Airbnb + Hidden Spy Cameras: A Cautionary Tale from the New York Times’ Tripped Up columnist. Plus the first look at a new company that could save you on airfare

Foreign.

Welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer, and we have one of our favorite guests back for the first segment today.

He is Seth Kugel.

He writes the Tripped up column for the New York Times.

Hey, Seth.

Welcome back to the Fromer Travel Show.

Hi, Pauline.

Thank you.

Glad to be on the first segment.

That's very exciting.

Well, you're always a headliner, and your most recent article profiled, I think, an issue that is quite scary to many travelers.

The headline of the piece kind of tells it in a nutshell.

Help.

We found a hidden camera in the bathroom of our Airbnb.

Oy vey.

What else can you say?

So these people reached out to you.

What was most shocking about this was Airbnb's lack of response.

So tell the story.

How did they find this camera?

I think it was through the pure luck of the battery running out on the camera or some connectivity issue of the camera because it started to blink a red light above the toilet.

It was a camera that was in an outlet extender.

So, you know, if you have one outlet, you plug something into it, and there's like, four more places to plug things in or maybe a usb.

And in that, there were these little.

Looked like maybe two tiny cameras that you would never know was a camera.

Sure.

The.

The person walked into the bathroom at night, and before they turned on the light, they saw a flashing red light.

And of course, it's a spy camera or a nanny camera, as you might call it, so it wouldn't normally be flashing.

I'm here.

Look over here.

But obviously something was wrong with it, so they just.

They discovered it.

They.

They called the police and Airbnb.

This took place in New Hampshire, where it can be a felony to have a camera installed in a pub in a private place that.

Where other people might not know it's there.

And, yeah, so that's what happened.

And the police did respond.

But Airbnb eventually, a few days later, sort of found in favor of the host, which was shocking because it couldn't have been more obvious.

I read the whole interaction between Airbnb and the guests, which is, of course, all over the Airbnb app.

So it's all documented.

I saw the documentation the guests sent, and it's quite convincing that it can.

It included the police report, right?

Well, it included the number of the police report.

The police report wasn't out yet, but.

And is still not out to this day, by the way.

But it included a photo of this thing hanging above the toilet.

And they Had.

I don't know how they did this, but they found the.

Probably through some image search, reverse image search on Google.

They found out the.

Found the product and common spy cam.

You know, it couldn't have been anything else.

I mean, I was trying to figure out how they could have faked this story, and it would have been the greatest conspiracy of all time.

It's absolutely astonishing to me that Airbnb either didn't believe them or didn't have the capacity to sort of process this complaint in the correct way.

Well, of course they did when you got involved, which is one of the reasons people write to you, and you gave somewhat of a reason why this could happen on Airbnb's watch.

So let's tell a little bit about their side of the story.

Why.

Why didn't they police this better?

Well, you know, Airbnb didn't give me a very detailed response, so I sort of took my best guess.

I read a lot of Airbnb complaints.

A lot come into email.

What's the most common one?

The most common is either I wrote a negative review of this place and the host got it removed, or a host writing to me, it said, a guest wrote a negative review of a place and I couldn't get it removed.

So Airbnb has a sort of a dispute resolution system.

I call it sort of an international small claims court.

They're running out of who knows where there's a system that they have to settle these kinds of disputes, which sometimes are less serious and in this case was very serious.

And I just don't think they have the capacity either to handle as many complaints as they get or to understand the seriousness of some of these complaints or really, I mean, to judge between two sets of customers.

And I think this is the big misunderstanding of the public.

You're not Airbnb's only customer.

When you stay in an Airbnb property, their other customer is the host.

And they're not going to favor you over.

You can't be.

You can't have the saying, the customer is always right as Airbnb because one of the two customers has to be wrong, either the host or the guest.

And they're just trying to do something that actually, to their credit, may be impossible.

They've got hundreds of millions of nights of stays in over 200 countries and territories everywhere in the world, and things come up all the time.

I can't tell you whether they haven't invested enough in training or they don't care enough or what, but.

