
Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight - moonlighter
http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare-no-end-in-sight.html
======
edw519
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
giant army of spotters.

4\. Hire her and pay her well (perhaps even with equity). She is obviously an
excellent writer and an empathetic persona. But more importantly, she is an
expert in addressing what is clearly the weakest link in your business model's
chain.

5\. Fuck the business models, projections, and funding rounds and just "do the
right thing".

This appears to be a royal fuck-up. But nothing compared to the lost goodwill
for Airbnb, YC, the startup community, and the "new order" in general. Many of
us had thought that you all had deprecated the era of Ford Pinto thinking.
Current data appears to be to the contrary.

Turn this lemon into lemonade before the window closes. Tick. Tick. Tick.

[EDIT: This has nothing to do with assigning blame; this incident was clearly
an outlier and nobody's fault (except the obvious bad guys). And it has
nothing to do with solving this class of problem. All I'm saying is that
fixing this instance will lead to solving this class. It presents an excellent
opportunity to fix things in a way that never could have been imagined before.
Airbnb has a compelling business proposition with an obvious Achilles heel.
This unfortunate situation presents an excellent opportunity to address that
weakness head on. But only with a 179 degree change in thinking. I don't know
what the ultimate solution to this problem is, but _now_ is clearly the time
for Airbnb to get moving on it...]

~~~
pg
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 lawyers that he couldn't go into detail
about that because of the precedent said "I can't comment on that." So
Arrington, in typical Arrington fashion said "Well, unless you tell me I'm
going to write that you're not willing to do anything for her." And he did.
Really not cool.

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

Even if you don't believe they are nice guys (which they are, among the nicest
of all the people we've funded), do you really think they are so dumb that
they don't realize it's not worth the bad PR to save money and effort in this
situation?

~~~
llambda
_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 attempt to mar Airbnb's reputation as
much as possible.

Granted her situation is very distressing, but weigh that against the fact
that even if she had not been participating with Airbnb her home still could
have been broken into and ransacked. The upside here is that Airbnb was
involved and it seems is trying to do whatever they can to help her, up to and
including paying for a new place. Now that it's been revealed she is
misrepresenting Airbnb's reaction and handling of her case in her latest
post[1] it becomes hard to deny this "victim" is utilizing their situation,
i.e. manipulating it. So it seems she has a particular ax to grind, apparently
with Airbnb...

[1] [http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-
nightmare...](http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare-no-
end-in-sight.html) "Airbnb has not assisted me in securing my safety, if that
is the implication being made in Chesky's article" and "But the staff at
Airbnb has not made a positive contribution to me personally or my situation
in any way, particularly since June 30." While maybe true in fact, clearly
misleading her audience.

Edit: I can see the angry mob is already hard at work down voting me. At least
provide some counterpoint if you feel you disagree; yes, my point of view is
unpopular on this subject, but have I made incorrect observations here?

~~~
chc
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.)

~~~
llambda
Paul Graham would have a lot to lose by making such a broad, unfounded
statement...unless of course that's what he's been told and has good reason to
believe it's correct. If so, why should we disbelieve the pg and Airbnb
account? Simply because EJ's is loaded with emotional appeal? I don't see how
a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb?

I believe that most of her story is true (in the first blog post she even
states that Airbnb has been incredibly helpful[1]; in fact this seems to
corroborate pg's statement, they offered her financial support), that it was
very traumatic for her, but what I don't believe is that pg and Airbnb are
lying, that Airbnb has effectively made no attempt to help her; because they
could have tried and she might have refused and now she's realized that the
whole Internet is up in arms and on her side...so she can frame it however she
likes, right or wrong. But I'm still inclined to believe pg would not spread
disinformation; why should he? I think the man is much smarter than you're
giving him credit for...

