The EU Would Very Much Like Airbnb To Know That the Rules Are Different in Europe (fortune.com) 105
Airbnb is facing fresh regulatory pressure in Europe. But this time it's not about the short-term home rental platform's core business model -- it's about its terms and conditions, and the way the company presents pricing to consumers. From a report: On Monday, the European Commission and a number of EU consumer watchdogs accused Airbnb of breaking consumer law. If the company does not change the way it operates by the end of August, then it could face legal action. Specifically, the regulators said Airbnb must show people total prices up-front that include all charges and fees, and it must clearly tell customers whether a property is being offered by a private host or a professional. The American company's terms and conditions are illegal under EU law for a variety of reasons, the regulators added. For example, the company tells people in the EU that they cannot sue a host in cases of personal harm or other damages, and it claims it can unilaterally change its terms and conditions without giving customers a warning and the option of cancelling their contracts. These sorts of terms might fly in the U.S., but they're banned in Europe.
The EU may not be perfect.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile Ajit Pai (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile in the USA, if you want to complain about a telco screwing you over, it now costs $225 to file a complaint with the FCC. Non-refundable. There use to be an informal free complaint system, Ajit has done away with that.
https://www.extremetech.com/internet/273212-fcc-may-gut-informal-complaint-process-force-consumers-to-pay-225-fee
Ajit Pai again.
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There is only so much time we can protests.
There is too much evil going on right now, FCC stupidity is on the low end of things at the moment.
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There is only so much time we can protests. There is too much evil going on right now, FCC stupidity is on the low end of things at the moment.
The time to protest was at the last US elections, and most of the eligible voters sat on their asses and didn't bother to vote.
Re: Meanwhile Ajit Pai (Score:1, Insightful)
Riiiiiight.
So forget about legitimate public policy issues, where your position might actually have widespread support.
Instead, let's focus on OMG RUSSIANS!!!!!!;2!;122!!!!!!
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Never used AirBnB.
If this is how they operate, I'm not likely to use them ever.
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Just tried using them (trip in August).
Reading their rules and regs, saw various potential options for hosts to scam guests.
Booked trip, host immediately tried to change price etc (city pretty booked due to intl event, easy scam).
I refused, told the host to cancel so I'm not stuck with fees etc.
Host refuses to cancel, since then he's not paid anything.
AirBnB? They are not picking up, no matter how I'm trying to contact them. Only option is to do a chargeback on the CC used for the original booking, which je
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Agree, maybe wealthy people can afford lawyers and servants constantly checking all the contracts for them, but for an ordinary person to have a family and to check in detail all the contracts one has to deal with to goon in life would practically require giving up the little free time, which is left including sleep.
Personally I do not require much:
- the truly total price
- not voided right to sue
- required consent for any contract changes
- default not sharing personal information
would be really apprec
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What's the size of the possible EU market compared to the US market? 100 million higher, or 150 million higher? I forget which.
It took this long? (Score:5, Interesting)
These violations seem easy to identify, so why has it taken this long for the EU to act? I cannot tell from the story how long Airbnb has operated in the EU but they do mention other EU legal battles in the past so I'm guessing it has been many years. It's not like Airbnb is a small company that could have flown below their radar.
Re:It took this long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably because they have lots of worse behaving US companies to contend with.
Try one of the big travel booking companies that closed their European office and thought it was ok to just lock the doors without notice and not pay any staff any money at all nor even give the staff termination notices which meant the staff couldn't even claim social security.
Re:It took this long? (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU generally doesn't investigate stuff like this itself, it relies on member states' own consumer watchdogs to do it and then bring the case to them if it looks like an EU wide issue. Unfortunately that does mean that it can be a bit slow.
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First they need people to complain about something. Then they investigate the matter, maybe file class action lawsuits or take other legal routes. But that step with people complaining is crucial.
And yes, action/reaction taking too long can become a problem, because of customary laws. If things were handled that way for such a long time that they can be considered to be normal by everyone, they're sometimes
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Also, enforcement tends to be at city / district level rather than national level, and councils tend to be more concerned about them running unlicensed hotels, paying residential property tax rather than hotel tax, and taking properties away from local people.