Or if they're just overwhelmed maybe.

I don't know, but it just couldn't have been clearer.

And, you know, this is only one of who knows how many cases.

And maybe sometimes they.

I'm sure sometimes they get it right, but it's very hard.

Like, one person says one thing, one person says another thing.

How does a customer service person in who knows where, the Philippines, Hawaii, India, New Jersey, like, judge something that's happening in Mongolia with a guest from Uzbekistan?

I mean.

Right.

And you make the point that it is possible because this Airbnb had been booked for a long time.

It's possible a guest could have put in this spy camera and maybe the host removed it.

You just don't know what the actual story is here.

Right, right.

But, I mean, in this case, it sort of doesn't matter.

This is a clear danger.

There's at least one camera in this house.

There could have been many others.

And the house was rented out.

This is a summer resort area near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

And this was Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of the summer.

It was rented out by a number of other people for the next few months.

And they just left it out there.

Right.

The people who reported this to you said they didn't do anything.

We wanted our full money back.

And we also wanted this house to be taken offline because in the reviews, they had seen that children had stayed there.

And so that didn't happen.

And just to be clear, once again, they did.

The police did take this camera, but there could have been other cameras.

And it just seemed like, you know, usually when I do a story like this, it's because I've heard similar problems from other folks, but it's either not that serious or it's not that clear.

This was such a clear and obvious case where it would have been so, so easy for a person at Airbnb, a reasonable person, to say, well, obviously, maybe in some cases we're not going to do anything.

This is a case where we have to do something.

Let's, for now anyway, cancel all the future reservations until we figure something out, whatever process they have to do that.

Right.

So since that's not happening, are there ways to make sure that you stay safe in.

If you do an Airbnb stay.

And I'll tell you my story in a moment.

But what.

What is your first piece of advice on what to do?

I mean, you know, there's certain things that are obvious, like you.

You.

You read the reviews Very carefully.

Right.

Don't stay at a place where you haven't really had the chance to read through reviews.

I do say, you know, there can be one bad review and that's it.

But, you know, hidden cameras are hidden cameras.

You could, if you really want to take it seriously, you could buy a device.

There's devices sold that.

Detective.

Human hidden cameras.

I believe you should Google this or chatgpt it.

But there's ways to have your.

Your smartphone detect infrared.

I don't really know how it works, but you have to figure out if you really are worried about hidden cameras.

There are ways to search for hidden cameras.

So that would be one thing I.

Would do well before we leave that.

So you also say read the reviews very carefully.

Here's.

Here's here.

I'm going to tell the Pauline.

Why were you so Stupid story in this case?

I was going somewhere for work, and I'm a total cheapskate.

The prices were insane at hotels.

The prices were insane at most Airbnbs.

So I accepted an Airbnb that was a room in someone's house.

And I read the reviews, and I did see a pattern of some people complaining that the host seemed a little nutty.

But I also read that they had kittens, and I love cats.

And I thought, how bad could this be?

I'm sure it'll be fine.

I get to the house.

It's clear the owner is on something really serious.

She's clearly out of her mind on some drug, and her boyfriend comes home, and they launch into this horrific fight.

And I'm in my room listening to them yelling, you know, doors banging and all this stuff.

And I'm thinking, okay, maybe I could go out, but will my stuff be safe?

And if I have to come back in, I could sneak out.

And then I thought, why am I even thinking of staying here?

So I snuck out, called Airbnb.

It took several days, but they did finally refund me, and I stayed at one of the expensive hotels for the night.

But, you know, I just was blinded by the prospect of being in a place with kittens, you know?

Right.

And I guess the reviews, you should have paid more attention to them.

I should have, yeah.

You know, Airbnb does have a whole system for if you feel unsafe in your.

In your.

In the place you're staying to at least try to get you another place or refund you.

I think that that works most of the time, but you're.

The whole ecosystem of Airbnb is so massive that you are sort of taking a chance Although I do say in the article, you're also taking a chance when you stay in a local hotel, and you're also taking a chance when you stay in a big chain hotel.

