Slashdot Mirror
'My Airbnb Guests Threw a New Year's Party For 300 People' (theguardian.com)
"What's the worst that can happen?" thought Nicko Feinberg last December when he listed his house on Airbnb.
The listing explicitly said no parties. Then a request came through to book the house for one night on New Year's Day. It was from a young man, probably in his early 20s. He had one review but it was terrific.... I picked up my boys and we stayed down the road at my mother's apartment... When I got back [the next day] I saw three or four cars in the driveway. I threw my food down and knew I was screwed. Inside there were about 12 young adults, all trying to clean.
The floors looked like someone had poured Jagermeister and champagne everywhere and then danced on them. Everything seemed wrong: my artwork was not on the walls; there was furniture missing; the glass panel on my staircase was shattered; even the floor didn't seem level any more. Then I noticed they were using my best sheets and towels as mops....I told them no one was leaving and I called the police and Airbnb. When a police officer turned up, he said it was a civil matter, before adding: "We were here last night...."
Ultimately, it was just stuff and I knew it would be OK. But I felt a massive disappointment in humanity. That night, it wasn't hard for me and my boys to find Instagram pictures and videos of the party. It was horrifying to see so many people in the house, jumping up and down on the furniture and windowsills. They broke my hot tub and tiles in the bathroom; when I looked in the rubbish bags, I saw all my drinks bottles empty, as well as broken glasses and towels. I found an image online of the invite that said, "Mansion Party" with my address. There had been 300 people there. Boys were charged to enter; girls got in free.
While he won't disclose what Airbnb paid him for the damage, "a year later repairs are continuing. The floor is still uneven." But he told one local news channel that the damage was over $100,000, adding "There's footprints on my bathroom walls."
At one point more than 100 cars had been parked outside, according to a police report, and the 23-year-old was ultimately charged with "disorderly conduct". He also was banned permanently from Airbnb -- which said in a statement that "negative incidents are incredibly rare."
The floors looked like someone had poured Jagermeister and champagne everywhere and then danced on them. Everything seemed wrong: my artwork was not on the walls; there was furniture missing; the glass panel on my staircase was shattered; even the floor didn't seem level any more. Then I noticed they were using my best sheets and towels as mops....I told them no one was leaving and I called the police and Airbnb. When a police officer turned up, he said it was a civil matter, before adding: "We were here last night...."
Ultimately, it was just stuff and I knew it would be OK. But I felt a massive disappointment in humanity. That night, it wasn't hard for me and my boys to find Instagram pictures and videos of the party. It was horrifying to see so many people in the house, jumping up and down on the furniture and windowsills. They broke my hot tub and tiles in the bathroom; when I looked in the rubbish bags, I saw all my drinks bottles empty, as well as broken glasses and towels. I found an image online of the invite that said, "Mansion Party" with my address. There had been 300 people there. Boys were charged to enter; girls got in free.
While he won't disclose what Airbnb paid him for the damage, "a year later repairs are continuing. The floor is still uneven." But he told one local news channel that the damage was over $100,000, adding "There's footprints on my bathroom walls."
At one point more than 100 cars had been parked outside, according to a police report, and the 23-year-old was ultimately charged with "disorderly conduct". He also was banned permanently from Airbnb -- which said in a statement that "negative incidents are incredibly rare."
In a world where everyone reviews everyone, airbnb type places are a lot less likely to have negative reviews. It's not worth giving a negative review and getting negative effects in the future. So you start getting reviews like this:
"It was a great experience. I enjoyed looking at the interesting patterns the mold made on the bathroom tiles. Five stars."
Another thing: for a while, Agoda would ask you to rate a place, and if you didn't put five stars, would ask, "What was wrong with this place?" As a result, it was easier to just not review, unless you wanted to give them five stars.
Lately I've stopped looking at hotel reviews at all, and just sorting by cleanliness rating. If it doesn't get a top clean rating, it's probably not worth visiting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Stupid person did a stupid thing and what everyone who is not an idiot expected after the first line happened.
Seriously. A 20-something rents a house for one night on New Years Eve. If that didn't raise every red flag within 20 miles, I have no idea what it takes to telegraph you "something just might be a bit wrong here".
I have a hard time believing this story is real. If it were told to me as the plot of a movie I would say it stretches the suspension of disbelief quite a lot.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you want to act like a hotel, be prepared for people to treat you like one.
Which hotel allows you to throw parties with hundreds of people?
You spelt bogan wrong.
Disappointing comment Michael, but far worse is being given a "score 3" on this site.
I moved to Melbourne more than 50 years and there's been a great tradition of vilifying each new wave of immigrants
However, it usually reflects more on the family of those doing the denigrating - in my experience at least.
(I was born from English dad & "Aussie" mum whose family was hugely racist against Australian aboriginals - I never worked out why.)
You rent your home full of your stuff to a total stranger. What do you expect?
The same as any B&B who rents out a room expects - someone who stays, behaves, pays, and leaves.
People like this should be sentenced to military conscription, with every paycheck going to the victim until all damages are paid off with interest. That should teach them some respect.
"I let random strangers that I didn't know stay in my house unaccompanied and unsupervised and it got trashed".
News at 11.
Honestly, no matter WHAT the rules for Airbnb may or may not be, why on earth would you be stupid enough to do that? If someone "random" asked to borrow your car for one night, would you let them? Would you let them if it was a sportscar? But you'll let them do it with a house worth what? 10 times as much?
20-something pays a minimal fee to use your house for one night over New Year's... bad enough. With a single review? Just what the hell were you thinking?
This is nothing to do with Airbnb per se, it's just bog-standard stupidity. And I bet it's not covered under any of your home insurance policies - for good reason. Airbnb probably aren't even obliged to do anything either... they just choose to do so to as a goodwill gesture to limit the bad press.
