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Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

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Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#121

The headline is a bit too much, even for TechCrunch. EJ is not "homeless". She almost certainly has never been homeless and will never be homeless; this is an insult to people who have been homeless, broke, and literally have nowhere to go. Choosing to not stay in a $3.8K / month loft in SF does not a homeless person make. And she's at least a bit responsible for feeding the sensationalism of this; it is coming off a…

Her nickname is EJ, and she is indeed homeless. Her home was destroyed and ever since she has been bouncing around staying with friends. She is now without a home - that doesn't mean she is sleeping in the subway station, but it does mean she doesn't have a permanent residence anymore. Hence, homeless.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale is obviously different, so in that sense I wasn't fair. But the defense is exactly the same, disclaiming responsibility for the acts of your contractors. I don't think any victim (Craigslist, NoTW phone hackees) cares about the fine point of the employment relationship. EDIT: took EJ off the parenthesized list of victims, as she was not the victim of a contractor.

I think things differ in 3 main respects - 1. Whether there was an ongoing culture of doing the wrong thing - NotW yes, AirBnb not so much (afaik). 2. Whether there is an indication that the defence is actually completely false (i.e. whether the guys in charge actually did know and sanction these things) - again there are some strong indications that this was the case at the NotW, especially if you take the culture i…

"1. Whether there was an ongoing culture of doing the wrong thing - NotW yes, AirBnb not so much (afaik)."

When you're first starting off a company, anything you do is your company culture.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#123
post #119
post #74

If you care for the reaction from someone who doesn't really know/understand what Airbnb is: "Who lets strangers into their home, unsupervised?" Does make some sense, right? Who would?

I have never used the service, but I always assumed that they pre-screened the customers and the hosts. I'm really surprised to hear that they don't have a screening process, like background checks, and that they don't carry some for on insurance to cover damages. They certainly don't seem to make the effort to inform hosts of those two points. Hosts should be completely aware that AirBnB, 1) does NO background check…

TSA and cops are both screened before they are hired, doesn't prevent the horror stories.

How do you know the people who do the screening actually do anything? What's their "skin in the game"?

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#124
A little OT from the actual story but I find it annoying when TechCrunch and similar sites find a random picture to put near the headline. I suppose the point of this is to attract more eyes to the article, but when the story is about someone getting their home trashed and you show some completely different house that looks like a bulldozer drove through it, I can't help but think you're creating an association that is a best worthless and at worst misleading. Pictures in articles serve a purpose and that purpose certainly isn't to remind me what a trashed house is.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#125
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is correct. The person who put up the listing claims to be friends with the tenant. The tenant has not paid rent in 4 months and his contract explicitly forbids subletting. So I am staying in this apartment illegally. Luckily, the owner is nice enough to let us stay for the remainder of our time without compensation. I have no idea how common this situation is but this is only our 6th time using airbnb and if th…

Berlin resident here. I agree that it's a tough problem to solve and would make verification of hosts (maybe prohibitively) expensive. You'd have to check that the person listing the place is a) actually the tenant, b) is in good standing with the landlord, c) has permission to sublet (without pre-approval of individual subletters by the landlord). In practice, most Berlin landlords won't ever notice their flat being…

well in this case the tenant did not pay rent for 4 months, and instead rented it out on airbnb for those months and pocketed the change. If the tenant funneled the airbnb money into rent I'm sure it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it is now.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#126
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're calling a 'sudden Customer Service cutoff' is actually when (from victim's account) communication switched to being with a cofounder. That's escalation and unification, and it's not fair to portray a direct open line to the boss as a 'cutoff'. (That the victim portrays it that way suggests they may have had better rapport with the original CS liason. Perhaps that person included more social/emotional nice…

The CS liason sounds like they were actually trying to serve their customer. The interactions with the founder sound like her account got switched from "customer service" to "damage control." Yeah, I get it, the business is his baby. But it's just a business, and it's just ruined someone's life for who-knows how long. Get your priorities straight. The business is just effort and money, it's not worth doing this kind…

From EJ's account, it does sound like "her account got switched from 'customer service' to 'damage control'", and that it happened the day of her first blog post. I have no doubt that's how she feels.

