It’s become a terrible company. I say “become” because like many tech-era enshittified companies, it started out as an actual good idea.

Pre-2015, we stayed in a beautiful home in Paris many years ago, some places in Brooklyn, an adobe home in New Mexico, and other places that were actually really people just renting out spare rooms or buildings and trying to be efficient/friendly with their extra space.

But it’s entirely “passive income” obsessed real estate mogul-wannabes who bought up properties and are now bleeding them for the maximum profit.

The last straw for us: We had a host threaten physical harm to us before check-in, we saved screenshots of the messages with the actual threats, and AirBNB support said they would rebook/refund on a recorded line. Then inexplicably AirBNB reversed course, refused to actually issue a refund and then when we reversed through AmEx they disputed the transaction 7 times before finally giving up. AirBNB is just awful.