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Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com

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Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#371

Post by foxit »

pg wrote: post #319
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'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…

Okay, look. As comments on TechCrunch have stated, MAJOR crisis coaching/high-level PR needs to be hired and step in, stat. This is just getting worse and worse.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#372

Post by llambda »

chc wrote: post #367
llambda wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I think this goes a long way towards confirming suspicions some people have held since the beginning of the debacle, namely that the victim here is blowing things out of proportion in an…

You're using pg's (apparently) second-hand information to discredit EJ's account of her experience. What proof do you have that EJ is misrepresenting anything? At best, this is a case of he-said-she-said. But given pg and EJ's positions relative to the situation here, it seems more likely to me that pg has been misinformed than that EJ is egregiously lying. (I admit the latter is possible , but you seem to be taking…

Paul Graham would have a lot to lose by making such a broad, unfounded statement...unless of course that's what he's been told and has good reason to believe it's correct. If so, why should we disbelieve the pg and Airbnb account? Simply because EJ's is loaded with emotional appeal? I don't see how a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb?

I believe that most of her story is true (in the first blog post she even states that Airbnb has been incredibly helpful[1]; in fact this seems to corroborate pg's statement, they offered her financial support), that it was very traumatic for her, but what I don't believe is that pg and Airbnb are lying, that Airbnb has effectively made no attempt to help her; because they could have tried and she might have refused and now she's realized that the whole Internet is up in arms and on her side...so she can frame it however she likes, right or wrong. But I'm still inclined to believe pg would not spread disinformation; why should he? I think the man is much smarter than you're giving him credit for...

[1] http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html "I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here to emphasize that the customer service team at airbnb.com has been wonderful, giving this crime their full attention. They have called often, expressing empathy, support, and genuine concern for my welfare. They have offered to help me recover emotionally and financially, and are working with SFPD to track down these criminals."

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#373

Post by dlss »

ajju wrote: post #364
dlss wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. She explained that in her blog post because she wanted us to actually understand what is going on. To you it might not matter as long as a suspect is in jail, but I'm sure that having an investigation paused while you wait on neighboring jurisdictions feels very different than the way you'd expect reading what AirBnB said: "a suspect is now in custody, and our information will now become important evidence"

It seems very likely to me that in the information they gave us, AirBnB was just relaying the information the police gave them. It's very likely the police told AirBNB to give them all the evidence they had so they could use it to prosecute the suspect they had in custody. If I were the victim, I would not be satisfied until the perp got prosecuted for my crime either, but this pause in investigating this crime to pu…

On its own it could have been innocent, but there are too many of these too close together in the press release to believe that

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#374

Post by PotatoEngineer »

llambda wrote: post #348
pg wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. I think this goes a long way towards confirming suspicions some people have held since the beginning of the debacle, namely that the victim here is blowing things out of proportion in an…

I haven't downvoted, but I suspect the "she could have been broken into without AirBnB's influence anyway" is the anger-inducing part of your comment. I certainly don't like it.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#375

Post by jen_mcfadden »

pg wrote: post #319
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'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…

This is another example of Arrington's increasingly low-grade "journalistic" standards. I wonder whether there are slander laws for sins of omission. Regardless, this, along with other recent infractions (like the @catarina bs), makes me want to check TC completely off my daily reading list. It is like the TMZ of the tech world.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#376

Post by jonnathanson »

ellyagg wrote: post #341
dlss wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, I don't see how this answers estel's question. Is she crazy? Did she stop checking email, SMS, and phone? (or maybe change number post break in?) Did you misinterpret what the AirBnB guys told you? How can these two drastically different accounts make sense together? (edit: if you only read the TC coverage, the link you are replying to is EJ's account)

While I greatly sympathized with her plight originally, I do note that she is somewhat disingenuous in her post today. For example, she quotes AirBnB as saying someone is in custody and then says local officials have not contacted her saying that's the case, implying that this somehow invalidates their claim. But then she goes on to show detailed knowledge of someone being in custody, even though they haven't been ch…

Someone's not telling us the whole story, and it's unclear whether that someone is the company or EJ. (Or maybe even the police).

Whatever the case, Airbnb increases its PR risk the more people it puts in contact with EJ. It should have assigned one person to talk to her, so as to keep the story straight and maintain a consistent line of communication with EJ. And that person should have been a founder / C-level exec from the get go.

