21–30 of 399 posts
I hate that the author broke out the short skirt rape thing. I don't think someone that leaves their house to strangers while they go out of town for a week is quite as innocent as a rape victim that was targeted for lack of modesty.
How could you, in principle, even tell that it was the bnb'ers who did it? What's to say that they didn't accidentally leave the door unlocked when they left, and someone else broke in?
"They found my coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond and used the discount, along with my Mastercard, to shop online." Are you kidding me? Seriously.
My home was burglarized once and among all the serious stuff that they took they also took: tortillas, salsa, ground beef, and cheddar cheese. I still can't believe that.
In an unrelated story, I happened to be moving out of that apartment the same day. And the very next day my new apartment also got robbed.
This is not the first story like this I have heard about AirBnB. They have just done a good job keeping them hush hush and talking people out of going to the cops. Obviously stories like this are horrible for their reputation and AirBnB have a big incentive to try and take care of issues on their own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My home was burglarized once and among all the serious stuff that they took they also took: tortillas, salsa, ground beef, and cheddar cheese. I still can't believe that.
Yep, when I was burgled, alongside a MacBook, watch and my freakin' backups, which were on a separate drive on a nearby bookcase , they also took some bath soap and a bottle of dessert wine that my gf and I brought back from France specially. I hope they choked on the wine. That said, I also had they keys to brand new Audi on the kitchen counter (I used to be a car journalist and it was a press test car) and they com…
Oh, and they took a bottle of vodka that was 3/4 empty. These scumbags do weird things.
Even if they didn't ransack my place completely, as happened to the unfortunate author - I would be concerned about unintentional damage to my property that I might not discover till too late. Renting out something as private as my primary place of residence just seems like a generally bad idea, especially when I am not around to constantly check in on it. Even if I got to meet them, and they seemed like nice people whats to stop them from leaving without paying if they accidentally broke my TV ?
As the service expands, and becomes more craigslist-y (in terms of audience) I can only see problems like this getting worse, and apart from implementing some kind of guest / host rating system (like ecommerce portals do with sellers) I see no clear solution to the problem.
Operating a property remotely via AirBnB implies all sorts of risks, which makes me think that it might be an unsustainable model, because a black swan event might ruin the property to such extent that it offsets the income made in all the other cases.
AirBnB handles property promotion and property booking on the Internet -- that's fine -- but when it advertised itself it included in the message ways to do property administration (as in rent-your-home-while-away). While this is not connected intricately with their core business, it is the model that some owners assumed by default, without realizing the risks involved or the fact that you are still exposed to one-in-one-hundred unpleasant events.
If they manage to warn about this upfront similar to the way Craiglist does, without losing their brand and their community support, then owners will become aware of those issues and take the necessary protection (by i.e. requesting guarantees/deposits/passports or by using their social network to validate the guests). If they don't, I'm afraid a couple of bad PR articles will be enough to destroy their reputation.
P.S.: I haven't heard of hotels managed remotely; there are some hotels where you check in automatically and you get the keys via some sort of robot system but in the morning there is someone handling the checkout, the cleaning etc. In addition they have your credit card on file, your passport, probably your cam photo when you picked up the keys and the most you can destroy is a hotel room (still a great deal of value but somehow limited and the hotel probably has insurance for it). But automation didn't pick up at scale in the hotel industry. In the current state, it thrives partially because the reception provides the safety-checks and balances needed to prevent and offset these black swan events. I'm not sure the remote administration model is scalable or even manage-able due to this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My home was burglarized once and among all the serious stuff that they took they also took: tortillas, salsa, ground beef, and cheddar cheese. I still can't believe that.
Yep, when I was burgled, alongside a MacBook, watch and my freakin' backups, which were on a separate drive on a nearby bookcase , they also took some bath soap and a bottle of dessert wine that my gf and I brought back from France specially. I hope they choked on the wine. That said, I also had they keys to brand new Audi on the kitchen counter (I used to be a car journalist and it was a press test car) and they com…
(also, envy on the car journalism; being an equipment reviewer for stuff you really love, like cars, guns, scuba gear, computer gear, headphones, etc., would be a really fun paid hobby)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My home was burglarized once and among all the serious stuff that they took they also took: tortillas, salsa, ground beef, and cheddar cheese. I still can't believe that.
The first time my home was robbed (while I was sleeping upstairs), the perpetrators did a whole bunch of bizarre things, like taking a jar of pickles out of the fridge and leaving them on the front porch and taking the laundry detergent from our laundry room and pouring it out in the back yard. In an unrelated story, I happened to be moving out of that apartment the same day. And the very next day my new apartment al…