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There has probably been a lot going on in the background to try and sort things out. That hasn't worked so it's now turned into a public "Fix this or else" situation. Ultimatums are rarely the first means of redress.
LOOPHOLES (Score:1)
"These sorts of terms might fly in the U.S., but they're banned in Europe."
Maybe that is an indication that, those US laws have more LOOPHOLES to exploit (compared to EU), for companies like AirBNB, Uber, etc?
Governments should not allow abuse. (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
"... the [EU] regulators said Airbnb must show people total prices up-front that include all charges and fees, and it must clearly tell customers whether a property is being offered by a private host or a professional."
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
The US government doesn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
They shouldn't but they routinely do. The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow not one sided and abusive because they are theoretically (though not really) optional.
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
Well, one party has been trying to do something [consumerfinance.gov] about it, albeit meekly and in a pathetically limited way. The other party screams loudly that regulation is the devil no matter how sane the regulation might actually be and works tirelessly to permit companies to behave as badly as possible. End result is that we get screwed unless we are rich enough to fight the system.
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Re: The US government doesn't care (Score:1)
Half the people in the US are cool with companies doing whatever the hell they want, because they believe people are smart enough to ban or boycott companies that don't fall in line.
Then they proceed to call the other half stupid for believing opposite of what they do.
So who's the real stupid one? :P
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The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow enforceable
FTFY. You can't sign away your rights. ... Well in most places in the world you can't sign away your rights. I'm not sure what batshit insane supreme court sitting decided you can force arbitration on people.
Forced arbitration (Score:2)
FTFY. You can't sign away your rights.
Sure you can and people do it all the time. You can voluntarily give up your rights if you want to - you just cannot be forced by a court into doing so. A right that is not exercised or that cannot be exercised is a right that is given away. A right that you cannot defend is a right you effectively do not have. Slavery was outlawed in the 1860s but for all practical purposes black people didn't even gain even the semblance of equal rights for another hundred years. They couldn't defend their rights so
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Sure you can and people do it all the time. You can voluntarily give up your rights if you want to
Actually no you can't. In most places of the world you can sign what you want but your rights doesn't magically disappear. That's the very definition of an unenforceable contract and many if not most contracts are full of unenforceable clauses which get through out during court cases constantly. Just because you sign something doesn't mean you won't exercise or defend that right if needed.
Their argument is that it isn't forced.
Their argument misses the incredible one-sided nature of contracting parties which is precisely why many countries defen
Legal theory versus real world outcomes (Score:2)
Actually no you can't. In most places of the world you can sign what you want but your rights doesn't magically disappear.
You're talking legal theory. I'm talking real world outcomes. In theory you are right. In practice you are routinely incorrect. A right that you voluntarily give up or that you cannot defend in a court room is de-facto a right you don't have. There also is the problem of rights being defined in such a way that they no longer have any meaning. For example let's take the 4th amendment right "against unreasonable searches and seizures". The key word there is "unreasonable" because all they have to do to
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It is not manipulating, tricking or abusing customers –it is a disruptive business idea!
Everyone knows that government needs to stop trying to force heavy handed over-reaching regulations on the poor companies. With all this regulation, how do anyone expect innovation? The free market will regulate itself. Customers will vote with their money. Dishonest advertising is not lies, it is alternate facts.
Yes, when I wrote all this my keyboard was dripping with sarcasm if it didn't come through. I am happy
Funny (Score:2)
Re: Governments should not allow abuse. (Score:1)
I'm sad that the country that I live in has decided to leave the EU. It'll be a boon for disruptive companies or something.
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Any U.S government that stopped companies manipulating, tricking, and otherwise abusing customers would be voted out of office for being cawmanusts. Because freeduhm and markets!
It's not legal in the US either (Score:1)
It's not legal in the US to change the terms of a contract unilaterally. There are many things in many TOS that aren't enforceable.
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Many things are also not enforced until a grievance has been had. For example, my wife works at an Asian supermarket in Oregon where there are laws for the number of sick hours given, and how they are deducted. By law they are required to be deducted in increments of 1 hour, but the employee handbook states that an employee must take them in increments of 2 hours. No amount of complaining to the Oregon Bureau of Labor would get them to do anything until someone had been denied taking an odd houred sick leav
Re: LOOPHOLES (Score:1)
Freedom is in fact made up of the words "freed" and "om", both old Celtic words meaning "safe" and "together" respectively.
