An Airbnb Thanksgiving Burglary

Not meaning to suggest he &quot;asked for it&quot;, but there&#x27;s a reason hotels have safes and secure storage services.<p>Burglaries happen all the time. Even if all the windows are locked, burglaries can happen in all sorts of ways, particularly in free-standing houses. I don&#x27;t like leaving my laptop or other valuables in my own home. I keep my devices with me when I can, and avoid owning items that burglars would want to steal (watches, jewellery etc).<p>Another issue with electronic devices and insurance is fraud. Having worked in the travel industry for a long time, I&#x27;ve known of people working in the industry, casually making fraudulent claims on devices just because they felt like an upgrade. Fraud is easy to commit and hard to prove, so the insurers just can&#x27;t offer much cover, unless you&#x27;re willing to take out special top-level cover for your devices, which is expensive for just this reason.<p>It always sucks being robbed, and it&#x27;s natural to want to blame someone, but I&#x27;m not sure what more Airbnb is meant to do in cases like this.

Sorry for your experience. Interesting post, chilling thoughts at the end:<p>&gt;<i>When I sit in front of the computer in San Francisco, the only thing that comes to my mind is to build a Face Recognition system and check the burglar’s face in it. Something similar to Clearview. Machine Learning is my expertise; creating such a system is straightforward but will take some time. Tempting. Thinking about it.</i><p>The thought my peers are pushing for extended surveillance&#x2F;identification tooling is terrifying.

Personally, I don&#x27;t trust panes of glass or rental doors (where anyone could have copied keys) to keep my belongings safe. I have a small backpack that always contains my laptops and cameras, and it comes everywhere with me when I am traveling.<p>I don&#x27;t leave it at the hotel, I don&#x27;t leave it in the airbnb, and I don&#x27;t leave it in the car. (Remember, the trunk of the car is one smashed window and four seconds away from being opened with the interior trunk release button.)<p>Then again, I also don&#x27;t go rock climbing, so obviously my approach wouldn&#x27;t work for everyone.<p>I grew up in a place where anything left anywhere in a car (trunk, passenger compartment, back seat, glove box, whatever), locked or unlocked, was fair game in 60 seconds. People who leave thousands of dollars of valuables in places without physical security other than panes of glass baffle me, but I also recognize that my experiences are unique in much of the developed world.<p>OP, don&#x27;t beat yourself up over the unlocked window; even if it had been locked, the sliding glass door in the back was a one second barrier.

Thanks for sharing your story. It&#x27;s good to know how that can go. Not the best possible outcome, but not the worst either.<p>In regards to this:<p>&gt;I would like to end the story with some action items like: “Next time, when I rent a place, I will do XXX.” Nothing reasonable comes to my mind.<p>Something you can do is carry anything with high value density, and hide other valuables out of sight. I tend to carry things I&#x27;m attached to with me, especially when in unfamiliar area. An AirBnB is not much different from a hotel room in terms of valuables safety. You don&#x27;t know who may have access to the place. It&#x27;s nice that AirBnB replaced your stuff.<p>Just want to let you know, while your site is loading, it shifts around several times, which gives it a bit of a janky feel. Looks nice otherwise, though.

While I lived in Amsterdam I could have made LOTS of money from AirBnB, and again where I live now close to the mountains.<p>However, I offer a room on CouchSurfing and to friends-of-friends in sporting activities I do..... for ZERO. Nada. Zip.<p>Why should only those with deep pockets pay insane prices?<p>An amazing stream of people from all walks of life have passed through my home able to enjoy things on a shoestring budget.<p>In return each guest has offered the same gesture if I am ever in their country.<p>You don&#x27;t get that with AirBnB as paying customers!

