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Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

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Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#161

Post by scott_s »

edw519 wrote: post #141

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 gia…

I get exactly what you're saying, but what about point 6? What do you do when this happens again? And I see absolutely no reason why it won't happen again.

Let me put it another way: I think this problem kills the business model. What they currently do is not sustainable. They can't swoop in and replace everything for every person who is a victim of a scheme like this with their current model. If that becomes their strategy, then they're really an insurance agency. It's not unprecedented, ebay and PayPal spend most of their resources doing fraud detection. But it will completely change what AirBNB is.

So, yeah, in this case, I think what you suggest is probably best. But they have to change their company to address this problem, even if what comes out the other side is not the company as it is today.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#162

Post by mattdeboard »

tribeofone wrote: post #153
edw519 wrote: post #141

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 gia…

How is this their fault? Your comments make no sense, because someone did not understand the inherent risks of using a service does not make it AirBnB's fault. "How could this happen? Why did this happen? Despite it not being in New York... I LOVED my apartment nonetheless. It was my own private retreat, my sunny, bright, cozy loft that I would melt into on those rare occasions when I wasn't traveling. The space was…

This is ridiculously short sighted. It is AirBnB's commercial interest -- if nothing else -- to make this issue go away. Thinking like this is what keeps PR people in business.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#163

Post by dlss »

tribeofone wrote: post #153
edw519 wrote: post #141

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 gia…

How is this their fault? Your comments make no sense, because someone did not understand the inherent risks of using a service does not make it AirBnB's fault. "How could this happen? Why did this happen? Despite it not being in New York... I LOVED my apartment nonetheless. It was my own private retreat, my sunny, bright, cozy loft that I would melt into on those rare occasions when I wasn't traveling. The space was…

> because someone did not understand the inherent risks of using a service does not make it AirBnB's fault.

If these are the risks then almost no one should be an AirBnB landlord. YC companies aren't supposed to profit by tricking people into making financial mistakes.

AirBnB needs to patch their business model (perhaps adding a $x insurance fee for both renter and buyer to compensate future victims), and then add prevention features:

- verify that landlords actually own what they are putting up for rent (postcard + pin?)

- verify that renters are who they say they are (billing info + billing phone verification for first time customers?)

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#164

Post by tpatke »

ig1 wrote: post #160
tpatke wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why YC should be getting blamed here? I give them a lot of credit as it appears that hacker news broke this story. If there was anything sinister going on I think they could have just deleted the story. Airbnb is another matter. Asking the blogger to remove the post sounds like such a bone-headed move that I have trouble believing it is true. Airbnb has lost all credibility in my book.

It was a bit tacky that YC removed AirBnB's name from the title of the original story.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#165

Post by temphn »

ColinWright wrote: post #118
temphn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: bring on the downvotes! That's right, downvote a difference of opinion, and forget about logical or reasoned counterargument. Next time the internet lynch mob will come for your startup; hope that someone takes your side when they do. ---- Don't you think the CEO has to worry about the people he's paying? Who knows what their burn rate is; that funding could have been a life or death event, and in the event of…

Putting aside the questions of blame, and the eventual intent of the individual. Putting aside the question of culpability, and whether anyone acted inappropriately. Thinking about this entirely from the perspective of AirBnB. Doing what a company is supposed to do, by law, and considering only the shareholders. Given what they've done, do you think it's the best thing to have done to give the company the best chance…

> I think your view is common enough, and you had the courage to say it out loud.

Thanks, I guess.

Philosophical: seems to me that the tone of HN has shifted. Not in the standard way, it's not less intelligent per se. Rather, there is a greater proportion of big-co employees, academics, and college students. People without profit/loss responsibility, who don't deal directly with customers, who've never been through a media firestorm like what AirBnB is experiencing now.

While it's usually hard to pinpoint any particular change, it's safe to say the tenor of this thread would be very different if this was still Startup News.

YC alums need not say AirBnB has handled this well (i concur that the mere existence of this thread shows that they made objective errors, though in my opinion not normative ones). But they would not be so quick to trash the startup.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#166

Post by sp332 »

ColinWright wrote: post #118
temphn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: bring on the downvotes! That's right, downvote a difference of opinion, and forget about logical or reasoned counterargument. Next time the internet lynch mob will come for your startup; hope that someone takes your side when they do. ---- Don't you think the CEO has to worry about the people he's paying? Who knows what their burn rate is; that funding could have been a life or death event, and in the event of…

Putting aside the questions of blame, and the eventual intent of the individual. Putting aside the question of culpability, and whether anyone acted inappropriately. Thinking about this entirely from the perspective of AirBnB. Doing what a company is supposed to do, by law, and considering only the shareholders. Given what they've done, do you think it's the best thing to have done to give the company the best chance…

Considering the interests of the shareholders means that, if the shareholders want Airbnb to buy her a new house, they should buy her a new house. "Interests" doesn't always mean "more money."

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#167

Post by krschultz »

jsavimbi wrote: post #124

tl;dr: Devil's Advocate. This is not going to be very popular, but I'm just going to go on the record and say that this whole story may be a hoax. And I highlight "maybe". What we have here are two blog posts from someone we know nothing about who epitomizes a concentration of fears (woman, home, identity, violation) and manages, in two blog posts over the past seven months to bring about a PR nightmare for AirBnB. I…

That doesn't really make any sense. If it was a hoax, AirBnB would have come out and said that in their TC post. Instead they came out and said effectively 'yes, this happened, we're fixing it'. The victim is now disagreeing with AirBnB's assertion that they are fixing it.

Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. So you are basically arguing that she trashed her own house and committed the crime of filing a false police report in an all out effort to crush AirBnB. Occam's Razor tells me the odds of that being the true angle here are slim.

As for your comments 'someone we know nothing about' and 'talented writer with no writing history'. You know nothing about her. You have never seen her writing before. But why should you know a random stranger? And most writers are not bloggers. The internet is not the universe. I've won a bunch of awards for my fiction writing, yet you probably can not find more than my HN posts online from me. Believe it or not, some things exist out there that Google can't find.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#168

Post by cubicle67 »

brianchesky wrote: post #151

Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO) here. My heart goes out to our host. My co-founder has contacted her multiple times, as recently as last night, and we have again offered to help her in any way that she needs. We will continue to make ourselves available to her to do whatever she asks of us in this time of need. We have encouraged her to reach us so that we can help her through this, and we are standing by.

ok, so without using wank words, can you describe exactly what you've done to help her in the last five weeks? What you plan on doing in the future doesn't count

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#169

Post by rmc »

farrel wrote: post #58
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…

It's not just the issue of accurate information. Hotels have a security infrastructure in place and the rooms are checked regularly. Had the criminals who did this tried it in a hotel there is a very good chance they would have been arrested straight away. They also have an agreement with the guest that the guest is liable for damages.

It's not just the issue of accurate information. Hotels have a security infrastructure in place and the rooms are checked regularly.

And they have much much less to lose if you trash the room. Hotel rooms aren't filled with a person's prized possesions.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#170

Post by rmc »

learc83 wrote: post #140

My first thought is that you'd might actually have a higher chance of having someone trash your house if you leave it unoccupied for week vs. letting someone rent it on Airbnb.

If you leave it unoccupied for a week and it gets trashed you can probably claim from your insurance company. If you rent it out to a randomer online, the insurance company probably won't cover any damages.
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