231–240 of 510 posts
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…
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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 pr…
Translation: I'm big enough to put my apartment for rent though this great, cheap service and try and profit from it and because so if ANYTHING AT ALL HAPPENS that I don't like, even if I may have possibly know or should have thought about it or not, because I'm a big girl but not that big, you know, then I should be able to sue because its really not my fault and if this does happen its clear that I was either tricked or deceived, because I'm pretty smart.
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…
In all my years working in health care as an ER and trauma nurse, I learned one thing: Do the right thing for the patient. If the doctor is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient. If the hospital is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient. If a police officer is doing the wrong thing... do the right thing for the patient. The ultimate policy is... Do the right thing for the patient. AirBnb.…
I really hope they do the right thing.
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we are standing by, and we just contacted her again telling her that we will do whatever we can to help.
A tip for you: I work in support, and weasel words are the substance of our being. You tell the customer "Do A, B, and C, and that should get you up and running". They don't really hear the 'should', but it needs to be there because computers are fickle and anything can go wrong. In short, I guess I'm saying I'm a bit more practised at recognising weasel words for what they are - and in this situation, it's not reall…
They must have totally messed this up for her to write a rebuttal post like that. This post absolutely torn apart all positive points from Chesky's response. I just still can't believe airbnb didnt see this coming, and stomp on the problem as hard as they can to get EJ on their side. If everything she said is true here, airbnb truly screwed up and deserve the negative PR coming their way. Isn't this why you give up e…
I guess there are three options: 1) dive in help her, pay up make it all good get good PR. BUT if they are thinking that this is going to be a common problem and going to happen a lot then they may be making rod for their own backs… or 2) Ride the storm - which again you would only do if you thought this was going to be an ongoing issue or 3) they are idiots and have no idea how to handle PR (just like I wouldn't hir…
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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.
I disagree, this is just a case of HYPER OMG!! This will not effect AirBnB business, investment, popularity or success even if it hits the front page of FT. You dont rent out your principal residence to someone you don't know and found on the net. Duh.
The issue isn't even whether or not AirBnB is responsible for what happened or not. (I happen to agree with you here as well that AirBnB is not legally or morally responsible.)
The issue is that right now AirBnB's blood is in the water. The media sharks are starting to frenzy. They need to take immediate remedial action in a very public way that makes it clear in no uncertain terms that they share the moral high ground with the victim.
This isn't about real culpability. It's about image and brand management. But, as I've said before, that is my perspective as a former PR & marketing guy.
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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.
I disagree, this is just a case of HYPER OMG!! This will not effect AirBnB business, investment, popularity or success even if it hits the front page of FT. You dont rent out your principal residence to someone you don't know and found on the net. Duh.
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It should be noted that when they changed that story title, they were changing it to the actual title of the blog posting. That is pretty standard practice here, to prevent editorializing via the title. Although, I can see how it would come across wrong in this case.
Thank you for pointing this out. The title was changed from "AirBnB: Crimes committed against a host" to "Violated: A traveler's lost faith, a difficult lesson learned" As you noted, this matches the title of the story on the blog. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."
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Once you do this as a matter of policy, you are open to fraud. Now you have to spend a significant amount of your resources on fraud detection - perhaps most of them. That's what I mean by they become an insurance company; their day-to-day operation would be indistinguishable fromt that of an insurance company. Both ebay and PayPay went through this, and that's what they spend most of their time doing. But ebay and P…
Insurance (and by extension dealing with insurance fraud) for this sort of thing is a solved problem. They don't need to do it in house. They just pick up a policy from one of the institutional insurers and pass on the cost with a markup. Edit: To clarify, by "this sort of thing" I don't mean "Airbnb like businesses". There's nothing particularly novel about insuring homes, their contents or vacation rentals. An inst…