Imagine your thought would be more like:<p>&quot;huh what made a fellow human go so far to steal from an AirBnB rental in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving?<p>We should make sure that education and social support are so strong that this is not an issue.<p>But hey, its just easier to try to solve it the other way around right? You can develop your face detection and human beeing tracking skynet from your nice SF home with your nice gear and let the policy handle those animals.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is easy for anyone dont&#x27; get me wrong but even myself i&#x27;m sometimes envy of the neighbours greener gras while i&#x27;m off very very well and i&#x27;m very torn if thats fair or not. Im still egoistic enough that i&#x27;m not giving my stuff away and still being smart about my money, but at least im living in a much more social country.<p>People in the usa should perhaps start to solve the real hard problems. 128 place in the global peace index is not very good <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Peace_Index" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Peace_Index</a><p>Ah and just a tip for every traveler: Take only what you need, always look it away or have it on you.

Airbnb has insurance that covers $500. Anything more expensive is your responsibility. To expect them to have insurance that covers more would be a waste of money to customers on a budget. Either get insurance that covers your expensive belongings (and accept that it will cost a lot because your belongings might not be securely locked up all the time) or securely lock up your expensive stuff.<p>It is unclear that the host secured the property to the standard required by airbnb and their insurance but that would be a matter between airbnb and the host not between the host and guest.

&gt; Vladimir Iglovikov. PhD in Physics. Veteran of Russian Spetsnaz. Kaggle Grandmaster.<p>&gt; When I sit in front of the computer in San Francisco, the only thing that comes to my mind is to build a Face Recognition system and check the burglar’s face in it. Something similar to Clearview. Machine Learning is my expertise; creating such a system is straightforward but will take some time. Tempting. Thinking about it.<p>Two considerations, after reading this story.<p>1) It&#x27;s not a good idea to mess with an ex-Spetsnaz. Plus a PhD in Physics! I wouldn&#x27;t want to be the burglar. Your days are numbered.<p>2) I would hire this guy in a heartbeat. Wouldn&#x27;t even do a single interview.

AirBnB used to be great, but I ended up deleting my account. It&#x27;s my own anecdata and I&#x27;m sure others still have great experiences, but I got three places in a row that were being operated as something like short-term tenement housing with everything at the bare minimum quality and cleanliness. Charging hundred euro cleaning fees and then leaving a bad review that there were dirty dishes left in the sink, which apparently we were foolish to assume would be included in whatever expensive cleaning service they were using. An expensive apartment that was not cleaned between stays, that had no cleaning supplies in the apartment and the owner was out of the country, and then the owner complained that it was still dirty when we left.<p>Popularity has ruined it in my opinion.

&gt; I would like to end the story with some action items like: “Next time, when I rent a place, I will do XXX.” Nothing reasonable comes to my mind.<p>Checking to make sure the locks work seems like a reasonable and already recommended step. How one goes immediately to some AI thing and misses 20 more realistic steps in-between is a bit perplexing to me. Second more reasonable step, keep valuables secured or in your possession.<p>I&#x27;m more paranoid than most with no real reason to be. I take a few moments to look around when staying in a hotel or airbnb. I turn the flashlight on to look for any hidden lenses in smoke detectors and vents etc, identify and disable things that could be used to listen in like smart speakers and tv&#x27;s. I&#x27;m not looking to be some super secure safe room but a few minutes prevents most petty maliciousness or &quot;opportunities&quot;. I&#x27;m more distrustful of Airbnb&#x27;s than hotels.

It’s unfortunate, and Airbnb makes enough in service fee that they should be faster to help on these cases. Once I was in SF and my Airbnb cancelled on me right at check-in time. I was tired, had luggages, I just went to the hilton and checked-in. It was really hard and I had to argue but Airbnb ended up reimbursing me.<p>Still, I’m scared about the next time I’ll run in troubles with Airbnb.<p>I find it more and more expensive, and I feel more and more taken advantage of whem they lie anout the pricing (the total amount can easily be thousands of dollars more than what you think when you look at the price&#x2F;night, while they could show you the real price per night they choose not to)

I rented an airbnb in Porto, Portugal and went to bed early one night. Someone broken in around 12 am and attempted to come into the apartment. I jumped up and ran to the door and stopped them. They clearly had the keys some how because that was door number three to open and get through. Really sketchy.<p>Airbnb was at least cool and gave me a refund and let me move. However, two weeks later I checked and the same apartment was for rent! It&#x27;s clear someone who worked for the owner had a set of keys and was robbing the guests.

