Question: Suppose that I use airbnb to rent out my apartment to someone, and that person leaves the door unlocked and a third person goes in and steals my imac. Who takes liability here? Is there something in the airbnb agreement which explicitly waives rights to pursue airbnb for the losses?
Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
241–250 of 510 posts
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#242Airbnb & 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 think all of this crossed their minds. Honestly, I don't think Airbnb wants to leave this person hanging.
If they pay for this incident, they are possibly opening the door for the kinds of schemes people pull on insurance. You know, the whole "rob my place and I'll collect the insurance" schemes.
If Airbnb pays for this incident, they effectively become an insurance company. Maybe what they should do is offer some type of actual insurance package on checkout. This way, they are providing a much needed service and indemnify themselves. Making their customers aware of this possibility rather than pretend it doesn't exist would also help create a safer environment.
EDIT: Let me be clear. I don't honestly think this person should be left high and dry. What I am saying is, to a criminal, the headline "Airbnb pays for all loss and damages", is enough to commit the crime again. We know criminals of this kind bet on low odds, otherwise there wouldn't be so many obvious ones. You might think on the side of a flexible entrepreneur, but criminals aren't looking at how Airbnb is going to look.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're conflating two issues. This isn't about whether or not it's sensible to rent out your living space to a stranger. (I happen to agree with you that it's reckless & irresponsible.) 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 wate…
You're conflating two issues. This isn't about whether or not it's sensible to rent out your living space to a stranger. (I happen to agree with you that it's reckless & irresponsible.)
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.)
Don't these two things taken together imply that no one should use AirBnB except to rent to friends/family (in which case, why would you use AirBnB)?
It seems like they really need to figure out if what happened here is something they can stop from happening or is it a new model for buglaries.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#244Airbnb & 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 couldn't agree more. Deal with the "if I give you a cookie, everyone else will want one too" problem if and when you actually have it. This isn't about business. It's about helping someone who needs help.
This is about business. Airbnb can't be sustained for free. It will cease to exist if it can't make money.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And I see absolutely no reason why it won't happen again. It will happen again. And it was clear that it'd happen at some point. And worse will happen. Shit happens, especially at scale. > I think this problem kills the business model. Nah. Let's do a little back-of-the-napkining: • Let's assume that this is the first incidence of such. • Let's assume that Brian's quoted 2 million nights of rentals is accurate. • A…
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…
OK, so they're an insurance company, just like ebay. And Google isn't really a search company but an advertising one. So what?
Your underlying premise seems to be that a responsible business model isn't viable. Is your argument that therefore companies should be irresponsible where there is profit to be made?
I would argue they become an insurance company, or make it clear that the householder assumes all the risk and makes it possible for them to minimise that risk i.e. by removing the obstacles they provide to investigating the other party.
This incident is suggesting that instead they mislead the customer regarding the risk, deliberately reduce their ability to manage that risk, in order to maximise their profits.
Setting aside the moral and legal aspects of such a strategy, I doubt that's good for business. Who wants to trust their home to a company with a reputation for cutting corners to make money?
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 think all of this crossed their minds. Honestly, I don't think Airbnb wants to leave this person hanging. If they pay for this incident, they are possibly opening the door for the kinds of schemes people pull on insurance. You know, the whole "rob my place and I'll collect the insurance" schemes. If Airbnb pays for this incident, they effectively become an insurance company. Maybe what they should do is offer some…
ef that. take care of your customers or before you know it, you won't have any.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#247Airbnb & 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…
6) Say you're sorry. Not because you caused this, but because a bad thing happened to a customer and it wasn't prevented and you weren't prepared.
Saying that you're sorry doesn't mean it was your fault or even have legal liability (which they might), it just means that you have a heart.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#248Airbnb & 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…
As someone who has spent a lot of time trying to "make it right" for the customer, I completely agree. They must absolutely take care of this RIGHT NOW. And, in a personal, non-public way. If they try to make any more public statements about what they are doing, it will just look flat out like a publicity stunt.
This is obviously the best and only possible customer service and goodwill move at this point (to me anyway). Every single day that this conversation continues to happen they are going to become less trustworthy.
I do have one adjustment. They need to make it clear that this was an obvious hole in their model and while they take care of this user, this is a unique case and immediately going forward offer insurance as an add on option.
I'm certain there must be a third party insurance partner out there who would absolutely love this business.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
HN could easily automatically use the title of the submitted article, it doesn't for the purpose of allowing more relevant titles to be written for the HN audience. The submitted title accurately portrayed the story as linked to without significant editorializing. There was a clear conflict of interest in YC modifying the title to be one more favourable to one of their portfolio companies. This is exactly the kind of…
YC does not hide the fact that HN is a tool for their needs. They have made no claims to be an unbiased news source so we can't really hold them to that standard.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#250Airbnb & 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…
we are standing by, and we just contacted her again telling her that we will do whatever we can to help.
The fact that it takes her calling you out in front of what amounts to the entire tech community to get you to act is appalling and speaks very poorly about how you value your customers.
You've known about this for five weeks and the best you've come up with is to just stand by and wait?