And, yeah, you know, travel has a certain element of risk to it, no matter what.

But in this case, they didn't want to give me my money back because I hadn't alerted the host I was leaving.

Now, I didn't feel confident in alerting the host because she was clearly out of her mind.

So that's why it took several days.

But I did eventually get my money back, and she's no longer on the service.

It's a similar element in this story.

The guest didn't want Airbnb to confront the host because they were worried about retaliation on the review or some other kind of retaliation.

So I'm not sure if that had anything to do with, with the Airbnb response.

But, but these, these, these are a real challenge.

And by the way, another thing I noticed about your, your case is that it was budget related.

Yes.

You know, there are certain times when spending less money on a trip actually makes a trip better, but there are also times when it makes it worse.

Oh, that's so shocking to hear from the former frugal traveler say.

I mean, safety is something probably one shouldn't compromise.

Absolutely.

Especially as a woman traveling alone.

So you say look at the, at the reviews carefully and look for patterns.

You said maybe get one of those devices that will show infrared.

If you're really nervous about that.

What, what other things can you do to keep yourself safe on Airbnb?

Well, I mean, despite what I said about Airbnb system, you do want to alert Airbnb right away.

They do have protocols in place, tell you to call the police, tell you to get out of the place, find you a new place.

I.

It's not really.

I guess it doesn't really count as staying safe.

But just to protect yourself, I recommend you do the same thing you should do when you rent a car.

You take a video of the entire apartment and when you arrive and when you leave to make sure you're not charged for something.

This is another huge problem on Airbnb is charges that come in that maybe are for something that occurred before you got there.

For example, like a broken vase or what broken vase?

I got a story recently about someone who left a stain on, I think they had unplugged some insect repellent thing that's plugged in.

They put it down on a coffee table, and the coffee table, it leaked onto the coffee table.

And they were charged some very outrageous amount that must have been more than the value of the coffee table.

Wow.

And, you know, I guess if they had had a video of what the coffee table was, they could have said, is there any way this thing is worth, you know, fifteen hundred dollars or something like that?

But, you know, I mean, hidden cameras can be any.

Anywhere.

These.

Sure.

By the way, regular cameras are everywhere.

We're being filmed all the time.

So I think there's a lot of challenges out there about protecting yourself, and I don't really have all the answers to this.

So as I alluded to, you used to be the frugal traveler.

Now you're the tripped up columnist.

Does being deluged with all of these horror stories every day make you less bullish on the travel experience?

I have to admit, it does make.

I am the pessimistic guy.

It's very rare now when one of my friends tell me something bad that happened to them that I don't immediately launch into where in the terms and conditions of the airline, they're screwed, you know, because they're never going to get their money back.

I certainly travel.

I'm very wary now of almost everything that happens when I travel and everything that can, can go wrong.

Actually, the one thing that I think I still maintain from the frugal traveler days is a lot a sense that people really need to be flexible travel and that a lot of the complaints I get, I'm kind of like, maybe you should just realize this is a part of travel and you don't need to go to war against an airline because they are not going to refund you the $50 you spent to have an aisle seat.

And then it turned out the airline, the.

This particular airplane had a different structure and the bathroom, the aisle was next to the bathroom or something like, you know, I do think that people, I have maintained a certain kind of sort of flexible idealism about travel that things will go wrong and you should expect them to go wrong.

And only when something really serious happens, like this case, which was very serious.

Do you really want to, like, waste the three months after you get back from your trip trying to, you know, fight whatever company caused you this problem?

Right.

No.

Excellent advice as always.

Well, thank you so much, Seth, for appearing on the former travel show.

Thank you, Pauline.

About two weeks ago, the cheap air carrier play out of Iceland went belly up.

And in the United States, Spirit is on its last legs.

It may be going away.

This is all a long way of saying it's gotten harder to find cheap airfares.

You have to be more strategic than ever.

And my next guest has a new business that is taking a new approach to saving money on airfares.

Full disclosure, I have not tested it yet.

I'm planning to do so and I'll come back to you with the results.

But it was such an interesting idea that I wanted to have him on the show.