Had terrible experience with AirBnB support. I had to reach out to them on Twitter and eventually someone got back to me!<p>You would expect their site to have a clear link to support. Good luck with that.

No wonder he had issues contacting support - they just recently fire a whole bunch of people.

That&#x27;s an awful lot of kit to take along on a climbing trip, and then to leave behind some of the useful bits in the accommodation.

Disjointed story - if MacBooks were replaced, &quot;money not an issue&quot; - what are you complaining about then ? Why write this sobbing tale?<p>The story lost credibility with me the moment I saw that all his &quot;stolen&quot; goods list he put with affiliate links to Amazon :) ...

I&#x27;ve been an Airbnb guest on 3 continents with good experiences. On 12 November this year, I became an Airbnb host by listing my beach pad for rent in Queensland Australia. What a shock. I am trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare.<p>Christmas is mid-summer in Australia. With the southern states coming out of lockdown, and my area COVID free, demand for beachside properties on the Sunshine Coast has never been higher.<p>The first two bookings went fine. I was having a great Airbnb experience. Then the 3rd and 4th bookings came in at less than half price. I couldn&#x27;t understand it because Christmas is the peak period of demand, and my new property was the only one listed in the area. All other comparable properties have already been booked for the Christmas-New Years period.<p>The support staff said the pricing was a result of &quot;Smart Pricing&quot;. That&#x27;s a &quot;feature&quot; that defaults to ON, along with Instant Booking, which means an algorithmically generated price was locked in.<p>But surely it&#x27;s a bug to offer a price below the low season minimum for the busiest week of the year, which should rent for 2.5 times that price? And I had set a Custom Price for that week, which &quot;Smart Pricing&quot; ignored!<p>The support ambassador said she could see my point. She did a search for comparable properties and verified that mine was the only one. She agreed something had gone wrong, and said she would investigate.<p>I spoke and chatted with 4 different support ambassadors over 5 days. All were professional, polite, and agreed there had been an inexplicable mistake. At 3am on the 5th day, a supervisor unilaterally closed the case via chat, saying &quot;Smart Pricing is based on the type and location of your listing, the season, demand, and other factors. For instructions on how to turn Smart Pricing on or off, visit our Help Center article. I will be out of the office from Nov 17-18. Should you wish to cancel the reservation or need further assistance please know that we are here with you all throughout your Airbnb journey, please don&#x27;t hesitate to reach out to us.&quot;<p>I didn&#x27;t want to cancel because this is clearly a bug and I want Airbnb to fix it, for their own sake as well as mine and my guest. My guest over Christmas is an experienced Airbnb superhost, who agrees it is a bug in Airbnb&#x27;s platform. She doesn&#x27;t want to re-book either, so we agreed to go through the support process and get a correction. She hoped for compensation.<p>22 days later, we still have no resolution. 3 days ago, the support ambassador said the issue would be escalated to the Product Team, but to do that, she had to close the support ticket. She said if I wanted to know the status, I could call them back. I asked her which team is working on the problem. She said it&#x27;s a secret.<p>I am not the only host to experience this problem.<p>The problem is evidenced during periods of peak demand e.g. Xmas-NYE in Australia and New York, Spring Break in Hawaii, Winter in Florida. Hosts report &quot;Smart Pricing&quot; has imposed the low season minimum nightly price or below, instead of a high season price.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.withairbnb.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;Help&#x2F;Smart-Pricing&#x2F;td-p&#x2F;494331" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.withairbnb.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;Help&#x2F;Smart-Pricing&#x2F;td-p&#x2F;...</a><p>That&#x27;s a bug! Hosts lose confidence in Airbnb&#x27;s platform because &quot;Smart Pricing&quot; costs them money or administrative overhead at precisely the point when Airbnb should be delivering maximum value.<p>Surely someone at Airbnb can see the value in fixing this?

An Oculus Quest 2 is 300$ not 400$. Just saying.