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It's more of a fundamental difference in how civil law works. In America, you can put wording in your terms and conditions that ostensibly requires your customers to bend over backwards and kick themselves in the gonads while whistling Dixie, for three hours every Sunday morning. Your customers will then proceed to not bother to read the terms and conditions and not actually do any of the weird junk said terms and conditions supposedly require. As long as you don't try to actually enforce any of it, it'll probably never go to court, and your terms and conditions will probably never be officially ruled unenforceable.
Under Australian consumer law it's unlawful to even make some of these claims, like "no refunds for any reason" and the ACCC will take you to court for even trying.
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I'm a reasonable person, but am beginning to feel actively hostile towards the behaviour of many US companies, which is not a good sign. Coupled with Trump basically seeing how many countries he can insult, I suspect it's not long now before there is a consumer-led major boycott of all US goods and services.
Baby formula makers (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you missed this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html
World Health Organizations wants to encourage breast feeding. US milk formula lobby opposed it. So USA tries to remove the wording encouraging breast feeding. Fails. US then threatens the bill sponsor, Equador, with military and trade sanctions to force them to stop sponsoring the bill! Equador withdraws the bill.
Russia then sponsors the bill, USA shuts up, says nothing, lets the bill pass.
US starts a trade war with Canada, not over the milk exports (there's no such thing as fresh milk exports, its too expensive to ship *chilled* milk long distances), but milk *protein* exports. The same group of companies, the same type of product.
US has a trade *surplus* with Canada, and USA screws it over on things like pharmaceuticals import bans. Yet it starts a trade war over whey protein.
So the current pecking order is Russia > US Milk Powder Companies > Canada > Nursing Mothers
save that idea when it's time Trans-Pacific Partne (Score:2)
save that idea when it's time Trans-Pacific Partnership to die again.
Resort fee (Score:5, Informative)
We are not used to that.
The whole:” the hotel is 299 pr night”
But then there’s the:
Resort fee, that’s another 50 pr night
Oh the tourist tax, that’s another 10 pr night
Ah you want to park your car? That’s another 25 or night.
And of course that’s without taxes.
And if you are using a hotel search engine, expect only the room price to be listed so you still have to do the calculations yourself.
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying. :)
Prices should include all fees and taxes (Score:4, Insightful)
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying.
It is annoying but it is also a problem. It permits de-facto false advertising of prices. The price should be the price. Taxes, fees, markups, etc should all be rolled in, whatever they happen to be. I don't really care what the tax is in your jurisdiction - I just care what the out the door price is and that is what I should be able to compare. If this makes businesses under the jurisdiction of some local government less competitive then they should petition to have the taxes reduced.
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Recently in Oregon with recreational marijuana, they will sell you a gram for $5.00, then under that they list out how much local and state taxes are already included. This way the price you see advertised is the correct price, and you get to know how much of it is taxes.
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Recently in Oregon with recreational marijuana, they will sell you a gram for $5.00
You have got to be shitting me! Are you saying the only people in the USA with any sense are the pot dealers in Oregon?
Out the door prices are the only ones that matter (Score:2)
The tax should be on the reciept and you should be able to ask the seller what the tax is before buying the product, but it should not be on the price advertised for the product.
Exactly. If I want to know the tax being charged for some reason (and there are good reasons to want to know this sometimes) then that information should be available. Possibly even itemized. But the advertised price of the product should be the all-in amount of money it will take for me to own it. Any other number is nothing but misleading bullshit.
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Sure, resort fees and parking should be made clear if they are optional or rolled in for ease (perhaps an "all-included" price) but tax is not part of the price,
Tax absolutely is part of the price because they won't sell it to you unless you pay it. Taxes are an expense to the vendor just like any other. If you have an issue with the amount of tax then take that up with your elected representatives. The place for that fight isn't on the receipt.
it is extra money stolen by a third party.
