Give me a frigging break!
I don't care what the long-term implications are
Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. They have responsibilities to investors, employees, and other users—they’re (rightly) making a decision with those stakeholders in mind, not the woman who had her house ruined.
I don't care about cost
Again, clearly you’re not cut out to run a business if you don’t care about cost.
If my business does this to someone I make it right.
Airbnb didn’t do this to her. The people who did it to her did it to her. Airbnb provides a marketplace for these interactions to occur—nothing more. The users cannot abdicate their personal responsibility not to use the service carelessly. I mean, we’re talking about letting people into your home here.
Is a car manufacturer liable when a driver runs over a jaywalker because they were texting on their phone? No. Is the phone manufacturer liable? No. Should I be sued when I recommend my accountant to my friend and the accountant defrauds him? No. Should Craigslist be liable if precisely the same thing happened through Craigslist? No.
Anything less is simple villainy.
This is a test of human decency.
Calling this villainy is one of the most hyperbolic statements I’ve heard in living memory. So is declaring, as if it were agreed upon fact, that Airbnb is evil if they don’t reimburse her.
If you are going to enjoy the rewards of your business, you have a moral obligation to ensure that you make things right when that business harms someone else.
If your company actually does something to somebody, then sure—but not when you’re company doesn’t. Airbnb didn’t do anything to her: she let a stranger into her house for a week without thinking about it! I’m not blaming the victim, I’m blaming the people who did it to her—but I’m certainly not blaming the middleman.
What happened to this girl sucks, but your post is overly emotional and absurd. It’s not Airbnb’s moral responsibility to do anything about this. They may choose to from a pragmatically-motivated customer relations, reputation, and corporate image standpoint—and sure, it would be an all-around charitable and nice thing to do—but I completely disagree with the claim that they have any moral responsibility to do so. Airbnb can do whatever they damn well please and what they believe is in the best interests of their business.
What I think is indecent is creating an artificially high and illogical holier-than-thou moral high ground divorced from the realities of running a $1B business that you then use to drum up a public crucifixion of a company that doesn’t live up to said standard.