I am a 53 year old and can’t deal with google . I want something on m own hand.
Based on the comments on this Quora thread, Wimdu sounds like it’s best avoided:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-better-Airbnb-com-or-Wimdu-com
I got an invoice for $5k for a rebooking in the middle of July when there is zero availability after they screwed up a phone call instructing them to close out the days.
Not fun.
Hi @owasow,
Unfortunately, if one was to avoid all the platforms which people warn against, one would have nothing left to use. Except Airbnb, perhaps, which does seem less awful than its competitors on balance. And possibly ones own platform/website.
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Yes, I will share my bad experience. I really dislike Booking.com as a host, because you are not protected at all. If you don’t have any acquiring, you’re completely depended on guests’ good will (whether they make an advance payment or not). If you have read the contract (big document Booking have sent you), you may understand that Booking don’t have any responsibility at all, only rights to take the commission. Be careful with extranet, one wrong movement (taping the wrong button etc.) and you will have overbooking. Overbooking is a nightmare, because in that case you will lose lots of money and nerves (interesting fact: when you call the support service in case of overbooking, they suddenly change their tone, become really rude and start blaming you). If guests steal or break smth, all you can take from them is a deposit. Most of the guests expect that you will wait for them as much as they need, they don’t understand that booking an apartment and booking a hotel suite are 2 different things. You may say why I still work with Booking? Because about 80% of our guest booked via this website.
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If you have different platforms use channel manager, that helps you a lot to avoid overbooking.
I used booking.com for a little less than a year, and quit. It was a very stressful job. Everything you describe and on top of that, several just disputed charges, claimimng they never stayed or when they did not show up, i still charged them and they did not want to pay. Also, lots of scams. With separate house, they book with stollen credit cards and then show up without proper ID. ANd then claim that they dont know what the charges are.
I thought i took the house off website but in fact i did not. I just got a booking yesterday for the same day for 2 weeks. I claimed that credit card is invalid without even checking and sent “guests” a message that their reservation is cancelled since card is invalid. They did not even answer me. That shows that they used stollen card, and were not going to pay.
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I found bookings.com a royal mess, and just to quit them is a scam in itself, I had to call three times and insisted that they take me off their network. I still got bookings from them for one more year, which I simply ignored.
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Airbnb is not awfull at all. It has its flaws and they still changing things around, but its a new company that offers very unique service and i think they did A LOT to improve since the day they started. They do so many things that other similar platform dont even think of offering, like they pay you for damages, WHo else does it?? Noone!. Theyl et you cancel reservations based on a guest breaking your house rules, they let you choose and screen your guests.
Also, if a guest disputes a charge they still pay you, and deal with it themselves. VRBO does not take responsibility over this issue.
I so far had a great experience with Air service with 1 exeption. I am hosting for 17 months and had well over 200 guests and have my stories to tell. Their customer service is close to excellent with most employees very well trained.
I am actually very impressed how the company is run and how they deal with many different situations.
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Yana, I’m so happy that find here a host from my country, but I’m also so frustrated that you got so terrifying experience from Booking! I hope that some day I will refuse to work with Booking, because the guests were so disrespectful and most of them thought that I’m their personal servant that is why they can bother me with silly requests at 3-4 a.m., I would like to be helpful to guests, do my best, but I just fed up with it. It is surprising fact, because from other websites I always have very nice people. I also would like to warn other hosts about different traps they will find on Booking extranet. 1. The system is so strange, that you can open the apartments on particular date EVEN IF YOU have the confirmed booking (from Booking.com) on that dates !!! Mind explosion! 2. Be careful with “genius” guests, you can give them special privileges using extranet, but on extranet it poses as all of them are depends on availability, but on guests’ confirmation it claims as their “human right”, and they can demand it;)
Aya, i am from Ukraine originally and live now in US, but you can say we are form one area:)
I had the same thing with booking when my calendar was open and i did not even realize it. It happened because when there was “no show”, i marked it as no show and it released those dates immediately, but i though it would be still blocked untili I do it myself.
Yes, i agree guests from booking.com were little sh…ts. One british guy,also ;genius" was trying to trick everyone. He booked with me for the cheapest rate on line, and then started to make a scandal so i would kick him out and then booked Holiday inn for 300$ a night, and was trying to get me to pay. Booking.com ref used him and he yelled and screamed at them too. ANd then i had italian dude who gave 1 on everything only because i was not a hotel, jerk.
and others. Everytime i got reservation from booking.com i cringed. So, one day i said enough is enough
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Yana, very nice to meet you here;) Thank you for sharing your experience! Despite the fact that I’m really shocked and all of the stories (especially yours) are very frightening and disappointing, but they are also very useful. I hope that in future Airbnb will be as popular in Russia as Booking now, I really love this service and the society of hosts all over the world sharing their experience to others. This is very important for me to understand that not only I have faced these problems, but these are common problems among people from many other countries. This means that the problem is inside the service, but not in me as a host;)
I never blamed myself, hehe, i alway knew their system is at fault
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Hi @Yana_Agapova,
I certainly don’t want to have a quarrel about Airbnb, but I also don’t share your enthusiasm with it, though I agree they seem better than the competition (or ‘less awful’, as I put it).
My experience with their “customer service” has been terrible. The reps seem half-witted. Much of the time they don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. I meant to post one extended exchange I had with them, but haven’t got around with it. And that’s on Twitter, where at least they reply. Via just email my experience is that they don’t even attempt to address what you write. Why that is so, I don’t know. And they tell me they will follow up on stuff, but don’t.
I’ve not had to contact them over any real issues yet. So I don’t know how that would pan out.
Also, their web site seems to have a lot of problems.
But I can believe they are better than their competitors. Booking.com certainly sounds awful.
I don’t know why our experiences have been different. Of course, you’ve been doing this much longer than I have. I just started.
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Same experience here.
Apart from that, extremely unprofessional customer service.
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I don’t know why but I never emailed them , always called.
Well there is no better platform I can tell you that when it comes to home sharing and to think that so many people can make money just with sharing their house! I know that for many it was a life changing when Airbnb came to life
EDIT: resolved after two calls to the support
I have a problems with childrens price how it’s listed for my place.
Anyone that is using booking.com and can have children?
Basically, It’s a big mess for clients when they are booking as children price is only said on my rules that it’s costing 200sek for each bed used.
Basically clients are booking and understand that children can stay at the place for free…how do you do ?
Please see our place
I would like to the same as this place (except that I want the minimum of persons to be 4)
Hi.
How do you do to set up the VAT tax?. we have to put 12% on the price some VAT
Is it the best to do as cleaning fees?
Hi Sylvain! If you’re using Hostaway, you can adjust the markup directly in the dashboard. Cleaning fees also work, but they’re fixed.