[mikeash]

I've traveled quite a bit, including to Barcelona. If you speak English (and this person clearly does) then "don't speak the language" is not an issue there, or indeed almost anywhere.

If I book a place for a certain period, then I'm staying for that whole period. If the host suddenly changes their mind and tells me I have to move, no way. I'm contacting the booking agency and having them tell the host to get lost. If the booking agency doesn't help then I'm initiating a chargeback and finding a hotel. At no point is it reasonable to just pack up, hop into a complete stranger's car at their insistence, and be driven off to some place where they won't even tell you where you're going.

Traveling used to be pretty interesting when things went wrong. I got stranded in the Beijing airport once with only a rudimentary command of Mandarin because the airline canceled my flight and never told me, and I had to hunt down an airline employee, borrow a phone so I could contact people, etc. But now? Bring a smartphone and you're a few taps away from communicating with anybody you need. Host is being obstinate? Call AirBnB. Still doesn't work? Book a new place. You make a mistake taking a car with a stranger and he takes you to a place where you don't even know where it is? Open up a maps app and find out where you are. Can't talk to people? Google Translate to the rescue.

You better believe that if the host refuses to honor our agreement and starts trying to jerk me around, I'm going to blow them off and sit with my luggage in the street while I resolve the problem myself. Relying on strangers to fix your problems, when said strangers have already demonstrated that they don't really care about you, is setting yourself up to be a victim.

[yardie]

You place far too much faith in AirBnB's customer service line. I've called it before. I've sat outside the apartment I rented waiting on hold listening to the same 3 damn songs forever (hey did you know the music they've selected is produced by their employees?).

AirBnB wasn't reachable when I needed them the most. Sitting on the curb with my wife and 4yo at 10PM without a place to go. Trying desperately to find any hotel with a vacancy at the height of tourist season in a small tourist town.

That incident has soured my wife on me ever booking a sharing economy rental again.

[59nadir]

> AirBnB wasn't reachable when I needed them the most. Sitting on the curb with my wife and 4yo at 10PM without a place to go.

There is literally no way I would trust some random schmo on a site that enables idiots to try to run hotels with the wellbeing of a child, much less a 4 year old. Book a real hotel, honestly. Even if it went well, the bad judgment on display here is slightly disturbing.

[mikeash]

I'm not placing any faith in AirBnB. I laid out a chain of actions, one of which is contacting AirBnB, and the next link in the chain is what to do if that doesn't work.

No doubt you can get stuck in a crappy situation here. But you certainly have choices that don't involve doing nothing while your host carts you off to some undisclosed location.

[yardie]

I apologise. When I've retold the story other peoples' responses are simply "contact AirBnB" as if that wasn't the first thing we did. We eventually found a place for the night, resolved the issue with AirBnB (though weeks later), and promised to do a little more forethought into our next rental.

[mikeash]

That's OK, and I'm glad you got your housing trouble figured out. AirBnB definitely should be prepared to handle problems like this right away, but I can't say I'm too surprised that they don't.

[pmelendez]

> "I've traveled quite a bit, including to Barcelona. If you speak English (and this person clearly does) then "don't speak the language" is not an issue there."

I don't know which part of Barcelona have you been but that's just limited (just to do not say untrue). My brother-in-law lives there, and even he (who is native spanish speaker and also speaks English and Catalan) recognize that most locals don't speak English.

> "or indeed almost anywhere"

I know so many places where that is untrue, I would be more cautious if I were you.

> "Open up a maps app and find out where you are. Can't talk to people? Google Translate to the rescue."

You are assuming too many things. Like you have a roaming data plan or even that your carrier have a way to provide you roaming in the place.

> Can't talk to people? Google Translate to the rescue.

Then you are trusting in the interlocutor. You won't be able to tell if they are lying or not.

[mikeash]

You don't need most locals to speak English, just a few will do. For tourism-oriented sectors like hotels, English proficiency is not typically hard to find.

I'm not assuming you have a data plan so much as I am saying that you should have one, so that you can handle eventualities such as this. Failing to plan is planning to fail, as they say. Never assume all of your arrangements will work out exactly as they're supposed to. Always have a backup plan, even if it's nothing more specific than "use my smartphone to figure it out."

If you show up in a foreign country with no way to communicate with anybody and no way to make contingency plans then you're making it likely you'll have a bad experience. Don't do that.

[massysett]

If I'm staying in a stranger's house and they tell me to clear out, I would leave immediately. No way I would stay and hope Airbnb tells the host to get it straight. The host can make your life miserable, take your stuff, or worse.

[chrismcb]

This isn't so much of a "customer desiring a room" as it is a "company desiring a room for its employees."