But EJ is a person who is still, by her own descriptions, hurt and angry. She's paraphrasing many communications down to just the excerpts that explain her feelings.

It's easy for misunderstandings to multiply. A recent less-emotional example was the Steve Yegge speech. He thought he said he was resigning from a project, based on context and word choice many thought he was resigning from Google.

If communicating over email and the phone with a person you've never met, who's still emotionally suffering, the potentials for hurtful misunderstandings are much higher.

You might say things that you think are reassuring/hopeful, that instead sound indifferent. When you ask, "are you OK and do you have a place to stay?", and get an answer like, "I'm set for the next few days and then have other friends to talk to", you might think things are settled, where the answerer is really just putting on a strong facade. If you close with, "contact us if you need anything else", you might think you've left an open door for all other needs, and will hear if there are any, when in fact she needs and expects more check-ins about her well-being. And so forth.

It's wrong to condemn someone's tone based on the accounts of one aggrieved side of the communication.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#127

This is a seriously damning essay from someone who's clearly working through PTSD issues (or is an amazing liar). Part of the issue is that young fast-growth CEOs don't major on empathy, typically. It's somewhat contrary to the necessities of the job. These co-founders have absolutely no concept of how this woman feels, or if they do, they have determined that they won't let her know about it. The best thing say Paul…

> This is a seriously damning essay from someone who's clearly working through PTSD issues (or is an amazing liar). I'm not going to defend AirBNB but I do have to say that I have an incredibly hard time identifying with this woman's writing. Ultimately, some tweakers trashed her apartment and stole her stuff. Is that a bummer? Of course. If that happened to me, would I be angry, furious? Absolutely. Would I change t…

"But the sheer levels of emotion she's experiencing over an event where, basically, her stuff got trashed, suggests to me that she probably had so many emotional stability issues to begin with that..."

Being traumatized by someone violating your home, privacy, and personal life is not evidence of "emotional stability issues", it's a perfectly natural and common reaction.

I think you're seriously overestimating the extent to which everyone else in the world's mind works just like yours. You may be too cool and rational to get upset at this experience (or think you are, at least), but that doesn't mean everyone else is--or should be.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#128
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin resident here. I agree that it's a tough problem to solve and would make verification of hosts (maybe prohibitively) expensive. You'd have to check that the person listing the place is a) actually the tenant, b) is in good standing with the landlord, c) has permission to sublet (without pre-approval of individual subletters by the landlord). In practice, most Berlin landlords won't ever notice their flat being…

well in this case the tenant did not pay rent for 4 months, and instead rented it out on airbnb for those months and pocketed the change. If the tenant funneled the airbnb money into rent I'm sure it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it is now.

Sure, in your case, the tenant's move was particulary bold. Owing two months rent to the landlord is grounds for immediate termination of the contract and eviction in Germany btw.

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#129

I'm using airbnb in Berlin right now. Two days ago I received a knock on my door. Turns out it was the real owner of the apartment and he had the Paperwork to prove it. Fortunately he was nice enough to let us stay without compensation. When I went to the airbnb website to try and call them all I got was a web message box. I filled out a message and sent it on its way but that's a pretty lousy system. Luckily for me…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry

#130
post #72

Acquaintances have said they'd probably not use Airbnb for fear of problems like this. After this incident and Airbnb's response, they will never even consider it. And they will tell all their acquaintances, etc, etc.. Airbnb's Achilles' heel is the deep-rooted fear of someone fucking up home. That they did not patch this with a good backup-plan should be a warning to investors.

What backup plan can you have for someone destroying your house, copying all your documents, and stealing your grandmother's jewelery?

They should be covered by some type of insurance so that they can compensate the owner or vice-versa. Things like this will happen and continue to happen.
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