Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

Sorry, but I've seen no proof of either and I doubt that you have. Even if AirBnB has seen the damage as reported by the host and the SFPD have a person in custody, what we have is the alleged destruction of property and alleged identity theft. Alleged, not proven.

> You know nothing about her.

Exactly, but what I do know is that there's a person who has made use of her blog three times this year: 1/22, 6/29 and 7/28. Two of those posts relate to AirBnB, drawing attention to the intense emotional trauma she's currently suffering and inattention and callousness that AirBnB is displaying towards her situation. Prior to that, we have an entry from 8/3/10. Nothing much to go by in order to assess who this person was prior to the AirBnB incident. Except we do have a blogroll link for "My year of getting published" dated one month ago. How odd.

Another thing that we have, and I'm drawing my own conclusions here, is the perfect recipe to get noticed in a sea-full of nerds: single vulnerable white female, lives alone in SF, violated by the actions of an unknown person or persons and who is crying out for help, appealing to the crowd who'll most like empathize with her: nerdy single guys who'd jump at the chance to put on their cape and save the day. It's too perfect of a recipe to ignore.

So what I'm saying is that she should get herself a lawyer, today, and have them handle her case and public relations going forward, because we all know that she's going to sue AirBnB and due to the amount of buzz she's been generating on the Twitters, my guess is that many a TV producer has been tasked with tracking her down for an interview. We'll see how that plays out.

If it took Chesky a whole month to address these issues of hers and implement changes in the organization to address them and those issues were real and valid, then shame on him, but something tells me that they may have expected this problem to go away.

I'm not trying to draw and links between this woman's complaint and those of the Groupon cafe owner, but it sees to me that, as always, people are engaging in activities whose potential consequences they know nothing about and in response they take to the web to generate outrage in support of their situation, but in those cases that I'm aware of, the stories start to unravel once they undergo any scrutiny beyond reading a blog post or two.

And if I'm still able to gauge public opinion correctly amongst the normals, most are going assume that you get what you deserve for handing the keys to your apartment to a total stranger for a whole week. It's something that is simply not done in the real world.

Marketplaces live on liquidity, and lack of confidence kills liquidity, so it's existential crisis time.

Telling you're contacting her and AirBnb doubled customer staff won't just solve everything.

Always remember you're dealing with people, not just nicknames on internet (it's more than a series of tubes). Stop buzzwords and start acting like real people in real world.

Renting one's own living space to someone sight unseen is absurdly naive. It is incumbent upon the owner of the property to protect his own. Hotels do it, B&Bs do it, but EJ did not. That is sheer stupidity. There should have been someone to meet the renter and to monitor their stay.

The relationships here are business relationships and there are certain minimal precautions one should take. EJ took none. I don't believe she is justified in insisting that Airbnb fix everything. She learned a lesson (and luckily, so did many others vicariously). A normal person would stand up, clean up and learn. A nutball would get a lawyer (and eventually lose).

Also, doesn't she have insurance? Although I would imagine that most policies would not cover renting one's dwelling to a complete stranger sight unseen without a special rider ("hotel insurance" maybe).

Finally EJ might look at her property's deed restrictions. Is she allowed to run a business at her residence? Is she allowed to rent her home? Is she required by the state or city to to pay a "hotel tax", a "business registration fee", etc.? EJ may be in violation of any number of municipal and state laws.

Show the world your integrity and make this right.