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Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

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Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#71

Post by muhfuhkuh »

It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure. But the answers are simple, although it's going to be a real pain for AirBnB's "frictionless" transaction model.

1) You MUST put down a CREDIT CARD. Not a bank card, not a debit card, not a prepaid card. No plasticky no rentee. A major credit card to make a transaction. No bitcoin, no cash, no BS. Airbnb then puts a hold equal to transaction cost + 20% for the duration of the stay. That 20% can be put toward insurance on both ends, paid out when satisfactory closeout of the transaction on both ends occurs. If renters balk at the 20% hold, they shouldn't be on vacation. If owners balk at the "hold" instead of cash in hand, they can take their business to craigslist or wherever.

2) AirBnB must then become an arbitrator, a mediator, a guarantor, and/or (unless they want to outsource this) an insurer.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#72

Post by pontifier »

It seems like easy money, but being a landlord is a crummy business to be in. I haven't had an experience quite this bad, but we screen our tenants, don't keep our own valuables where they can get them, and take a large deposit up front. We have still had places trashed and had to pay repairs of well over $10k to return them to rentable condition when someone moves out...

Luckily we have much of the tenants information to try to collect from them. Un-luckily we can almost never collect damages from these types of people. They will quit their job to not have an income we can garnish.

You don't want to be a landlord. I don't want to be a landlord.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#73

Post by hooande »

alnayyir wrote: post #9
pseudonym wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Once our host’s safety was secured, our attention moved to further strengthening our system. In the context of this article, this sentence from their PR statement takes on a new and depressing overtone-- that of "Okay, we think the guy is arrested, so you're fine, right? We don't need to pay attention to you anymore, right? By the way, can you take down that blog post now?"

I don't like to be vulgar, particularly on HN, but it really needs to be asked. Is anyone here really all that surprised Chesky is a douche?

Brian Chesky is not a douche. Whatever he did regarding this situation, he did with one billion dollars worth of pressure on him. If he made some kind of mistake, then it was much more likely due to the pressure of the moment than a flaw in his character.

He's actually one of the few truly good people that I've ever met. When I read the other day that he had reached out to the woman with support and money, I figured the issue was settled. I'm sure that he and the entire AirBnB team feel horrible about this and are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it go away.

You, indeed, should not have been vulgar. Particularly here on hn.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#75

Post by moonlighter »

pseudonym wrote: post #52
cageface wrote: post #41

In our rush to disintermediate old industries we may discover that some of those intermediaries are there for a reason.

What I don't get is how AirBnB vets the people leasing in the first place. I have to get a background check when I get a job, when I rent an apartment...does AirBnB really just let people sign up under pseudonyms without doing any one-time identity or background checks? I realize a background check may not have helped at all in this situation, and I don't know how much personal info AirBnB has stored on the guy that…

I'm not familiar with how the booking on airbnb exactly works, but given the fact that they shield both parties from each other throughout most of the process, shouldn't airbnb have some information* about the fraudulent party involved here? Email address? IP address from their logs? Phone number ? Credit card? Anything to assist to get a hold of the perpetrators...

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#76

Post by g123g »

It is becoming so typical of the modern society to try to put spin on everything for our own narrow benefit rather than trying to get to the root cause and fix it.

This is another glaring example of it. A month after such a gruesome incident, nothing at all has been done by AirBnB. But they have gone out of their way in trying to put a positive spin on this whole sordid episode in order to protect their precious funding. When will somebody from AirBnB step up and say that we take responsibility for what happened and will do whatever it takes to help the victim and fix the system so that something like this does not happen again rather than wasting their efforts in trying to put a positive twist to this story? Doing such a thing will help them much more in the longer term than trying to simply sweep this story under the carpet.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#77

Post by hooande »

alnayyir wrote: post #26
yasmine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Brian personally and he is one of the nicest persons I've worked with in the valley. He also sincerely cares about his customers. I am surprised that anyone would think of him in that way.

I'm making this analogy extreme for the sake of clarity not because I think it's legitimately comparable: Charles Manson's friends and followers were pretty fond of him too. Leadership of a company tends to attract rather extreme personalities in all kinds of directions. One of the tendencies that is extremely common is sociopathy. Sociopathy is usually found is charismatic, likable people, but those people don't act…

Let me clear this up for you: Brian Chesky is not a sociopath.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#78

Post by tinkerer »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #71

It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure. But the answers are simple, although it's going to be a real pain for AirBnB's "frictionless" transaction model. 1) You MUST put down a CREDIT CARD. Not a bank card, not a debit card, not a prepaid card. No plasticky no rentee. A major credit card to make a transaction. No bitcoin, no cash, no BS. Airbnb then puts a hold equal to transaction cost + 20% for the duration of the…

now that sounds like a service that i would actually use.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#79

Post by [deleted] »

karlhiggins wrote: post #20

What's telling about this whole story is how Airbnb tried to "manage" her. I thought the whole point of being a startup is you don't need to fall in line with the dehumanizing bullshit that you find in big corporations. That's why I'm in a startup at least and it works for me on that level. But there's such a stench of insincerity about the Airbnb approach that I will never use their site now.

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#80

Post by pseudonym »

moonlighter wrote: post #75
pseudonym wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is how AirBnB vets the people leasing in the first place. I have to get a background check when I get a job, when I rent an apartment...does AirBnB really just let people sign up under pseudonyms without doing any one-time identity or background checks? I realize a background check may not have helped at all in this situation, and I don't know how much personal info AirBnB has stored on the guy that…

I'm not familiar with how the booking on airbnb exactly works, but given the fact that they shield both parties from each other throughout most of the process, shouldn't airbnb have some information* about the fraudulent party involved here? Email address? IP address from their logs? Phone number ? Credit card? Anything to assist to get a hold of the perpetrators...

I'd think so, assuming they're not blatantly lying about the police "having a suspect in custody" (I really, really, really hope they're not lying about that, just for the sake of how spectacularly stupid that would be.)
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