Doesn't AirBnb require a credit card from the renter? Wouldn't it be straightforward to find the vandalizing renter using their credit card information? I'm sure that I'm missing something here...
No it doesn't. I've booked on AirBNB using paypal.
The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
171–180 of 243 posts
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting point, but I don't see why it would be any different from any of the usual insurances (car, house, etc). A market based on life insurance policies which then incentivizes assassinations is a chilling thought, and strikes me as analogous to your scenario, but I don't think such a thing happens, right?
You might be surprised - see this : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-16/death-derivatives-e... Other examples in the entertainment industry - say there exists insurance that your movie will earn a minimum revenue say 25 million usd. Your competitor simply buys those contracts and then trash talks your movie on the opening night ( by simply paying out bloggers and amateur journas some pittance sum of money ). You…
Reminds of the plot of "The Producers". Sometimes real life can be stranger than fiction..
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#173A related article talks about how David Patterson and the state of NY has made it illegal to rent your house to others a la AirBnB.
If people want to trust others enough to risk this sort of crime, let them. Get the fuck out of my life, State.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#174> I spoke to Airbnb about EJ’s situation. They won’t reimburse her for damages This is bad news. They're going to backtrack on this. The sooner they do it, the better for them politically. I understand the problems of setting a precedent. And there really is no getting around the fact that the hosts do have the final responsibility for screening travelers (and travelers for screening hosts). But rightly or wrongly, t…
I'm reminded of PayPal's early days when fraud was a big problem (and probably costed a lot more than a trashed apartment). If AirBnB handles the risk well, it may well set up a high barrier of entry to other me-too enterprises trying to do the same thing.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
AirBnb is illegal in some of the states (and when states/hotel industry/cities get a wind of this story, it will probably be illegal in all the states), so I doubt any legitimate insurance companies will be handling this affair.
That statement doesn't seem based in logic: it doesn't follow. Lots of things are illegal in different countries, but that doesn't stop legitimate businesses operating in countries where such things are legal. For example, online gambling is illegal in the US, but that doesn't stop legitimate (US-headquartered) credit card companies dealing with online gambling companies in the UK. Also, if it were indeed the case th…
>For example, online gambling is illegal in the US, but that doesn't stop legitimate (US-headquartered) credit card companies dealing with online gambling companies in the UK.
you're talking about the things you don't know about. The US processors can't legally process payments coded for gambling (some gambling operators code the transactions as "groceries", etc... - this is how the things still sometimes can fly under radar )
http://www.egrmagazine.com/news/514743/mastercard-crackdown-... :
"implementation of America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which bans the facilitation of online gambling by payment companies."
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#176"I spoke to Airbnb about EJ’s situation. They won’t reimburse her for damages, they say, and they do not insure against losses. They are helping police track down the person who did this, but their help ends there." ... Fuck. That. I don't care what the long-term implications are, I don't care about precedent, I don't care about policy, I don't care about cost . If my business does this to someone I make it right . E…
I'm sure they wouldn't employ someone who reacts in such a hot-headed manner so quickly. Keep in mind this is the first time this has happened to them, that they've probably never been placed in this sort of situation before, that they most likely exercised a bit of intelligence and consulted a handful of advisers, and that they are trying to take the wisest steps in handling this.
I doubt they're that soulless and cold-hearted; and if you'd just waited a bit, you would've caught Brian's response explaining how he plans on helping her out financially.
You're the one failing on human decency due to your inability to exercise even a shroud of empathy for these guys. They're trying to play it smart while still doing what they can to help.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the problems of setting a precedent. I don't, actually. If the financial industry has taught us one thing, it's that you can insure anything . Let's assume that this is a very rare occurrence and that the total cost of making this right (say, tops $100k?) can be amortized over the profit being generated. I have a hard time understanding how it'd be rocket surgery to get something in place to handle these…
Such an insurance would probably be pretty much impossible. If you get a legit HTBRAI ( house trashed by random asshole insurance ), you've automatically created a market where these HTBRAIs are priced, bought and sold. That means you are essentially gaming burglary. eg. if I buy 100 HTBRAIs in some dicey neighborhood and there's an incident, my contracts automatically go up in value. That's a huge incentive for crim…
you're mistaking the insurance with risk swap contracts, options, CDS and the likes. The insurance is when you own the interest in the property subject to the risk you're insuring against and the limit of the insurance payment is generally the amount of the actual market value/damage/replacement cost to your interest in the property. Thus it is illegal to double(triple...) insure in order to receive double(triple...) insurance payment. I.e. owning a 100K house you can't get 10 insurances and receive 1M when your house is burnt. You also can't get an insurance for your neighbor's house.
What you can, if you find a dealer, is to buy a risk swap contract that will pay you the contracted amount in the case of some house burnt or some earthquake happens or some bonds go south. This isn't an insurance in the sense of regulated insurance business. In stocks it is called options, in mortgage bonds it is CDS.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#178It may just be that Breaking Bad is back in season, but it sounds like she unknowingly rented her house out to be a meth lab with cooks who probably used a bunch of meth in the process. > The death-like smell emanating from the bathroom was frightening (and still is) and the bathroom sink was caked with a crusty yellow substance. Various pairs of my gloves were strewn about
Wow, I only thought grow-ops and meth-labs were limited to actual rented houses, but I guess AirBnB and the like can take it to a whole new level.
Not too likely for a grow house since that takes a while, but meth is quick. If that's what this was, I'm sure it's not the first time (and won't be the last). It's probably a better scam if you don't destroy the place.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#179airbnb has had the advantage of having a mainly "geek" clientele so far. As it expands it's going to get less savory users.
Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
An accomplice renter - or destruction or property - isn't necessary. The owner can just claim theft, at which point it's their word against the renter - "They stole my HDTV!" "There was no HDTV to start with!" At that point Airbnb is put in an impossible situation - they either pay for what may be fraud, or they refuse to compensate what may be actual theft.
I don't get it. They require you to file a police report, just like insurance companies do. In fact, since they know the identity of the renter, they can require that the renter's name appears in the police report, and Airbnb can call the police station themselves to follow up with more information. A claim against the fund necessarily means pressing criminal charges against another individual. So as the owner, it's…
I'll freely admit I don't know that much about insurance fraud. But I suspect the majority of people attempting fraud wouldn't be loyal Airbnb customers, but rather people of questionable ethics who hear that if you go to such-and-such website, and file a claim, you may end up getting some money. If there's any weakness in Airbnb's insurance system, given the scale at which Airbnb wants to operate, people WILL find and exploit it.
It is, of course, very possible to set up insurance so it has few loopholes - insurance companies do it! My point is simply that it's not trivial, and Airbnb would have to invest significant resources to make it work well - while still potentially failing to gain the goodwill they need (few people actually LIKE insurance companies).