So I have Jason Lucking on the line.

He is one of the founders of, of payback, which is not spelled the usual way.

It's pay a I back.

Welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

Jason.

Thank you, thank you.

Great to be here.

And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to share a little bit more about payback with you.

So how does it work?

What is the idea behind payback?

Sure.

So payback and as you said, spelt P A I back was this play on, on getting paid back for your airfare but using technology.

So what we do is we take bookings that are directly made with the airline and we'll take those tickets, they're forwarded to us, we monitor them from the time we receive them until the time that you take off.

Now, as we know, pricing dynamics go up and down.

If the price goes up, we do nothing with that ticket.

If the price goes below what you originally paid for it, we use AI to automate that process and of getting you the difference between what you paid for it and what its value is now.

And you'll get that as a future flight credit if you get a non refundable ticket, which most of us do, or you'll get it back on your original form of payment if you get a refundable ticket, which some people do, but you pay a bit of a premium for.

So it's a very simple hassle free process.

You book your ticket with the airline, you forward it to us and then you sit back.

That's.

That's all you get to do.

We accrue these credits.

One in every two flights, see a price drop.

So there's some pretty high frequency that goes on with it as well.

So just to unpack this, this works for folks who travel a lot.

If you're taking one trip a year, that getting the credit back could be meaningless for you.

Right.

This is for people who will be able to use that credit later on.

Yeah.

So two, two prongs here.

We at this point recommend people that fly two to three times a year would see advantage from it because as you said, they could use it for future flights or for Additional flights.

Now, the second prong is, although our business is to save people money on their existing tickets, our real deep rooted ethos is, you know, since COVID we've seen a fall off in travel.

We really want people to do more.

Wait, hold on, I got to stop you there.

How have you seen a fall off in travel since COVID That doesn't make sense to me.

Well, during COVID a lot of people were not flying as much.

There was more travel via car and vehicles.

And you've seen the airline industry drop from a $206 billion US market, it dipped down to about 175, I think.

And we're starting to see it back up.

That's interesting because in the United States, a lot of the airlines.

This is all a side discussion, but a lot of the airlines are posting, had been posting record profits.

Record profits, but not necessarily.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they were having as high a revenue as possible.

Record profits are obviously a different section to revenue.

Okay.

We'Ll go on with our discussion because we got a little inside baseball there.

So you want to get people back in the air.

You know, deep, deep.

One other thing.

I mean, just so back to the original thought.

So you, you register your flight with payback.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

And then you guys use AI to monitor whether or not the cost has dropped.

Yes.

What if it's the only time you're going to Karachi and you're on Air Pakistan?

Does it help you to have a credit on Air Pakistan knowing you'll probably never be going back to Karachi?

So right now we're focused on US Airlines, and that's Delta, American, United, Alaskan, and we're looking at adding two of the other airlines as well.

Jet slu.

We're working on those right now.

Again, as you know, there's a bit of a shift in the airline industry right now where some of them are figuring out partnerships or figuring out, you know, how they're positioning their seating or things like that.

So we're holding off on some of those other airlines right now, but it does work on both domestic and international flights for those airlines.

So again, focus on Delta, United, American, Alaskan right now and we'll see additionals coming in the coming weeks.

I see.

Okay.

Is it easy to use the air credits or do you get put in the same bucket as people trying to use loyalty points, which is getting increasingly difficult because too many damn people have loyalty points?

There are far more loyalty Points than ever could be turned in and used.

So the great thing about future flight credits is it's the same thing as cash.

So anytime you go to book a future flight, you can apply those future flight credits to your future tickets.

We can break it down airline by airline on which one's easier and which ones, you know, makes it maybe a little tougher.

But the airlines really are seeing an increase in people that may have cancelled a flight and therefore get a future flight credit.

So the, the ease is definitely becoming, is definitely increasing there with the airlines.

But it's a very simple thing.

You have a credit, you can very easily apply it to future flights and some auxiliary services as well.

Forever, or is there a deadline for when you need to apply the credit?

Yeah.