Honestly, some people are so stupid it defies belief.
The whole idea of Airbnb is a stupid concept in the first place, though I'm sure profitable when it does work. When it goes wrong, seriously, what did you expect?
If nothing else, a ten second Google will show you things like people Airbnb'ing and turning places into brothels and drug-dens, by comparison a party is the low-end of the scale. Not to mention that they have access to your address for the period of time they are Airbnb'ing... they could be doing all sorts with that kind of access - I could destroy your credit rating in a week in my country by getting access to things addressed to me at your mail address.
I wouldn't even trust a 20-something who might be my own son to have a place "just for New Year's" without making sure they couldn't have a party without my knowledge. Let alone a random stranger.
You learned a lesson that most people never have to learn because they're just not that thick.
Either rent out your place, with a full rental agreement, deposit, month's-rent-in-advance, insurance and all the legal trimmings that come with that, or don't. Short-term rental based on an app EULA is the most ridiculous thing ever and you only need one bad incident to wipe out an entire lifetime's profit doing it.
I disagree. These sorts of people have always been around. The difference is that back in the day, the level of reporting was much lower so you probably never heard about it. I suspect that the old "boys will be boys" mentality probably resulted in more people looking the other way, too.
Our history is defined by people being assholes. There are just more cameras around to catch it now.
Indeed. The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
For nights like New Year's Eve, the deposit will be like in the "rent a helicopter" scene in the film "Clear and Present Danger":
Jack Ryan: I’m here to rent the Huey.
Helicopter owner: We don’t rent it anymore, but it is for sale.
Jack Ryan: How much?
Helicopter owner: Two million dollars.
Jack Ryan: Uh, my pilot and I will have to take it for a test drive.
Helicopter owner: Of course, you just have to leave a deposit.
Jack Ryan: How much is that?
Helicopter owner: Two million dollars.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
At least AirBnB stood behind the homeowner is making good on what its idiot customer did. I would have expected AirBnB to hide behind some nebulous legal language and walk away from this scot-free. I guess I am jaded towards corporations and impressed that AirBnB took actions to try and make the entire situation right. Still, I never would use AirBnB offering accomodations.
Hotels also have a legal army behind them to keep people generally in line. Hotels have established case law precedent which will also side with them in case of having guests that behave like this. I am certain the large chains have successfully garnished guest's wages for repayment of property damage. I am honestly shocked that the police didn't charge the AirBnB guest with, at the very least, criminal mischief
I used to work at a hotel. It was common for people to check in with "only 2 people" but then secretly bring in a dozen friends to stay with them and lounge at the pool. In terms of raw numbers of guests who did it it was fairly rare, but it would happen about once a month. The worst ones would trash the rooms and our facility equipment. You wanna know why it costs so much to stay at a hotel, you can thank these people. The thousands of dollars it cost us to repair their damage was paid for via the fees charged to all hotel guests. We're supposed to be able to charge damages to the credit card you used to pay for the room, but they knew what they were doing and usually paid in cash and gave fake names and address/phone numbers.
I have an Airbnb, and have hosted hundreds of guests. I never had anything happen like what is described in TFA.
I once rented to a group of people that turned out to be a Harley motorcycle gang. When they checked out, the place was immaculate. All the laundry was done, the towels were folded, the dishes were washed and put away, and they left me a five star review.
We had a similar experience once with AirBnB. They'd cut holes in the ceiling to get the giraffe in, the walls were covered in copies of Shakespeare apparently typed by large numbers of monkeys, and we had to use a crane to get the Baleen whale out of the bathtub. Luckily this was just before the subprime mortgage crisis,and we unloaded the place on speculators before they discovered what was inside the pentagram in the basement.
If you want to act like a hotel, be prepared for people to treat you like one.
Which hotel allows you to throw parties with hundreds of people?
Call any larger hotel and tell them you want to book a party. Their conference services people will set you up in a room that handles 300 people easily, complete with DJ and bar.
The thing is to not book a single king bed room and expect the same.
I've got an apartment in Flemington (Melbourne) as well as one in Elizabeth Bay (Sydney), so when I'm in Melbourne, I'm in African immigrant central. There's almost no trouble here. In fact, most of the trouble involving Africans is vandalism targeting businesses owned by Africans in the main street. A few years back, they had to sack most of the local cops because they were targeting African kids for no reason. The trouble is, when you have to cops unfairly targeting a group, they'll think, "Well, I get treated like a criminal even when I'm clean - I may as well just be a criminal."
If you haven't noticed that every group of immigrants in Australia is racist to the next group, you've had your eyes shut. The western Europeans/Brits hated the Greek and Italian "wogs", then the "wogs" hated the Chinese/Vietnamese, and the Chinese/Vietnamese feel entitled to hate the Indians and Africans.
Now there have been issues with groups, but you get that with kids that grew up in a war zone - they're going to have trouble adjusting to a "normal" society. Do you remember the 4T gang in western Sydney? They'd shoot people for looking at their girlfriends wrong. They imploded when their charismatic leader was killed. But what would've happened if instead of targeting the problematic behaviour, we'd alienated the entire Vietnamese community? We'd have a permanent underclass at odds with the rest of society. What about the MERCS (middle-eastern raping cunts)? Do you remember the outrage over that? When the other Lebanese people found out who was responsible for this, they started sending death threats to their parents, like, "Your fucking kids are giving the entire Lebanese community a bad name! We're gonna kill you!" But it was the same thing - kids from a war zone not knowing any different.
Wait a decade or so, and Sudanese will be the same - the Sudanese community will be an integral part of Australia's multicultural society, everyone will look back on the initial issues through the lens of hindsight, and they'll join in with everyone else in hating on whoever the latest round of refugees or economic migrants are.