[1] <http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html> "I would be
remiss if I didn’t pause here to emphasize that the customer service team at
airbnb.com has been wonderful, giving this crime their full attention. They
have called often, expressing empathy, support, and genuine concern for my
welfare. They have offered to help me recover emotionally and financially, and
are working with SFPD to track down these criminals."

~~~
HSO
> I don't see how a random blogger is more plausible than pg and Airbnb?

Yeah, that's status thinking and antithetical to rational discourse. You
evaluate a story or its plausibility on _its_ merits, not on the status of who
tells it (unless you have _real_ information about the author's credibility,
which in this case neither of us, correct me if I'm wrong, have.)

> this seems to corroborate pg's statement, they offered her financial support

No, it doesn't. There's a difference between "offering" support and giving it.
What EJ said in her follow-up post is that although she was initially offered
full support, none of it has actually materialized in the weeks after.

> But I'm still inclined to believe pg would not spread disinformation; why
> should he? I think the man is much smarter than you're giving him credit
> for...

Maybe you should get your nose out of pg's behind and realize that pg too puts
his shoes on one at a time and shits like you and me. Having psychological,
reputational, and financial stakes in one party of a dispute can induce
biases. What I mean is, even good and smart people can fuck up, even with the
best intentions. AFAIC, his story gets weighed on the same scale as everyone
else's.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
> Yeah, that's status thinking and antithetical to rational discourse. You
> evaluate a story or its plausibility on _its_ merits, not on the status of
> who tells it (unless you have _real_ information about the author's
> credibility, which in this case neither of us, correct me if I'm wrong,
> have.)

What about in the other direction? I have no information about the author's
credibility whatsoever, but from personal interaction I have ample information
about PG's credibility.

~~~
danso
That's still argument from authority, like saying "Colin Powell is known to be
a highly educated man and honored soldier, how could he be possibly fooled by
faked documents?"

there is the possibility that the anonymous blogger has just as much integrity
and honesty as pg. We don't know whether or not she does. We _do_ know what
both parties have said in public. therefore, we need to limit our evaluations
to that until further information is known.

------
fletchowns
_He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially
negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of
funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut
down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested
that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the
story”._

If this is true it is downright appalling. Does he really think this woman
that just had her life turned upside down gives a shit about his next round of
funding?

~~~
temphn
Edit: bring on the downvotes! That's right, downvote a difference of opinion,
and forget about logical or reasoned counterargument. Next time the internet
lynch mob will come for your startup; hope that someone takes your side when
they do.

\----

Don't you think the CEO has to worry about the people he's paying? Who knows
what their burn rate is; that funding could have been a life or death event,
and in the event of death then a bunch _more_ unemployed people would be
hitting the streets.

And that wouldn't help anyone, least of all this woman.

AirBnB reported this to the police. They said they had someone in custody.
What more do you want them to do? Go after them like Dirty Harry?

Dollars to donuts this woman is planning a lawsuit and looking for a payday.
Not against the drug addicts who trashed her apartment, but against AirBnB.
She rents out a room to people she's never met in person and then acts
surprised when sometimes it goes wrong.

It's depressing to see the mob mentality here on Hacker News, and the extent
to which Arrington delights in playing the organ grinder.

A pedestrian is hit by a DUI driver, does he sue or blame Honda? No? So why
all the hate on AirBnB when it was a bunch of drug addicts who committed the
crime? Sell them into old school bondage and send the income to her, by all
means, but let's be real: it was the criminals' fault first, her fault second,
and AirBnB in a distant third.

~~~
ColinWright
Putting aside the questions of blame, and the eventual intent of the
individual. Putting aside the question of culpability, and whether anyone
acted inappropriately.

Thinking about this entirely from the perspective of AirBnB. Doing what a
company is supposed to do, by law, and considering only the shareholders.

Given what they've done, do you think it's the best thing to have done to give
the company the best chance of long-term survival?

I don't.

Leaving out the morals and the ethics, assuming we only care about the
company's survival, this issue has to be dealt with in an open, transparent,
and above all _seen by all to be fair_ manner.

Providing for the short term care of this customer is vital. Whether it's
right or wrong, ethical or moral, if they don't do it, people will say _"That
might have been me."_

Above all else, that will kill AirBnB, and they are seeming to do nothing
about it.

