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Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

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Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#201

Post by blagie »

bpodgursky wrote: post #178
bingidingi wrote: post #174

This is horrifying. I know we feel like there's nothing we can do and this type of thing is old news, or maybe a risk no matter where you are... but I can't do business with a company that reacts this way.

Do you have a reason to think AirBnB is doing anything less moral than existing hotel or motel chains? I would expect most operators to call the police and hire lawyers to ensure that their liability stays at 0, and not much else. AirBnB is offering victims sometimes millions of dollars to settle claims, but they cannot force the victims to do anything. It turns out that as individual agents with free agency, the vic…

I'd take millions of dollars over unencumbered free speech!

That said, it's rarely millions. Total settlements = $50M. They have 100 full-time safety agents. This means each agent handles an average of $500k per year. If we assume each agent handles 4 incidents per day, times 200 days, that's 800 incidents, or under $1k per incident.

The scale of the problem, per the article, is striking.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#202

Post by sidlls »

lupire wrote: post #97
aaomidi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprise! You were not middle class.

Eh, an au pair from overseas provides childcare in exchange for rent and food, and comes on vacations. If you aren't a stay at home parent, you can use some of the money you earn at your job to pay for child care.

Having an au pair puts one firmly above the middle-class. Not necessarily rich, but certainly flirting with "affluent."

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#203

Post by jitl »

Mizza wrote: post #52

Is anybody else kind of over AirBnb? I loved it for a while, but now prices have gone way up, the "cleaning fees" are exorbitant and make navigating/browsing a minefield, and I've had a few sketchy incidents (which were, admittedly, a side effect of choosing the cheapest place I could find), including one where the apartment manager came in, went through our clothes and _stole the bed_. I've found myself just using h…

Browse on the Australian TLD, where regulations require showing the total price inclusive of all fees, not the per day price. you can still set the currency to USD (or whatever you pay with)

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#204

Post by bingidingi »

bpodgursky wrote: post #178
bingidingi wrote: post #174

This is horrifying. I know we feel like there's nothing we can do and this type of thing is old news, or maybe a risk no matter where you are... but I can't do business with a company that reacts this way.

Do you have a reason to think AirBnB is doing anything less moral than existing hotel or motel chains? I would expect most operators to call the police and hire lawyers to ensure that their liability stays at 0, and not much else. AirBnB is offering victims sometimes millions of dollars to settle claims, but they cannot force the victims to do anything. It turns out that as individual agents with free agency, the vic…

It's one thing to offer support, it's something else to use support to make silencing someone palatable.

I will disagree with this no matter who does it.

Even feeling as strongly as I do about this, I would personally have a hard time turning down millions of dollars — the power imbalance is so large here that it's the illusion of a choice.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#205

Post by dzhiurgis »

jjeaff wrote: post #144
grillvogel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Traveling with kids and a babysitter what? i make what i thought was good money but this is absurd to me

Have you ever priced it out? Probably not as expensive as you think. Like travelling with an extra kid, plus some extra overtime for the baby sitter you would have paid anyway.

Some random site here in NZ quotes $400-500 per week, say $25k per year which is quite ok.

Thing is there's tons of people in their gap year who are willing to come to first world country and experience the rich life (you need to provide accomodation and food IIRC) even if it's pretty middle for us.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#206

Post by srslytho »

bpodgursky wrote: post #178
bingidingi wrote: post #174

This is horrifying. I know we feel like there's nothing we can do and this type of thing is old news, or maybe a risk no matter where you are... but I can't do business with a company that reacts this way.

Do you have a reason to think AirBnB is doing anything less moral than existing hotel or motel chains? I would expect most operators to call the police and hire lawyers to ensure that their liability stays at 0, and not much else. AirBnB is offering victims sometimes millions of dollars to settle claims, but they cannot force the victims to do anything. It turns out that as individual agents with free agency, the vic…

everyone's bumhole has a price. whats yours?

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#207

Post by dzhiurgis »

gpapilion wrote: post #153
foobiekr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bay area, I actually know a very surprising (shocking, to me) number of people with au pairs. It would never even have occurred to me that people would do this. But it’s common at least as far as I can tell, among people in their late 40s who’ve made a modest amount of money. I still can’t get my head around it. These are people who have a relatively low asset base (owned house, 401ks, maybe modest taxable bro…

My sister has an au pair in the bay area, and she pays less for child care than I do at a in-home daycare. The au-pair industry is a bit of a scam, bringing labor from low cost countries. They are not paid the same as a nanny or day care worker, often it is half of full time daycare. The idea is that you're providing room and board, and thats part of their comp. Also the quality of care you get from an au pair is mix…

Not much of a scam when there's millions in second or third world country dreaming of such work experience.

We forget safe home + food security is far from given in many places. Let alone other perks of Bay Area.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#208

Post by dorchadas »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #113
dorchadas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about how the things you like out of AirBnB come at the expense of those things for actual residents of the city? Each home that's in AirBnB is one that's not on the long term market for locals, pushing them further and further out for tourists' convenience.

By the same logic, every hotel is a big building that's not an apartment building. But travelers have to stay somewhere...

No, because hotels don't remove existing supply from the market like AirBnB does. Nor at the rate that AirBnB is. It's not like the AirBnB owners are just making all newly built houses into AirBnB, they're actively lowering the supply already in the area, which hotels don't do.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#209

Post by ghaff »

sidlls wrote: post #202
lupire wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, an au pair from overseas provides childcare in exchange for rent and food, and comes on vacations. If you aren't a stay at home parent, you can use some of the money you earn at your job to pay for child care.

Having an au pair puts one firmly above the middle-class. Not necessarily rich, but certainly flirting with "affluent."

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people in the US consider middle class to be anything between barely putting food on the table and flying around in private jets. It's probably fair that people hiring au pairs/nannies are on at least the upper range of middle class income but that doesn't make them "rich" in typical American parlance.

Re: Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away

#210

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

drstewart wrote: post #186
asciimov wrote: post #182

After living next to a house that was on AirBnb for 3 years (rented at least 4 days a week), I want nothing more than the complete outlaw of the company and these types of rentals.

I lived next to a bad neighbor once, I want nothing more than the complete outlaw of home ownership.

You're being downvoted, but in all seriousness, I've lived next to someone who was a nightmare for years. I wish there had been a rotating cast of folks who came through, at least that would have given me a break from her.

Crappy neighbors can exist in many different forms, whether they live there full time or their renters do. I see lots of shit raised regarding bad AirBnB neighbors, but I think they're just an easily identifiable target - there is no big company to blame if you just have a plain shitty neighbor.

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