time it's not about the short-term home rental platform's core business model -- it's about its terms and conditions, and the way the company presents pricing to consumers. From a report: On Monday, the European Commission and a number of EU consumer watchdogs accused Airbnb of breaking consumer law. If the company does not change the way it operates by the end of August, then it could face legal action. Specifically, the regulators said Airbnb must show people total prices up-front that include all charges and fees, and it must clearly tell customers whether a property is being offered by a private host or a professional. The American company's terms and conditions are illegal under EU law for a variety of reasons, the regulators added. For example, the company tells people in the EU that they cannot sue a host in cases of personal harm or other damages, and it claims it can unilaterally change its terms and conditions without giving customers a warning and the option of cancelling their contracts. These sorts of terms might fly in the U.S., but they're banned in Europe.
But they've got this right. Glad to see them doing the right thing.
These violations seem easy to identify, so why has it taken this long for the EU to act? I cannot tell from the story how long Airbnb has operated in the EU but they do mention other EU legal battles in the past so I'm guessing it has been many years. It's not like Airbnb is a small company that could have flown below their radar.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"These sorts of terms might fly in the U.S., but they're banned in Europe."
Maybe that is an indication that, those US laws have more LOOPHOLES to exploit (compared to EU), for companies like AirBNB, Uber, etc?
If you do not like the laws, do not do business in the country. Can you imagine what would happen if AB InBev (A Belgian-Brazillian company, stationed about 100m from where I live) would start selling beer to 16 year olds because that is what they do in the home countries?
No matter how stupid the law is, you must follow it and let the people decide what those laws are.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
AirBnB "tells people ... that they cannot sue a host in cases of personal harm or other damages, and it claims it can unilaterally change its terms and conditions without giving customers a warning and the option of cancelling their contracts."
The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
"... the [EU] regulators said Airbnb must show people total prices up-front that include all charges and fees, and it must clearly tell customers whether a property is being offered by a private host or a professional."
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
We are not used to that.
The whole:” the hotel is 299 pr night”
But then there’s the:
Resort fee, that’s another 50 pr night
Oh the tourist tax, that’s another 10 pr night
Ah you want to park your car? That’s another 25 or night.
And of course that’s without taxes.
And if you are using a hotel search engine, expect only the room price to be listed so you still have to do the calculations yourself.
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying. :)
L'Idiot
This one is so obvious that it's surprising that the rule is not applied in all developed countries. On airbnb, the daily rate is shown but it can be easily doubled after cleaning and airbnb fees are added to the original price.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It's not legal in the US to change the terms of a contract unilaterally. There are many things in many TOS that aren't enforceable.
if European politicians would just take the bribe^XCampaign Contributions and look the other way.
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The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
They shouldn't but they routinely do. The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow not one sided and abusive because they are theoretically (though not really) optional.
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
Well, one party has been trying to do something about it, albeit meekly and in a pathetically limited way. The other party screams loudly that regulation is the devil no matter how sane the regulation might actually be and works tirelessly to permit companies to behave as badly as possible. End result is that we get screwed unless we are rich enough to fight the system.
The third-world of the first-world. The USA has seen better days, and most of us know it.
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying.
It is annoying but it is also a problem. It permits de-facto false advertising of prices. The price should be the price. Taxes, fees, markups, etc should all be rolled in, whatever they happen to be. I don't really care what the tax is in your jurisdiction - I just care what the out the door price is and that is what I should be able to compare. If this makes businesses under the jurisdiction of some local government less competitive then they should petition to have the taxes reduced.
The terms these stories tend to miss is burried within the legal verbal masturbation, will be a clause that states "Void where prohibited". In some cases there will be further stipulations attempting to limit what is void (typically to those specific clauses which are).
TOS does not take precedence.over law. Whether or not legal remedies exist on the stop, are upto lawyers tl;DR - Pay under duress and take it up in court.
Meanwhile in the USA, if you want to complain about a telco screwing you over, it now costs $225 to file a complaint with the FCC. Non-refundable. There use to be an informal free complaint system, Ajit has done away with that.
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/273212-fcc-may-gut-informal-complaint-process-force-consumers-to-pay-225-fee
Ajit Pai again.
save that idea when it's time Trans-Pacific Partnership to die again.
The amount I have to pay is the only price that I'm interested in. That goes for ALL purchases.
A breakdown that shows me how much of that money goes to pay employees toilet paper and various taxes is nice, but ultimately a total irrelevance unless I can use them for deductions etc.
Taxes that a company has to pay isn't interesting to me. I don't care. And the beauty is that if everyone lists full price, nobody is at a pricing disadvantage.
Perhaps you missed this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html
World Health Organizations wants to encourage breast feeding. US milk formula lobby opposed it. So USA tries to remove the wording encouraging breast feeding. Fails. US then threatens the bill sponsor, Equador, with military and trade sanctions to force them to stop sponsoring the bill! Equador withdraws the bill.
Russia then sponsors the bill, USA shuts up, says nothing, lets the bill pass.
US starts a trade war with Canada, not over the milk exports (there's no such thing as fresh milk exports, its too expensive to ship *chilled* milk long distances), but milk *protein* exports. The same group of companies, the same type of product.
