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How airbnb lost me as a customer

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#21

Post by potatolicious »

tptacek wrote: post #18
njs12345 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how (1) is relevant to the complaint at hand.

It's not, except to the extent that it might be hard to feel sorry for someone who is taking unfair advantage of his landlord and cotenants and then complaining about the poor customer service that he was provided when doing so. Again though: it's not. It's a mostly orthogonal point.

> "except to the extent that it might be hard to feel sorry for someone who is taking unfair advantage of his landlord and cotenants"

The morality and ethics behind AirBnb is far from clearcut. The landlord-tenant relationship is also not so easily moralized - I'd take a flying leap off the high horse unless I knew more.

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#22

Post by solsenNet »

tptacek wrote: post #13

(1) You refer to your "apartment", which by convention refers to a domicile that you are leasing. While other HN readers will contest this point, I'd be willing to put money on the fact that you violated your lease by renting out your apartment on Airbnb at all. (2) HN is not a forum for complaints about YC companies, and while I didn't flag this post, you shouldn't overreact if it is killed. Nobody is trying to cens…

yeah this is a pretty classic example of what startups have to deal with: irrational customers.

the guy is getting $3k from a transaction that breaks all kind of rules, and is upset that a _SCAN_ of his Driver's License might be intercepted in a "man in the middle" attack on a sent email!?!?!?

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#24

Post by tptacek »

potatolicious wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, except to the extent that it might be hard to feel sorry for someone who is taking unfair advantage of his landlord and cotenants and then complaining about the poor customer service that he was provided when doing so. Again though: it's not. It's a mostly orthogonal point.

> "except to the extent that it might be hard to feel sorry for someone who is taking unfair advantage of his landlord and cotenants" The morality and ethics behind AirBnb is far from clearcut. The landlord-tenant relationship is also not so easily moralized - I'd take a flying leap off the high horse unless I knew more.

I'm sorry you felt like I was rebutting the complaint with the landlord thing. I'm not.

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#26

Post by hbien »

mootothemax wrote: post #17

Look at it from the other side of things: how would you react if AirBnB weren't doing these checks? If I'm staying somewhere, I'm leaving my luggage, and there's plenty of opportunities for stuff to go missing, whether in the middle night or otherwise. That's just the petty crime aspect, leaving aside other opportunities for much more serious badness. It's bad that their customer service failed you, but I'd much rath…

But the document checks weren't finished yet and the guest still arrived. At this point, they're not really protecting the guest.

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#27

Post by ARobotics »

solsenNet wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #13

(1) You refer to your "apartment", which by convention refers to a domicile that you are leasing. While other HN readers will contest this point, I'd be willing to put money on the fact that you violated your lease by renting out your apartment on Airbnb at all. (2) HN is not a forum for complaints about YC companies, and while I didn't flag this post, you shouldn't overreact if it is killed. Nobody is trying to cens…

yeah this is a pretty classic example of what startups have to deal with: irrational customers. the guy is getting $3k from a transaction that breaks all kind of rules, and is upset that a _SCAN_ of his Driver's License might be intercepted in a "man in the middle" attack on a sent email!?!?!?

And if I weren't upset with it, someone else on the internet would be calling me stupid and telling me I deserved it when my identity was stolen or some account was compromised because I was sending things over unencrypted email. Some days I guess you just can't win.

Again though, issue number 1 is unresponsive, unhelpful technical support.

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#28

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mootothemax wrote: post #17

Look at it from the other side of things: how would you react if AirBnB weren't doing these checks? If I'm staying somewhere, I'm leaving my luggage, and there's plenty of opportunities for stuff to go missing, whether in the middle night or otherwise. That's just the petty crime aspect, leaving aside other opportunities for much more serious badness. It's bad that their customer service failed you, but I'd much rath…

Heaven forbid they spend 10 dollars on a php upload script on SSL for this kind of information as opposed to "Scan you social security card and send it to customerservice@airbnb.com!"

Re: How airbnb lost me as a customer

#29

Post by evoxed »

tptacek wrote: post #13

(1) You refer to your "apartment", which by convention refers to a domicile that you are leasing. While other HN readers will contest this point, I'd be willing to put money on the fact that you violated your lease by renting out your apartment on Airbnb at all. (2) HN is not a forum for complaints about YC companies, and while I didn't flag this post, you shouldn't overreact if it is killed. Nobody is trying to cens…

I don't know about OP, but I've always assumed that by 2012 people would have the common sense to ask their landlords first for permission (either one time or recurring). I haven't listed on AirBNB but have sublet my apartment and that was obviously step one. Are most of the people using the site not doing that?
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