You could argue that a co-founder's time, especially in the middle of a giant financing round, makes the opportunity cost too high. Nonsense. The opportunity cost of the PR hit, versus the potentially massive positive PR of a crisis turnaround, is nigh incalculable. Possibly even worth tens of millions in intangible value and impact on future growth.

Take a page from the old 1980s-1990s Disney playbook on crisis management. Whenever a big PR fiasco popped up at the theme parks -- which was often -- Michael Eisner was the face of the crisis management effort. Now, obviously Michael Eisner himself wasn't personally up all night working exclusively on the crisis in question. No doubt he had a team on the case, feeding him his talking points. But he was the single public face of the company in all communications related to the crisis. Not some PR flack, or some customer service rep. Not some vice president. The CEO himself. It counted for quite a lot, even at times when it was bullshit.

(Note, of course, that I would never advocate the use of bullshit, especially in the EJ case).

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#377

Post by [deleted] »

llambda wrote: post #372
chc wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using pg's (apparently) second-hand information to discredit EJ's account of her experience. What proof do you have that EJ is misrepresenting anything? At best, this is a case of he-said-she-said. But given pg and EJ's positions relative to the situation here, it seems more likely to me that pg has been misinformed than that EJ is egregiously lying. (I admit the latter is possible , but you seem to be taking…

Paul Graham would have a lot to lose by making such a broad, unfounded statement...unless of course that's what he's been told and has good reason to believe it's correct. If so, why should we disbelieve the pg and Airbnb account? Simply because EJ's is loaded with emotional appeal? I don't see how a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb? I believe that most of her story is true (in the first blog post…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#378

Post by jsavimbi »

krschultz wrote: post #285
jsavimbi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. 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…

What do you mean it's not something done in the real world? What is VRBO.com (vacation rental by owner). I've taken a half dozen vacations where I rented someone elses house - long before AirBnB. There have been vacation houses in ski towns for decades, on the shore for literally hundreds of years. The only twist AirBnB provides is that it competes with regular hotels - not just vacation homes. And I know more than o…

> vacation houses

Renting out your apartment to include all of your worldly belongings, not a vacation-purposed structure, or loaning your car to a complete stranger through a scaled web application is a relatively new phenomenon and the normals, who often view their vacation lodgings as part of the experience, simply do not participate in this type of activity as AirBnB wishes to scale. It's a very new and unique concept.

I'm shocked as well and I'm sure that incidents and misunderstanding have already occurred in the past and they've obviously been able to deal with them. And I'll bet that the AirBnB crew are shocked at what they're seeing right now, given the exposure that two blog posts have been able to generate.

Spats between businesses and customers rarely get this type of hype from a venerable institution like the FT this early in the story. This is the kind of exposure that you plan and pay for.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#379

Post by chc »

llambda wrote: post #372
chc wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using pg's (apparently) second-hand information to discredit EJ's account of her experience. What proof do you have that EJ is misrepresenting anything? At best, this is a case of he-said-she-said. But given pg and EJ's positions relative to the situation here, it seems more likely to me that pg has been misinformed than that EJ is egregiously lying. (I admit the latter is possible , but you seem to be taking…

Paul Graham would have a lot to lose by making such a broad, unfounded statement...unless of course that's what he's been told and has good reason to believe it's correct. If so, why should we disbelieve the pg and Airbnb account? Simply because EJ's is loaded with emotional appeal? I don't see how a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb? I believe that most of her story is true (in the first blog post…

I really don't mean to imply pg is being dumb or anything like that — my experience is that even intelligent people tend to trust what their friends tell them. His comments seem to indicate that he hasn't been involved with the situation (which makes sense) and he's just repeating what he's heard from the AirBnB guys.

I don't know, she could be lying. But she has little incentive to do so. It's possible that somebody might give up a free house and become a transient just so they could trash-talk AirBnB, but it would be deeply weird. But a business owner spinning the facts to the benefit of his business? That would be deeply normal. Some might even argue it's his job. And a smart guy not extensively checking up on his friends when they tell him something? Again, that's normal.

Anyway, I'm not trying to say that we have to assume AirBnB is lying. We don't have a lot of evidence, so it makes sense to be tentative. But it seems unfair to very non-tentatively accuse EJ of lying when the facts seem to be on her side at best and on nobody's side at worst. You asked why people were downvoting, and I thought it was a fair question, so those are my thoughts.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#380

Post by eavc »

pg wrote: post #319
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'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…

>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.

Sounds like legitimate grounds for pursuing a case of libel.

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