[Nate75Sanders]

There is, but the problem is that not every amenity listed is something that all customers would want, thus they won't knock a host for it being incorrect.

For example, I stayed at a place in Germany that said they had a washer and dryer. Indeed there was a washer and I thought it might be one of those all-in-one units (washer and dryer), but it was just a washer. I asked the host about the dryer and she said she didn't have one. I pointed out that she listed one on the AirBnB site under amenities.

The problem here? Language barrier. She thought "dryer" meant hair dryer, which she had. It sorta screwed up my trip because I did a multi-city stay and that was the place I decided to do laundry and forewent laundry facilities and the previous and next places when I planned everything out beforehand.

And as grandparent here alludes to: people have wildly different ideas about what a particular amenity is. "Wifi, but only when you're sitting on the couch" isn't up to snuff for me. It may be that most people who stayed at that place were not in the apartment much and only checked email occasionally. It may be that I need to use the internet for a couple of hours each day to deal with work or some other commitment.

What I've found is that you need to find out which amenities are REALLY important to you for each place you stay and send messages to the people ahead of time to make sure the really important stuff is what you'd expect and not "just true enough that I can probably check this box for the amenity".

[geddes]

This is also a cultural barrier, when I lived in germany very few people had electric clothes dryers - most people had electric washers and racks for air drying. For a german it's reasonable to assume dryer meant hair dryer.

Ultimately, because AirBNB and VRBO are p2p you are accepting a certain level of risk in exchange for a rate much cheaper than a name brand hotel. The name brand hotel buys you a level of certainty in the experience you will have.

My example airbnb in Prague - a room advertised as a king size bed, but when we got there it was two twin mattresses pushed together, with a king size sheet laid over both of them.

In my experience hosts have been honest when you ask them direct questions when researching their listing. It just takes time to do this for every listing you are interested in, and there will always be things you don't think of. "Is your bed a single mattress or two mattresses pushed together?" wasn't on my list!

[pfranz]

I feel like I've had the same issues with hotels in general. Internet is commonly subpar, down, or inaccessible in the room. In some countries it was still common to have wired Internet or maybe wifi only in the lobby (sucks if you only brought an iPad with you).

[lucaspiller]

It's not just cheap hotels either, this is pretty common in well known brands - each country has their own policies on how things should be, so (for example) at a Hilton in London you may get free wifi in your room, in Australia the same for $40 a day, and in Brazil poor wifi only in the lobby.

[WA]

Weird, because Airbnb has a German website. I never posted a place there, but I can imagine that you can select "dryer" from the amenities in German language. Or was this in the description of the place?