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Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

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Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#361

Post by zavulon »

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…

If that's the case, either EJ or AirBnB are lying.

Just one example:

> I've talked to the Airbnb guys and they are already doing everything they could be doing to help this woman.

From EJ's post:

> I arranged and paid for my own transportation while dislocated (with Airbnb's assurances that this expense would be compensated - which it has not been)

If EJ is lying, it should be easy to prove. But even if that's the case, AirBnB has dropped the ball in pissing her off so much that she has to continue to make an effort to paint AirBnB in a negative light.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#362

Post by tptacek »

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…

How do they "just fix this" if her lawyer is saying "let's find the highest possible clearing price for this transaction"? In my experience, that's what a good lawyer is going to say. "This is just business."

Like in any negotiation, anything Airbnb offers is now the price floor. Her best interests are served by turning the pain dial to 11 for as long as the offer is on the table.

You don't even have to know anything about this person to wonder about this. You don't have to psychoanalyze her. You can just read between the lines. Even before 'pg said Airbnb offered to make her whole, reread her post. How does it even make sense for Airbnb to suggest she add a "happy ending" to her story unless they actually offer her something? But in the same post, she says she hasn't talked to them in a month and makes no mention of any offer. It doesn't add up.

There's nothing Airbnb can do here other than soak up the punches until they hit a number they can agree on.

Unfortunately, this problem is likely to recur until Airbnb figures out the business model tweak that mitigates it.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#363

Post by quandrum »

tomlin wrote: post #291
econgeeker wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBnB paying for one incident does not create any obligation on them to pay for other incidents. That's nonsense. Apple replaced a friends phone that they abused and then made up a story about. Apple did this because Apple wanted to take care of their customer. Doesn't mean Apple is obligated to replace every phone, even when it is abused. Apple's only obligated to the terms of the warranty it promises. Apple promis…

I'm not saying it's right or fair. I also think it's nonsense . You're thinking on the side of a smart entrepreneur, not a criminal. All a crook is interested in is hearing or seeing the headline: "Airbnb pays for loss and damages to rattled user", or other more clever narrative. If you're a criminal, details aside, you've got all you need to scheme up an assalt. Criminals don't work on high probability, if they did,…

I don't think this line of thinking works. Criminals aren't your customers. If you respond to incidents with non-customers in mind, you're going to create a negative response in current and potential customers.

This was an opportunity for AirBnB to prove that their service is excellent and worth using. This was a chance to prove to potential customers that if the worst happens they'll be their. Instead they proved they won't support their customers fully when worst case scenarios happen. Because they were thinking more about people who don't pay them then people who do.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#364

Post by ajju »

dlss wrote: post #358
ajju wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sympathies are for the victim but I think it would help to post the full context of her statement. She said "One month ago an individual was apprehended, however as far as I know, this person was transferred to a neighboring jurisdiction for prosecution of previous crimes , and no charges or arrest warrant has been issued for my case within San Francisco County." (emphasis mine) I don't think Brian Chesky or AirBN…

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 pursue other crimes first, does not falsify AirBnB's statement that the perp is in custody, and that their information will become important evidence.

Anyway, AirBnB should have done a much better job of helping the customer and communicating both with her and the rest of the world.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#365

Post by chc »

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…

Of course "someone is in custody." There are many thousands of people in custody in the US. The question is, how many of them have demonstrated ties to EJ's case? AirBnB's comment implies (but does not state) that the number is 1. Unless AirBnB know something different that they are not sharing with EJ, it would appear the real number is 0. That's what she was correcting.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#366

Post by abcd_f »

brianchesky wrote: post #151

Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO) here. My heart goes out to our host. My co-founder has contacted her multiple times, as recently as last night, and we have again offered to help her in any way that she needs. We will continue to make ourselves available to her to do whatever she asks of us in this time of need. We have encouraged her to reach us so that we can help her through this, and we are standing by.

Very few people in distress can coherently answer an open-ended question such as "what can we do for you?" It also puts her in a position of, basically, asking a favor, and this is not something that a hurt person would be inclined to do.

Give her a list of specific things you can do. Or rather just do them first, and then tell her. Rent and furnish an apartment for her and bring her the keys, for example. That will go a much further way than just writing a blank cheque.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#367

Post by chc »

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…

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 the less plausible explanation as a given and using that assumption to attack the victim here. Hence the downvotes.)

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#368

Post by lsc »

It seems to me that what AirBnB should do is just this:

1. Announce they are instituting a (possibly optional) insurance policy. At most, there should be a checkbox when I rent my place out that says 'insure it' and if I check it they take the cost of insurance out of what I'd get paid otherwise. If insurance is cheap enough (I don't know what 'cheap enough' is) they can simply make it mandatory.

(The decision to self-insure or use an external insurance agency is not germane to this discussion... that's something they need to figure out internally.)

2. Offer this person some sum (say, 5x what insurance would have paid) for her silence.

Now, I'm sure they are working on 2. but I think #1 is actually more important, because many of us are not going to be willing to do this negotiation in public to get compensation... so insurance is better all around. The people renting out the houses know they can get paid with minimal hassle, and AirBnB knows exactly how much it is going to cost ahead of time. If you can find an insurance company that insures hotels, they might also be able to help with risk mitigation efforts.

I really think that instituting some sort of insurance policy is a good way for AirBnB to accept responsibility for the problem, and a realistic "and this is what we are doing to mitigate the problem going forward"

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#369

Post by run4yourlives »

TheCondor wrote: post #360
run4yourlives wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares about Arrington. That's not AirBnB's problem. AirBnB's problem is "EJ". I've talked to the Airbnb guys and they are already doing everything they could be doing to help this woman. If they've been offering to fix it from the start, why haven't they said that? Certainly the victim doesn't believe they've offered much, if anything at all... either that or you've just called her a liar. (I obviously have to…

It's tacky and even grandstanding to say "hey, we offered to buy this lady a new pad..." From the start, there are ways to deal with this stuff, you do some analysis, figure out what this person wants or needs, you offer them a bit more than that in exchange for their silence. It's just how it is done. Once she started blogging about it, how do you fix that? If she takes the blog down for any reason then she looks pr…

You talk to her. Yes this takes some skill.

You don't need to tell everyone the specifics, but you need to tell her... provide her with more than any rational person would consider reasonable and say publicly that you are doing what it takes to make the situation right.

Most rational thinkers won't continually bad mouth you if you genuinely show remorse, offer compensation (thereby providing something, in theory, she could lose) and approach the situation honestly. As any person that has ever done any customer service knows, the quickest way to placate an angry customer is to admit when you are wrong and look to find solutions that would make said customer happy. It's amazing how powerful a "Crap, I screwed up, I'm sorry, let me fix this" is.

She shouldn't be asked to do anything... she should be given enough reason to produce a positive blog post on her own. It's not as good as it would have been prior to her posts, but lesson learned.

Re: Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

#370

Post by mlapeter »

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…

Agreed. I don't want to sound totally callous, but while this is a dramatic and terrible incident in it's own right, her writing style does seem to be magnifying the drama for maximum effect/ attention, in which case it's a truly difficult problem for AirBnb to solve. Even handing her a big sack of cash/ new apartment (just an example, not recommending that course) would probably just lead to an expose blog post about how they tried to buy her silence. How do you satisfy someone if a large part of what they want is attention? Create a new security policy and name it after her?
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