US has a trade *surplus* with Canada, and USA screws it over on things like pharmaceuticals import bans. Yet it starts a trade war over whey protein.
So the current pecking order is Russia > US Milk Powder Companies > Canada > Nursing Mothers
"... my keyboard was dripping with sarcasm..."
Please point to one case of this leading to a lower cost and not having to pay a lot more than expected.
Just one. One will suffice.
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prob because you in us are abit over 100mil and we europeans abit over 500mil. im sure they would just jump to close that market from paying them for worthless garbage.
That's an easy question :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
US is around 19T$, EU is 17T$ and relatively easy to do business in (strong rule of law, some convergence between countries). Next are China at 12T$, but if you find EU too much of a hassle don't even think about it, after that Japan (4T$) and India (2T$), also not easy markets.
So, if you don't think US is a big enough market, EU is a pretty natural second. But to play ball here, you gotta play by the rules. Which is true across the pond as well, just check out the fines EU banks were hit by in response to (presumably) violating US laws or statutes.
Post to cancel mod.
How the fuck is being required to show the real price up front a ridiculous regulation, rather than the bait and switch method and hidden fees the US uses?
Why do these companies waste their time dealing with Europe?
Maybe they like our principles of common sense and not fucking over anything with a pulse and a wallet.
So long as you have an army of corporate attorneys in your pocket, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want to whomever you want in the Good'ole U. S. of A.
The tax should be on the reciept and you should be able to ask the seller what the tax is before buying the product, but it should not be on the price advertised for the product.
Exactly. If I want to know the tax being charged for some reason (and there are good reasons to want to know this sometimes) then that information should be available. Possibly even itemized. But the advertised price of the product should be the all-in amount of money it will take for me to own it. Any other number is nothing but misleading bullshit.
FTFY. You can't sign away your rights.
Sure you can and people do it all the time. You can voluntarily give up your rights if you want to - you just cannot be forced by a court into doing so. A right that is not exercised or that cannot be exercised is a right that is given away. A right that you cannot defend is a right you effectively do not have. Slavery was outlawed in the 1860s but for all practical purposes black people didn't even gain even the semblance of equal rights for another hundred years. They couldn't defend their rights so they were taken away from them.
I'm not sure what batshit insane supreme court sitting decided you can force arbitration on people.
Their argument is that it isn't forced. Their argument is that you agreed to the contract of your own free will. It's a bullshit argument because it only holds if you have realistic alternatives or are willing to live like a hermit. Good luck getting a cell phone from any vendor without signing a forced arbitration agreement.
Actually no you can't. In most places of the world you can sign what you want but your rights doesn't magically disappear.
You're talking legal theory. I'm talking real world outcomes. In theory you are right. In practice you are routinely incorrect. A right that you voluntarily give up or that you cannot defend in a court room is de-facto a right you don't have. There also is the problem of rights being defined in such a way that they no longer have any meaning. For example let's take the 4th amendment right "against unreasonable searches and seizures". The key word there is "unreasonable" because all they have to do to take the teeth out of that right is to define unreasonable to be something that doesn't really protect you.
Their argument misses the incredible one-sided nature of contracting parties which is precisely why many countries defend people's rights in the face of worthless legalese.
Agreed. It's not just being one sided. A one sided contract isn't a problem if you have alternatives. If all the other options are equally one sided then it's not like you have an alternative. There are plenty of industries where literally every viable option requires forced arbitration so your options are either waive your right to a trial or give up whatever it is you are trying to do. For example good luck buying a new car without some sort of arbitration clause being thrown in the contract these days. Doesn't matter what dealer you go to since they all do it. And why wouldn't they? They don't need the business of any single customer so there is a clear power imbalance. This is where government is supposed to step in and help but our government doesn't generally do that because too many of our citizens have delusions about rugged independence and that regulations are always bad.
I agree that it would be nice to show everything included in the price, but in the US companies face a problem that the EU does not have. Within the US you have many different tax rates. You can have a sales tax from the state, county, and city. This will vary widely across the country. By putting a fixed price you could be very profitable in one area, and very unprofitable in another.
There are things you can do to mitigate this by averaging the total or averaging from your current sales, but if your sales migrate to the majority coming from the unprofitable section of the country. You would have to change your price often, which can put off a lot of consumers. The EU on the other hand has a VAT system for the entire country. It is known that every sale in that country will have the same VAT.
They still have the same issue of varying tax rates, but it is easier for them to tailor and average to the countries where their is more. They have the same problem just on a smaller scale.
In addition building in the cost of shipping to total price is problematic as well as carrier rates change by the location shipped, weight, and fuel costs at the time.
Don't get me wrong adding all pricing into the total is nice benefit for consumers, but in my opinion if all costs are known before payment/booking then it shouldn't be a problem.
WTF? the EU also has many different tax rates across various countries. many countries have that exact same US problem as they sell cross borders all the time. The way you work around that is you display the local tax rate as part of the price and provide the option within the system for a user to specify their location/address to adjust accordingly if they have additional taxes or exemptions. The US is not some special case here.
That's an easy question :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
US is around 19T$, EU is 17T$
And if you add a few countries which are technically not part of the EU (e.g. Switzerland or Norway) but practically belong to the same economic zone, EU is also around 19T$