Leaving aside the moral and ethical considerations, working only according to
the game theoretic standard of doing right by the company, what they are doing
is clearly not in the best interests of the company.

========

ADDED IN EDIT: From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> :

    
    
        Please don't bait other users by
        inviting them to downmod you. 
    

FWIW - I didn't down-vote you. I think you're wrong, and I don't think you've
thought it through enough, but I didn't down-vote you. I took the time to
reply because I think your view is common enough, and you had the courage to
say it out loud.

But as I say, the current actions (as we understand them to be) are not in the
best interests of the company or its employees - really, they're not.

~~~
temphn
Well, ok. While being entirely rational, let's also think about a related
angle. The woman is out quite some money. She wants it back. The most
coldbloodedly rational act on her part would have been to wait till they
closed the round and then sue. Which, if you read her post carefully, is
almost certainly what will happen in terms of timeline.

A billion dollar co is a real juicy target, much more so than the actual bad
guys.

~~~
ColinWright
Sure. And:

a. She's in a fit state to be cold-bloodedly rational

b. She knew AirBnB was about to close a round

c. That closing was within a few weeks, and hence worth waiting

d. In the meantime she has no home, and has to deal with

d.1. the police,

d.2. all the credit card issues,

d.3. all the banks,

d.4. AirBnB themselves

Seems unlikely to me that she planned that. <shrug> You call them as you see
them. I'm saying that I think AirBnB did the wrong thing to start with, and
continues to make it worse, even discounting the ethics and morals. Add those
in and it's even worse still.

    
    
      | Rock | AirBnB | Hard place |
    

The real issue, again ignoring ethics and morals and just concentrating on
optimal course of actions for the company - where is their risk assessment and
contingency plan? If they don't have one, that's tantamount to negligence. And
you can't claim 20:20 hindsight, because people have been expressing concerns
over this issue ever since they started.

As a director of two companies, one of which is involved in safety and
security issues, I watch the unfolding - and perhaps unravelling - drama with
interest (in both senses of the term).

------
jgrahamc
I have a simple question for AirBnB.

    
    
      Did one of the founders ask this woman to take down
      or limit access to her blog post?
    

When you cut through everything else I think the answer to that would be
telling. If the answer is no, then it points to dishonesty on the part of EJ,
if the answer is yes, then much has been learnt about how AirBnB dealt with
this situation.

------
kooshball
They must have totally messed this up for her to write a rebuttal post like
that. This post absolutely torn apart all positive points from Chesky's
response. I just still can't believe airbnb didnt see this coming, and stomp
on the problem as hard as they can to get EJ on their side. If everything she
said is true here, airbnb truly screwed up and deserve the negative PR coming
their way.

Isn't this why you give up equity to have advisers on your team? Shouldn't
they have predicted this?

~~~
junklight
I guess there are three options:

1) dive in help her, pay up make it all good get good PR. BUT if they are
thinking that this is going to be a common problem and going to happen a lot
then they may be making rod for their own backs…

or

2) Ride the storm - which again you would only do if you thought this was
going to be an ongoing issue

or

3) they are idiots and have no idea how to handle PR (just like I wouldn't
hire a project manager who hadn't been on a serious failed project I wouldn't
hire PR who hadn't weathered some sort of shit storm)

None of those choices speak well for Airbnb's value - either this is going to
be a problem for their business model or they aren't experienced enough to run
something like this…

to be fair if it's (3) I'm sure they are getting some pretty good learning in
right now

~~~
pseudonym
I honestly think that there's three proper responses:

1\. Work on your system to help prevent something like this doesn't happen
again.

2\. Add a couple dollars of "insurance" to the cost. If the PR statement is
accurate and there's been "2 million nights stayed" before an incident like
this, having a couple bucks per renter would have more than covered the cost
of this theoretically isolated incident.

