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Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com

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Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#141

Post by edw519 »

Airbnb & YC, just fix this please:

1. Get a new place for EJ. Furnish it fully. Pay for everything.

2. Help her restore her virtual identity. Use any resources at your considerable disposal.

3. Help her find her irreplaceable stuff. A few private detectives and a small team of scouters can make more progress in 2 weeks that the SFPD can make in a lifetime. Publish pictures of her grandmother's jewelry to enlist a giant army of spotters.

4. Hire her and pay her well (perhaps even with equity). She is obviously an excellent writer and an empathetic persona. But more importantly, she is an expert in addressing what is clearly the weakest link in your business model's chain.

5. Fuck the business models, projections, and funding rounds and just "do the right thing".

This appears to be a royal fuck-up. But nothing compared to the lost goodwill for Airbnb, YC, the startup community, and the "new order" in general. Many of us had thought that you all had deprecated the era of Ford Pinto thinking. Current data appears to be to the contrary.

Turn this lemon into lemonade before the window closes. Tick. Tick. Tick.

[EDIT: This has nothing to do with assigning blame; this incident was clearly an outlier and nobody's fault (except the obvious bad guys). And it has nothing to do with solving this class of problem. All I'm saying is that fixing this instance will lead to solving this class. It presents an excellent opportunity to fix things in a way that never could have been imagined before. Airbnb has a compelling business proposition with an obvious Achilles heel. This unfortunate situation presents an excellent opportunity to address that weakness head on. But only with a 179 degree change in thinking. I don't know what the ultimate solution to this problem is, but now is clearly the time for Airbnb to get moving on it...]

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#142

Post by ericelias »

Upon reading the article about TaskRabbit, I think Airbnb can apply the same type of checks:

"Since many common tasks are carried out in the senders’ homes, runners are vetted through a three-step process..

which starts with an application form and progresses to an automated phone or video interview that poses a series of questions designed to weed out deadbeats.

Finally, TaskRabbit pays the database giant Acxiom to perform a federal criminal background check on each prospective worker."

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_taskrabbit/

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#143

Post by watty »

Awful customer service and PR failure on Airbnb's part, they should be ashamed. Not only did they NOT do anything to help this poor woman but they lied about it for positive PR and asked her to remove/edit the blog? Wow, that's about as low as it gets.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#144

Post by chegra »

Hmm... At this point, AirBnB has gone beyond the point of reconciliation with this EJ. Either she is lying or AirBnB is lying.

The onus is on AirBnB to supply evidence to the contrary of what EJ has to say. They have more at stake. Their brand is now blowing in the wind along with the goodwill they have built up.

What we have so far is that you have indeed offer to help financially. What we don't have is evidence to support you did or you did and she turn down the offers. Appropriate receipts would easily discredit her. Any other response short of supplying document would only discredit AirBnB.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#145

Post by ry0ohki »

va_coder wrote: post #137
g123g wrote: post #76

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 fund…

The only reason I can think of for the founders behaviour is that this kind situation may happen more often than you would think and the founders don't have the cycles to appropriately handle each one.

That's what I was thinking, they didn't understand the gravity of this case because I imagine at AirBnB volume, this must happen at least once a day somewhere.

That said, from a customer support point of view, you never know which negative customer experiences are going to blow up so it's important that every customer leave with some level of satisfaction (or at least a payoff and a signed contract if you want to be shady!)

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#146

Post by Omnipresent »

Airbnb should look at,this situation as an opporrunity to turn bad publicity into a good one. Some bucks taken out from huge funding rounds and spent towards ej would go a long long way. This should also be combined with better identity measures implemented to avoid airbnb from having to cover cost of any more cases like these.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#147

Post by lyudmil »

yasmine wrote: post #18
alnayyir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 sorry, but how could you be surprised? If the facts are as laid out in the post, he doesn't always care about his customers enough. That wouldn't be opinion, but objectively true. I don't see any room for surprise here, especially given that most people here don't personally know Mr. Chesky and are likely more even-handed in their assessment than you are.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#148

Post by nickolai »

robtoo wrote: post #120

From a comment on an earlier post by Brian Chesky: We've created a marketplace built on trust, transparency and authenticity within our community, and we hold the safety of our community members as our highest priority. I'm really not sure how he can reconcile that comment with the actions described in this post.

Thats just generic PR text. Almost boilerplate.

Isnt your BS-detector off the charts when reading 'trust' 'transparency' 'community' and 'highest priority' all in one sentence?

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#149

Post by watty »

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…

3) Get some customer service (seems like anything would be better than what they currently have)
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