Vice asked its readers to tell them about scams they'd been subjected to trying to book and stay at AirBnB locations. It received thousands of stories: enough to generate a ranked list of the most widespread frauds pulled by AirBnB listers.
The stories quickly started to fall into easily discernible categories. Scammers all over the world, it seems, have figured how best to game the Airbnb platform: by engaging in bait and switches; charging guests for fake damages; persuading people to pay outside the Airbnb app; and, when all else fails, engaging in clumsy or threatening demands for five-star reviews to hide the evidence of what they’ve done. (Or, in some cases, a combination of several of these scams.)
In the aggregate, these emails paint a portrait of a platform whose creators are fundamentally unable to track what goes on within it, and point to easily exploitable loopholes that scammers have steamed their way through by the truckload.
The company's solution appears to be generous to screwed-over customers, booking hotels and handing out nearby upgrades, but to let the scams happen and to let the scammers stay. They've presumably calculated that policing listings would be more expensive. The moral hazard this creates — consider people who don't complain, or who are simply tricked out of money rather than literally stranded — is overwhelming.
