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Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

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Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#51

Post by gojomo »

_delirium wrote: post #35
gojomo wrote: post #23

Might have even been the same meth c[r]ooks. Kudos to Dayton for keeping a balanced perspective on the situation, and not equating customer service clumsiness with indifference. I like AirBnb. I will continue to use AirBnb as a guest. (Hypothetically if I were to be a host, I would only rent a hardened/rental-only property with careful assessment of the potential guests.) I am also still bullish on the general theme…

> Might have even been the same meth c[r]ooks. That's what I thought as well (both are SF Bay Area), though it's only a guess. The combination of meth-heads and identity theft seems weird to be repeated. I would even tentatively guess at the meth-heads trashing apts being a cover for someone else who got the idea of using AirBnB to acquire documents for an identity-theft ring, but who knows, it's possible there are a…

Meth addicts seem to like identity-theft, so that correlation is not especially unique. See for example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/us/11meth.html

(Identity theft is also the perfect precursor to evading what payment- and identity- checks do exist in an AirBnb-like system.)

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#52

Post by ig1 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #22

What's going to be a game changer is when stories start breaking about owners who rent out their space as a way to lure in people for killing or torturing them. Right now it's about "you were stupid, why did you rent your space out to strangers?". Later on it'll be "why did you try to save $20 and go sleep some place where you're 110% vulnerable?". You don't control the locks, you don't know the neighborhood or even…

This already happens on classified ad sites, people regularly go into strangers homes to purchase a wide range of goods with close to zero pre-checks. And yes people do get killed when they turn up at someone's house with 5k in cash to buy a car.

Doesn't seem to have stopped the classified business from working...

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#53

Post by code_duck »

AirBnB never should have set up such an unsafe system, but surely the decisions of the renters are at fault as well. I personally would never even consider allowing people who were not carefully screened by myself to have free reign with my property.

I'm pretty sure this is getting large enough to garner the attention of politicians. That may be a positive thing, since AirBnB and their clients are apparently not taking care of safety and procedures adequately on their own.

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#54

Post by michael_dorfman »

[deleted] wrote: post #38
michael_dorfman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That business already exists: it's called the insurance industry. I'm shocked that AirBnb apparently hasn't availed themselves of it.

[deleted]

It doesn't matter that Airbnb renters are not businesses.

There are a number of ways in which this reduces to an insurance problem.

First, Airbnb could purchase liability insurance to indemnify themselves against claims made by people like EJ. This would enable them, under certain circumstances, to make generous payouts on occasion while maintaining fixed expenses.

Second, Airbnb could easily offer optional insurance to their customers (in this case, the hosts) whereby a small fee is paid for each night's stay, and damages are paid up to a set amount, with proper documentation. (Naturally, Airbnb would then, in this case, attempt to recover the money from the renter who committed the damages.)

I see no legal obstacles to such solutions, nor any reason to think it would be too expensive. Believe me, you can get insurance for pretty much anything, and the rate setting follows predictable patterns.

Insurance may very well be the whole answer here, and I imagine we are discussing it because a) Airbnb isn't adequately insured, and b) they screwed up the customer relations/PR side of this one enormously.

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#55

Post by dspillett »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #27
mgkimsal wrote: post #22

What's going to be a game changer is when stories start breaking about owners who rent out their space as a way to lure in people for killing or torturing them. Right now it's about "you were stupid, why did you rent your space out to strangers?". Later on it'll be "why did you try to save $20 and go sleep some place where you're 110% vulnerable?". You don't control the locks, you don't know the neighborhood or even…

What's going to be a game changer is when stories start breaking about owners who rent out their space as a way to lure in people for killing or torturing them. I agree 100%. However I ask say how in the world did you think about this?

I thought it too when I heard about the service and how little vetting is done (i.e. not, it is all left to the users).

A fair number of rape/murder/other cases involve an unwitting victim being lured into situations that they naively (or just incorrectly) think should be safe. It is far from a daily occurrence in any given area but such cases are in the national news often enough (and fictional realms also) to figure in the minds of the more paranoid!

1. think of using AirBnB, 2. perfectly healthy paranoia kicks in and starts listing worst-case scenarios, 3. book into a large well known chain hotel instead...

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#56

Post by timr »

cletus wrote: post #18

As much as some people might view this as "sometimes things go wrong", which is basically true, that's not the whole story. The story here is that people are doing things that in most jurisdictions are illegal. AirBnB is profiting off this. Do something illegal and you can't insure against any negative consequences. The whole EJ situation is a potential inflection point. Without knowing the full facts (which no one s…

"But there's something "off" about EJ's position here. Why is a vandalized apartment leaving her homeless?"

Put yourself in the position of a person who has just had their apartment burglarized (remember: they stole her personal documents and valuables) and their keys stolen by probable drug addicts. Also, remember that the police have arrested one of the vandals, but probably not all of them.

Ignoring, for the moment, that the place would be unlivable for a while, wouldn't you also be wary of middle-of-the-night retribution (or just a repeat performance) from a bunch of psychotic drug users? I would, and I'm not exactly a fearful guy.

There are many sketchy details about this story, but EJ's fear of retribution isn't one of them.

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#57

Post by gojomo »

tokenadult wrote: post #31
Cushman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is they're a craigslist where you don't get to find out who the other person is until after the payment processing, which would seem to most people to be negative value. Edit: Except for to Airbnb.

The claim is they're a craigslist where you don't get to find out who the other person is until after the payment processing, which would seem to most people to be negative value. Exactly this. The first blogger to go public with a report of a place being trashed by an Airbnb guest pointed out that with Craigslist, it is EASIER to contact the guest individually beforehand. Airbnb subtracts value from the typical tran…

Paradoxically, these incidents could solidify AirBnb's lead. If they've been clumsy in the past; they can't afford to anymore. They have the money to implement a leading solution, and they have to become synonymous with the best protections to get the most listings/searches.

And, the components of a potential solution – costly one-time background checks, longer reputation histories, insurance pooling, deep experience with all abuse variants – all benefit from scale. Participant fear enhances the winner-take-all nature of the market... if the leader can best assuage that fear.

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#58

Post by jerrya »

gojomo wrote: post #32

Let's not forget even four-star hotels are not immune to room-invasion burglary, as Alex Trebek learned in SF last week: http://www.baycitizen.org/crime/story/alex-trebek-crime-figh...

And here I thought you were going to mention O.J.

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#59

Post by michael_dorfman »

hnal943 wrote: post #41
michael_dorfman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That business already exists: it's called the insurance industry. I'm shocked that AirBnb apparently hasn't availed themselves of it.

I'm also shocked that EJ did not avail herself of it.

I'm not sure that a standard homeowner's insurance policy would pay out in a case such as this. Airbnb is putting hosts in the position of a business; one of the services they could (and should) be providing is some form of insurance (for an added fee, of course.)

Re: Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”

#60

Post by tptacek »

callahad wrote: post #40
cletus wrote: post #18

As much as some people might view this as "sometimes things go wrong", which is basically true, that's not the whole story. The story here is that people are doing things that in most jurisdictions are illegal. AirBnB is profiting off this. Do something illegal and you can't insure against any negative consequences. The whole EJ situation is a potential inflection point. Without knowing the full facts (which no one s…

> If she has received offers for help, why hasn't she taken it? That might depend on the strings attached to said offers.

Or it might depend on Airbnb offering to pay for physical damages and "EJ" holding out for tort-level compensation.
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