I wonder if this will be killed like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2834066 ...
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Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
21–30 of 177 posts
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#22I wonder how they're now going to prevent fraud.
I wonder too.. They are proposing a worldwide guarantee, how could they verify each claim?..By partnerships with insurance companies all over the world?
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#23A $50,000 guarantee seems a bit low. Condos in OK neighborhoods here in Chicago start at around 200K so theoretically a lot more than 50K in damage could be done.
Is it possible to damage a condo, without damaging the neighboring units, in such a way that it would cost more than $50k to repair? (Spraying putrescine doesn't count. I don't know why.)
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#24though he humbly suggests the opposite, this is a great example of how to deal with a crisis
I think it's fantastic that they're implementing this, but it's still rather depressing that it took a month of time and a weekend of bad PR to get them to do it in the first place.
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#25I wonder how they're now going to prevent fraud.
I wonder too.. They are proposing a worldwide guarantee, how could they verify each claim?..By partnerships with insurance companies all over the world?
Presumably by not paying out except in the case of a successful police investigation.
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#26though he humbly suggests the opposite, this is a great example of how to deal with a crisis
This is pretty much exactly what they should be doing. The fact that it took them several weeks to do it is what constitutes a poor response to the crisis.
Regardless, it looks like they're doing what they should be doing, and I hope it works out both for them and their customers.
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#27though he humbly suggests the opposite, this is a great example of how to deal with a crisis
I think it's fantastic that they're implementing this, but it's still rather depressing that it took a month of time and a weekend of bad PR to get them to do it in the first place.
the fact that AirBNB has managed to implement an international insurance/guarantee program in as little as a month is a heroic feat.
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#28Two things immediately pop out from this:
"Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings."
I'm not sure how I feel about this line (I assume it's referring to his TC post). On one hand, it's nice that he's now 'fessing up with a this-is-how-I-feel post. On the other, it's a pretty clear admission that he's had no problems in the past sending out PR spin as a blog post under his own name - so what should make the reader think this (or any future posts) are actually him, and not more spin? It seems like it's muddling the authenticity of the message a bit.
"In working with the San Francisco Police Department, we are happy to say a suspect is now in custody."
Haven't they been saying this for a while, and each time they do, it turns out that when someone tries to verify it with SFPD, the suspect isn't in custody (because they've been extradited to another community)?
As for the potential for fraud, that doesn't concern me that much. If they're doing a blanket insurance policy like this, then they're contracting it out to a legit insurance company - who will presumably have adjusters and claims people who will investigate every claim, the same as other forms of consumer insurance (like you get on your rental car).
I'm also interested in the legalities of this insurance - particularly in places where short-term rentals to strangers are illegal/contrary to bylaw/in violation of the occupant's lease. You'd think that insurance companies would have a problem selling a policy to cover the side-effects of a prohibited activity; that all Airbnb hosts would have to sign a line that certifies under penalty of perjury that they're legally allowed to host a place on Airbnb, which most can't.
If I was a landlord who had a tenant who put their place on Airbnb, and which then got trashed, I'd make the tenant fix it up (which they'd pay for, presumably, from the insurance), and probably try and sue the tenant for violating the terms of their lease. Could I then sue the insurance company as well, for helping my tenant break the conditions of their lease?
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#29A $50,000 guarantee seems a bit low. Condos in OK neighborhoods here in Chicago start at around 200K so theoretically a lot more than 50K in damage could be done.
An unbounded guarantee isn't necessarily reasonable or practical.
On the other hand, your concern probably presages an eventual headline of the future: "AirBnb guests burn down host's home; AirBnb guarantee only covers less than 10% of loss."
Re: Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
#30though he humbly suggests the opposite, this is a great example of how to deal with a crisis
This is pretty much exactly what they should be doing. The fact that it took them several weeks to do it is what constitutes a poor response to the crisis. Regardless, it looks like they're doing what they should be doing, and I hope it works out both for them and their customers.
I disagree. Changing your support model to a 24 hour call center in a month is a big, impressive feat. Think of the hiring/training/management/infrastructure challenges.
Not to mention the insurance policy, which is international?
This is not trivial stuff. It would take most companies several months to even get close to this.