So that flight credit has 12 months from the time of original purchase on most of the airlines.

Okay.

All right.

So you have to keep track of it.

Do you guys keep track of that for your customers?

It's a pro feature that we'll be adding again in the coming months.

Okay, interesting.

And I got to ask, how do you make money on this transaction?

So being a frequent flyer, both for business, myself and with our family, we love to travel, I wanted to make this as seamless a possible opportunity for anybody to use.

And so what we said was, the only time we will make money is when you make money.

Which means anytime we secure you a credit, that's the only time we will charge you.

And we'll charge you 20% of whatever we saved you.

So if the price doesn't change, we don't, we don't charge you anything.

So it's going to cost you nothing to sign up.

It's going to cost you nothing for us to monitor.

The only time that we monetize is when you make money.

It's you win, we win situation.

Very interesting.

So how long have you been in business?

Now?

The idea was conceived a little over coming up to three years.

We did a lot of R and D, we did a pilot scheme, and we've really gone live in the last 12 months.

And it's been extremely exciting.

I come from the luxury service world where I know every single person that, that, that I interact with.

And so seeing this exceptional growth, obviously, I don't know 99% of the people that are signed up, but we still take a service approach.

As much, again, as much as we know we're saving people money, we believe that we are a single service first company for people.

Because travel's super important to people.

It's very delicate.

It's you've got to be very respectful for people's flights about their privacy.

And so we make sure that all of those things are taken into account for us as a company.

I feel like we're on shark tank right now and I'm trying to assess whether or not it's worthwhile to invest in you.

Although it does seem like a risk free investment for your travelers that they're not going to lose anything by simply registering their flight with you and then the registration process.

What do they have to give you so that you can cancel and rebook them?

So, so that's an interesting point.

We do not cancel your tickets.

That was originally something that, that we thought of.

What we do is we, we get that ticket reticketed with the airline so you stay on the same confirmation in the same seat or in one airlines in the same class.

We try to ensure that you always remain in that same seat, but just at that new lower price.

So we don't cancel.

We re ticket.

And that's where you end up getting that future flight credit.

Because if you cancel, there's always that opportunity.

There's always that risk of something going wrong.

You know, think of families, families with kids.

The kids end up at the back by the toilet and you end up at the front in, you know, comfort plus or something.

So we didn't want to do a cancel rebook.

But to your point, it is risk free.

We wanted that case to be.

You don't have to worry about it.

Only when the price goes down are you going to be optimized for that ticket.

Okay, so to find you people, go to paiback app.

Yes ma'.

Am.

So paiback app or you could just Google Payback Travel, Pai Back travel and that'll get you directly to us as well.

So there isn't an app you have to download.

You can simply do it through a website.

It's in development.

It's in development, like a lot of this.

All right, well, best of luck to you.

It sounds like it could be a good strategy for travelers who travel a lot, as most of our listeners do.

So thank you so much for appearing on the Fromer Travel Show.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And we have reached the end of another show.

I thank you so much for listening.

Do me a favor.

If you enjoy the show, won't you consider subscribing or giving us a five star review wherever you stream this show, whether it be Apple podcasts or Spotify or another platform that could really help us find new listeners and in this day of AI, when so much is being taken from content creators without any compensation, we really, really depend on our listeners, on our readers, to be staying in the journalism game.

Things are changing rapidly and we need travelers to come to us directly.

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End of commercial.

Thank you so much for listening.

And to those who are traveling, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants Watching cable well it feels so far away all the channels seem the same Trying to remember all the songs we like to play Cause those lazy afternoons don't come so frequently these days oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boothouse on the lake oh but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes I can't get you off of my mind Looking out the window where we spend so much of our time cause I miss the way it feels But I guess you can't control those damn cards with babe I know the both of us are happy when we're free but would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boathouse on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tast and I, I, I hate the way it tastes But I love it all the same and I, I hate the way it tastes But I love it all the sa.

Oh I know it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boat house on the lake But I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it takes it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

When I see you with a sour candy don't want it any other way oh I just hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes.