Is it possible that she made the story up?
Not at this point, no.
Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
311–320 of 510 posts
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 death then a bunch more unemployed people would be hitting the streets. Well, how bad is bad PR? Their service has this major flaw that your home can get royally trashed & there is no backup. If they let this stand AS-IS, all it's going to take i…
If Honda advertised that their cars were safe, but in some cases under normal operation their cars had catastrophic failure despite the owner not doing anything out of the ordinary, then yes, Honda would have a major issue on their hands. If you look at the advertising for cars, it's always along the lines of safer instead of safe . A LOT of lawyer-hours went into protecting them from exactly this scenario.
But recall the Toyota "brakes not working" debacle from a year ago. Even if there are no assurances of safety in the marketing, people expect their cars to be safe under normal conditions. Breaking that implicit contract is still very expensive in both PR and money.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#313Airbnb & 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…
1. Get a new place for EJ. Furnish it fully. Pay for everything. They should definitely be doing better, but I think this particular advice is wrong. They can't buy a new house for everyone whose home gets vandalized. And any kind of "policy" would make this incident seem more likely to happen in the future, so no one would use the service. Irrational, but people aren't good at thinking about small odds (about 10 mil…
I would change it to:
1. Get a temporary place for EJ. Pay for her stay for 6 months, so she can rent/sell/fix her place. When she moves to her new residence, furnish it fully.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#314Airbnb & 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…
Absolutely actionable advice for Airbnb.
Screw business, if this happened to my clients, I would go spend a week with her, try and help restore her life back, be on the phone for her with credit agencies, police, lawyers, anyone.
Isn't that the reason why we start companies? To make lives of others better? Do you need better examples to drop your stuff and go help others?
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#315Fuck this shit. This is like when a Facebook user gets contacted by a raper using it; this is like when a Gmail account gets completly deleted. Shit happens, and it will continue to happen to someone from time to time, but one case between thousands should not damage so much a single company.
BTW She is making more damage to the AirBnB employees (and their families) than the raiders did to her.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#316I'm slightly concerned that AirBNB are spinning this rather than just sorting stuff out. Veiled threats to the victim, whilst spreading incorrect stories are a concerning development in an already distressing case. If the guy in custody is the guy responsible, why are AirBNB and EJ not in sync? This smells massively of a total PR disaster for AirBNB, whatever is said about compensation or no, threatening victims, or telling them to 'limit access to their blog' is as naive as it is stupid - how does the internet usually react to 'limiting access'?
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#317The people who did this are horrible, and Airbnb definitely has areas they could improve their process.
That said, I'm more shocked at "EJ's" naivety and passing of all responsibility on Airbnb. You're renting your place out to complete strangers, not only that, you're leaving all of your valuables there with them. You don't know their real (or the fake one they stole) name until you're already aboard an outbound plane?! That is insanity to me.
If a person NEEDS Craigslist-style warnings about being careful, that person should probably not rent their place out on Airbnb. This is just very poor judgement on her part.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#318Airbnb & 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…
Couldn't agree more, and if you look at the history of horrific moments for companies and brands these incidents become turning points for the companies involved.
This is rapidly spinning from a Tylenol crisis to a Ford / Firestone crisis. This could have been a positive moment for the company as the FT had a front page article about AirBNB making the situation right. However, AirBNB failed to get infront of the story and now they are in the FT in a very negative light.
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#319Airbnb & 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've just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb
has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the
beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff,
and do whatever else she wanted.
The story Arrington wrote yesterday about Airbnb not offering to help was bullshit. He asked a company spokesman what Airbnb was doing to help her. The spokesman, who'd been told by their lawyers that he couldn't go into detail about that because of the precedent said "I can't comment on that." So Arrington, in typical Arrington fashion said "Well, unless you tell me I'm going to write that you're not willing to do anything for her." And he did. Really not cool.
I've talked to the Airbnb guys and they are already doing everything they could be doing to help this woman.
Even if you don't believe they are nice guys (which they are, among the nicest of all the people we've funded), do you really think they are so dumb that they don't realize it's not worth the bad PR to save money and effort in this situation?
Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
AirBnB are on record saying one of their principles is that people are generally good. They have to believe this at some level or else their entire business model would be untenable. They cannot on one side claim that AirBnB is a safe proposition because most people are good and on the other refuse to take care of their customers because of the one-in-a-million who might cheat them.
Generally being the key word there. Even they recognize that there are outliers within their belief system. The real question is what their response is to an encounter with an outlier. If it is "Sorry, you're SOL". then this raises a huge red flag to the consumer. Now they're more aware of the stakes of the bet.
People are less likely to gamble once they have more understanding of the odds. AirBnB needs to make sure they mitigate "worst case scenarios" if they want to maintain a strong customer base.