I've also used AirBnB extensively for renting places to live on a very short term, no strings, basis. I've lived in quite a lot of places over the best part of a year this way so my sample size is quite large, and so I've noticed a fair few trends in the advantages and disadvantages.

Obviously, since I've kept up with it I'd say the advantages, like the flexibility, the ability to have a more direct, and human, relationship with hosts (as opposed to the more standoff-ish business-like relationship that traditional landlords tend to favour) and the vastly greater supply and ability to choose without much pressure (as opposed to doing rental viewings with estate agents, former tenants, breathing down your neck and applying pressure on you), really outweigh the disadvantages overall.

I agree with what you say: the main disadvantage I've noticed, and by far the one which causes the most problems, is the unpredictability of the experience once you're living there, and sometimes how things differ from the description.

However I'd say for me, it's not necessarily these things per-se that are the problem, it's the intrinsic difficulty in dealing with them precisely because of the situation, and the relationship, you have with the host in the AirBnB scenario. I'm not sure reviews, AirBnB policies, or anything else can really mitigate these problems in any meaningful way, they're just part and parcel of the deal.

My favourite example of such a problem was with a place I was living in a few months ago. The apartment itself was awesome, it was just as described and the pictures gave an accurate and fair representation of the place. The host was lovely. Everything was great. There was just one problem. The lovely host happened to have a particular habit of speaking to her friends on skype, on the phone, etc, almost literally all of the time she was home. I don't exaggerate - she would come in from work and immediately go into her room, fire up the laptop and start a conversation. After that one had finished, she would take a minute's break, and then call someone else. And this would repeat, again and again, until she went to sleep. This would happen quite literally every day. It was a small apartment so her voice rang out, and she had a very animated way of speaking, lots of 'ooohs' and 'aaaahs' and 'nooooooos', etc, and you could hear every word, every expression.

Obviously this was incredibly irritating after a few days! I couldn't read, watch netflix without headphones, do any work, do anything really without hearing this and being massively distracted. But ask yourself, what can you do? If it were a hotel and it were a staff member or somebody in the room next door, of course you'd have no qualms about making a complaint, a polite but stern request, that the person please make the calls somewhere else because it's not really fair that you have to listen to this all evening every evening - you're a paying guest after all. The same fact is of course true with AirBnB but there's a very, very different social dynamic because it's not a hotel, it's the person's home. What are you supposed to do? Ask that they make calls somewhere else - when they're in their home? Ask that they please not speak to their friends, in their home, when you're in, even though it's clearly an activity that is incredibly important to them? Perhaps it's just the type of person I am, but I'd feel incredibly awkward about really saying anything at all. It's the person's home, and you're intruding on their life, their habits, their way of doing things. On paper you're a paying guest, but in the actual situation you just feel like a guest full-stop, and you feel like you don't really have the right to tell them what to do or how to behave in their own home, when what they're doing may be annoying to you but is not, under any definition of the term, aggressive or anti-social behaviour. This for me is the major, major disadvantage of AirBnB - it's a problem of the social situation you find yourself in, living in a perfect stranger's actual home, conforming to their routines, getting used to their day to day lifestyle in ways you wouldn't imagine you'd have to, and in ways you can't possibly predict in advance.

Because of this it's also not the type of thing you can really complain to AirBnB about. Are you supposed to ask for a refund because everything was perfect but there was this one thing that really annoyed you? What are they supposed to do about it? You can't really even prove it and trying to prove it would get you into an immeasurably awkward situation with the host, a person you like and respect. Also related to this, are you going to put it in the review? Again, on paper you probably should, but social pressure means you almost certainly won't, because it feels like a silly thing to bring up when everything, objectively, was perfect about the apartment. After the fact, you feel like you should just let it go. So it goes unaddressed.

I have many other stories like these, from just-occasionally noisy neighbours to the host behaving disrespectfully just once or twice, in an otherwise perfect apartment and stay. I've come to the conclusion that these are things you can't get upset about, because the risk of them happening comes bundled into the AirBnB experience and I'm quite sure there's no solution to the problem. If you want a hotel, get a hotel. If you want to live in a real person's apartment by their rules (for a lot less money, I hasten to add) choose AirBnB.

Before I started using AirBnB so much I was quite naive with my expectations of the experience - the fact is, and something I wish someone had told me before I learned and came to deal with it myself the 'hard way', you have to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth, have some evenings and nights' sleep ruined with no possibility for recourse, and fold that into your assessment of whether you think AirBnB is worth it for your situation.

As an example, due to my experience, I'd be now incredibly reluctant to use AirBnB for a short holiday, because I'd much prefer to pay more for a hotel for the reduced risk of stuff going wrong, being annoying, losing sleep or not being able to just do things on my own terms. My instinct now with AirBnB is what can go wrong, you should expect to go wrong, and what does annoy you, you should expect to happen, and kind of take it as a bonus if this turns out not to be the case. Of course if you're renting and living in a place these are risks you can take, you can find a new place, you can take time to try and adapt. If you're on a short holiday, it could be the difference between enjoying your stay and not.

I hope somebody who's not had a lot of experience with AirBnB, and possibly didn't think about this perspective, found this useful!