Ahh, I get it. You're one of those loonies who actually believes taxes are theft and that somehow our society would be possible without them. Explain to me how we get roads, police, schools, first responders, a military
Re:Resort fee (Score:5, Informative)
The rule in the EU is that the price advertised must be the price you pay for everything you would reasonably expect, including things like taxes and random fees. Parking might be included sometimes, it depends what it is you are booking (e.g. airline tickets won't include airport parking).
They also can't get away with advertising offers where there are only one or two available and the rest cost much more, aka bait and switch. Comparison prices can show them and let you book them, but they can't do billboards or TV ads for them.
The next step is to ban comparison sites and search engines from pressure selling to you. A lot of them claim to only have a couple of rooms left or only hold the flight for 1 minute.
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I've learnt with booking.com to check for cleaning fees on top of the base price. They seem to be quite common in France and Spain, at least, and in one case would have doubled the cost of the room if I hadn't noticed and discarded that particular apartment.
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Compared to AirBNB where the accommodations advertised are inaccessible, not what as advertised or plain unlivable and you are left empty handed with a company with couldn't care less. You are left thousands of dollars out of pocket stranded and abandoned.
In most jurisdictions you are still liable for the tourist tax since it is imposed by the local government. If the tax is not collected it can result in the unit not being available when you arrive.
Most jurisdictions in North America have fire safety requi
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Show People Total Prices Up-Front (Score:2)
And AirBnB would like very much (Score:3)
We're an Industrialized Banana Republic Now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We're an Industrialized Banana Republic Now (Score:5, Funny)
The third-world of the first-world. The USA has seen better days, and most of us know it.
That is what happens when your country is run by banana republicans.
Bottom line price only, thx (Score:3)
The amount I have to pay is the only price that I'm interested in. That goes for ALL purchases.
A breakdown that shows me how much of that money goes to pay employees toilet paper and various taxes is nice, but ultimately a total irrelevance unless I can use them for deductions etc.
Taxes that a company has to pay isn't interesting to me. I don't care. And the beauty is that if everyone lists full price, nobody is at a pricing disadvantage.
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Random example - petrol tax in the UK. Petrol is taxed at £0.5795 per litre fuel duty plus a further 20% VAT, and the price per litre at the moment is around £1.281. That means a majority of the price of a litre of petrol is tax. Whether this is right or wrong is not the point of this comment - there are arguments either way. It is, however, quite ill
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Put it on the receipt, don't make it a math exercise before you pump.
If you have to put 1.45 Euro per liter on the counter once you're done pumping, it doesn't matter right then and there whether 20 or 25 cents of those are some kind of tax. You need to have THAT MUCH MONEY on your person (or in your bank account if paying with credit card) at that moment in time.
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A breakdown that shows me how much of that money goes to pay employees toilet paper and various taxes is nice, but ultimately a total irrelevance unless I can use them for deductions etc.
The Insightful part missing from other comments [well, cannot mod]
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This so caught me out in the USA. I literally had a dollar on me, got like a chocolate bar walked up to the counter and then couldn't buy the damn thing because I only had a dollar and the damn thing had a dollar on the price tag but somehow that offer and payment was unable to be reconciled.
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I love the idea of dollar stores in places like that - walk in with a dollar and can't afford anything. It's insanity!
Post to cancel errant mod (Score:2)
Land of the Free (Score:1)
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Please point to one case of this leading to a lower cost and not having to pay a lot more than expected.
Just one. One will suffice.
Re:ridiculous regulation (Score:4, Informative)
That's an easy question :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
US is around 19T$, EU is 17T$ and relatively easy to do business in (strong rule of law, some convergence between countries). Next are China at 12T$, but if you find EU too much of a hassle don't even think about it, after that Japan (4T$) and India (2T$), also not easy markets.
So, if you don't think US is a big enough market, EU is a pretty natural second. But to play ball here, you gotta play by the rules. Which is true across the pond as well, just check out the fines EU banks were hit by in response to (presumably) violating US laws or statutes.
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That's an easy question :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
US is around 19T$, EU is 17T$
And if you add a few countries which are technically not part of the EU (e.g. Switzerland or Norway) but practically belong to the same economic zone, EU is also around 19T$
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Why do these companies waste their time dealing with Europe?
Maybe they like our principles of common sense and not fucking over anything with a pulse and a wallet.