I put way too much faith in Airbnb's "million dollar coverage" when I was a host.<p>I had an Airbnb guest steal all the electronics from my apartment -- Sonos speakers, wifi router, everything. They also left behind a large stack of obviously stolen credit cards, social security cards, and driver licenses.<p>When I called up Airbnb support to tell them what happened they responded by saying "We've found that most disputes between hosts are just misunderstandings. Have you tried talking to them about it?"<p>Then when I tried to claim they needed original receipts (which I obviously didn't have for everything) and ultimately only paid out a small fraction of the original cost (because the items were no longer new).
"While AirCover protects you while you’re hosting an Airbnb stay or Experience, it is not a substitute for personal insurance"<p>This is a key point. As a host here in NZ, its basically useless as I still have to have commercial insurance. Aircover only covers you for the period of time that you have someone staying in your property. As soon as they have gone, you have no insurance. So if you have a house listed on Airbnb and someone breaks in and burns it down between bookings, you're not covered.
Theoretical insurance doesn't help you when Airbnb will simply ignore you or close your claim without explanation. They have become completely predatory and incompetent towards hosts in the past few years. As soon as something goes wrong they will find a reason to deny your claim. Their support that handles these cases is clearly incentivized to close cases without payouts. The only way anyone sees any coverage from them is if they get social media famous and then they quietly sweep it under the rug and make them sign a non-disclosure agreement to get their payout.
> <i>These Host Damage Protection Terms contain an arbitration clause and class action waiver</i><p>So this insurance policy isn't even worth the pixels it's rendered on. It's not a good sign when a company purporting to be entering into contract is already trying to wriggle out of it, and this goes doubly for insurance.
Perhaps a dumb question but who was handling the insurance before this? Homeowners does not cover rentals, correct? So you needed rental insurance? I’ve always seen airbnb to be too risky to do with your primary residence, which seems to greatly diminish from the efficiency of the service (and of home ownership)
Does it cover the costs of you guests illegally downloading stuff? I've ran into that one myself (in Germany the host can have it dismissed when you can prove it wasn't you).
Does this do anything to address the rapes and sexual assaults that occur inside of an Airbnb? I remember those being swept under the rug with NDAs to receive compensation.
when I bought a vacation home for myself I was initially hesitant because the HOA doesn't permit short term rentals or Airbnb's. But I'm actually glad.<p>The hassle of worrying about your personal belongings is just not worth it IMO. I want to buy nice nice furniture for my place and not worry about strangers ruining it.<p>Although I do want friends & family to be able to enjoy it. Maybe a site like Path was to Facebook?
Good luck on finding anyone there to make a claim to. They've had 'million dollar' coverage from the start. They just don't pay claims. Yo AirBnB: when's the last time you paid out a million dollars to anyone?
The definition of "air cover" is:<p>> protection from aircraft for land-based or naval operations in war situations.<p>AirBnB needs better branding people.
Wow, the astroturfing in this thread already is happening.<p>0. This is nothing new, airbnb always had a free "guarantee" they just rebranded it basically from what I see to a trademarkable name.<p>1. Umbrella policy is better than airbnb. Umbrella policy will go after all parties including airbnb on your behalf.<p>2. Airbnb has a history of ignoring or mitigating damages unless you get famous on social media - this includes sexual assault/rape and murder of animals.<p><a href="https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Guest-caused-the-death-of-hosts-dog/td-p/1250138" rel="nofollow">https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Guest-caused-the-de...</a><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/16/airbnb-new-york-woman-allegedly-raped-settlement" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/16/airbnb-ne...</a><p>While these are just two incidents, there are countless more that can be searched, or you can probably filter through other incidents, and yes, while airbnb did "compensate" they did so only after intense media pressure.<p>3. If you are a tourist in most countries and "fly" back home, you are judgement proof. There only liability is the guests airbnb account, which, is worthless. You can create new accounts, and in most places you can use alternative government identification to bypass previous bans.<p>You can read the link I posted earlier about the death of a dog, the PII that airbnb released was not enough to start a civil court case. And even if you have a name, you have no guarantee that the nae of the airbnb account is the ACTUAL guest that stayed.