Me three! I can’t believe I missed it. I usually read posts daily.
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Cliff notes: a host had an Amazon echo spot (a “smart” alarm) in the guest bedroom without realizing it has camera capabilities. Guest told host that he got out of shower and somehow it took his pic by accident… host erased said dick pics and guest left a flirty goodbye note.
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Thank you for the cliff notes : ) Sounds like an episode from Sex and the City tv show LOL
I’m glad I don’t have any fancy alarm clocks!
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No, she was actually clueless about it-she never intended to have a camera that recorded anything in the guest room. Within a few minutes of looking it up online, after I said it recorded, she was horrified and removed the offending device.
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Look, even if it was accidental (i.e. she really didn’t know that the device had a camera in it), she still put it in her listing and that’s negligence. She shouldn’t be hosting. I can tell you that if I stayed in her listing and found that camera, she would’ve been searching for an attorney the next morning instead of posting about it on the internet.
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I do not blame the host for any of this. I’d never ever heard of the Spot till this posting. One can buy something and not pay close attention to all of its capabilities.
This “guest” is the guilty party and a total pervert in my book. He knew what he was doing and thought these photos would attract the host.
Yet another totally clueless male.
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You’re right. And I should delete my post out of embarrassment but I’ll leave it for the record. I call others on their 
and I should be called on mine.
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C’mon, man, have you never made a clueless mistake?
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Thank you for this thoughtful and educational reply about the Spot (of which I hadn’t heard before, either).
The guest sounds like a real creep. Dick pics… ugh…
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I encountered Alexas twice, and as soon as I saw them, I unplugged them. I don’t allow devices with microphones (or cameras) in my personal space unless they’re mine.
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I would unplug that stuff as well. And I wouldn’t book a place that required me to use my phone to gain entry. Not because I’m incapable of using modern devices, but because anything can happen with a phone- I could drop it and break it, I could lose it, it could run out of charge.
And I wouldn’t want to be standing at a door, after perhaps a long trip, fussing around trying to figure out how to enter some code on my phone, etc.
And it’s pretty obvious that some hosts don’t realize that when guests are travelling internationally, their phone might not work in another country. I’ve had a few guests who had that situation.
As have we, and every time it’s been a guest from the US. Some struggle with roaming, others have been too tight to purchase a data pack and exist using free WiFi in bars and cafes etc.
JF
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Last time in Europe still had a locked flip phone and couldn’t take it. Only had two occasions in 2 months where I was in need of one, but things finally worked out. My trusty companion is my lap top.
If I ever get out of the country again, I will have a phone.
I’ve stayed in two Airbnbs that had the Amazon Alexa devices and I like and use them. But hey, I gave up all my freedom when I got the Moderna chip implanted so I may as well enjoy the tech.
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So true! When I first opened, I bought a Kevo lock; it was a Shark Tank alumni, and you would open an app and register yourself, and when you approached my door it would auto unlock. I thought “how can this be hard?”…
I encountered folks who would say thing like “I don’t want another app on my phone, give me a key” or folks who would literally tap their phones on the lock as if that would open it. And sice it was first gen tech for the Kevo, it would not always work well (it was bluetooth). It was a nightmare… altho it was 2014, a million years ago in tech.
So…
I replaced it with a beginner style deadbolt smart lock, and found that deadbolts are a problem in themselves - confusion about auto lock, when the lock bolt closed automatically in 30 seconds, usually while the door was ajar, and the guest then slamming the door closed, making a big dent into the doorframe, or manually turning the lock to UN locked position after it had been closed.
I finally got a Remote Lock brand keypad door lock that directly replaced my keyed entry doorknob; problems went away. it also automatically puts codes in, and informs guests the code info, and times the codes so that folks have specific check-in and check-out.
That ‘long strange trip’, and the fact that these days people are savvy enough to know how smart locks work and actually expect them, has made my life very easy. The luddites that come once in a while (brain-fog type folks or even worse, grumpy old men whose wives booked for them), grudgingly join us in the 2020s but get poor stars in communication. I say ‘too bad’ because not providing access in the way folks expect in 2021 is not an option nor is it business-smart to make the guest do a lot of thinking when the simple task of opening the door is the problem at hand.
I’ve not yet travelled as a guest, but yes, I would write down necessary info using good old pen and paper. I would also make it clear to a host that I would need check-in info xx days before arrival and if they weren’t amenable to that, I wouldn’t book with them.
Not wanting to have to use some app or whatever to open the door doesn’t mean I couldn’t phone or text the host, that’s 2 different things.
And I always travel with my laptop anyway.
You can’t get phones in vending machines here, nor in Canada, where I used to live. You can buy them in convenience stores, but newly arriving gursts who found their phone wasn’t connecting wouldn’t know that.
I didn’t say my guests don’t have phones, I meant they don’t always work here. My very first guest had paid $40 to her cell phone provider to be able to use her phone while in Mexico. She couldn’t get it to work (she was young and tech savvy). She showed me the little card her provider had given her, giving all the settings she would need to change, and I immediately saw the problem. Her phone provider in the US was partnered with a Mexican provider whose signal is not accessible in my area.
There are also places where you can’t pick up a cell signal. The drive between my town and the next largest town 30 minutes away is a dead zone- it’s mountainous.
There’s a host who is active on the Airbnb forum who doesn’t use a smart phone at all. She’s not old, she’s a millenial. She also travels quite a lot as a guest, and doesn’t have any issues just because she doesn’t use a smart pone, so it’s obviously not essential.
Oh, it was just by way of explaining that it wasn’t a matter of her being one of those older people who are tech-challenged or simply refuse to learn. She’s never explained why she doesn’t use a smart phone, but she obviously is tech-savvy. She’s one of the most helpful and knowledgable hosts on that forum, posting help article links and screen shots to help out others.
I missed it too! Piecing together from separate posts, I’m assuming there was a camera in the clock radio?
Remember the days before remotes?
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My goodness, my goodness, my goodness. We really did miss all the fun stuff. Thanks much for the synopsis.
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