3, which is far more important, figure out a way to reimburse her. This is
already far overdue, and I realize there's a couple lawyers that'll say "But
it opens the door for a fault-based civil suit", but that's an issue for the
lawyers. It seems like human decency here, and it would be a transparent PR
tactic to have waited 5 weeks to do it, but it really does seem like it's
something they'll have to do to recover from this, especially if she keeps
blogging about it.

~~~
eric-hu
I would add onto 3--however the reimbursement is done, make sure she doesn't
publish the actual numbers. One of the AirBnB guys blogged about this and
included the maximum on his insurance policy for his east coast cabin. The
first comment was "if you publish this number, everyone and anyone who sues
will sue for this amount". Likewise with any future settlements.

------
redthrowaway
So somewhere between, "we need to appear to have taken responsibility for this
and done everything in our power to help the victim and prevent future
incidents", and "we need to take responsibility for this and do everything in
our power to help the victim and prevent future incidents", Chesky et al went
seriously off the rails. If there's anything worse than doing nothing, it's
saying you've done the right thing when, in fact, you clearly haven't.

I know pg isn't likely to talk about this while the situation is still
ongoing, but it'd be nice to hear his thoughts on the matter. This is the kind
of behaviour you expect from a major airline or telecom, not a YC startup. It
certainly doesn't speak well of the character of the founders.

------
g123g
It is becoming so typical of the modern society to try to put spin on
everything for our own narrow benefit rather than trying to get to the root
cause and fix it.

This is another glaring example of it. A month after such a gruesome incident,
nothing at all has been done by AirBnB. But they have gone out of their way in
trying to put a positive spin on this whole sordid episode in order to protect
their precious funding. When will somebody from AirBnB step up and say that we
take responsibility for what happened and will do whatever it takes to help
the victim and fix the system so that something like this does not happen
again rather than wasting their efforts in trying to put a positive twist to
this story? Doing such a thing will help them much more in the longer term
than trying to simply sweep this story under the carpet.

~~~
va_coder
The only reason I can think of for the founders behaviour is that this kind
situation may happen more often than you would think and the founders don't
have the cycles to appropriately handle each one.

~~~
ry0ohki
That's what I was thinking, they didn't understand the gravity of this case
because I imagine at AirBnB volume, this must happen at least once a day
somewhere.

That said, from a customer support point of view, you never know which
negative customer experiences are going to blow up so it's important that
every customer leave with some level of satisfaction (or at least a payoff and
a signed contract if you want to be shady!)

------
muhfuhkuh
It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure. But the answers are simple, although
it's going to be a real pain for AirBnB's "frictionless" transaction model.

1) You MUST put down a CREDIT CARD. Not a bank card, not a debit card, not a
prepaid card. No plasticky no rentee. A major credit card to make a
transaction. No bitcoin, no cash, no BS. Airbnb then puts a hold equal to
transaction cost + 20% for the duration of the stay. That 20% can be put
toward insurance on both ends, paid out when satisfactory closeout of the
transaction on _both ends_ occurs. If renters balk at the 20% hold, they
shouldn't be on vacation. If owners balk at the "hold" instead of cash in
hand, they can take their business to craigslist or wherever.

2) AirBnB must then become an arbitrator, a mediator, a guarantor, and/or
(unless they want to outsource this) an insurer.

~~~
farrel
What is the insurance premium on:

1) A dedicated holiday apartment with little valuables and suitable
furnishings

2) My primary residence full of my own furniture, valuables and sentimental
items

Who is going to do that appraisal? AirBnB?

~~~
alexg0
That's actually fairly easy. Host should declare coverage limits. Does not
make sense to artificially lower the limits, since insurance will not pay for
what's not declared. Thinking somewhat similar to insurance that FedEx and UPS
are happy to sell.

------
karlhiggins
What's telling about this whole story is how Airbnb tried to "manage" her.

I thought the whole point of being a startup is you don't need to fall in line
with the dehumanizing bullshit that you find in big corporations.

That's why I'm in a startup at least and it works for me on that level.

But there's such a stench of insincerity about the Airbnb approach that I will
never use their site now.

~~~
jcc80
Upvote - the CEO really comes off as a used car salesman here and serious
d-bag.

~~~
jcc80
edit: I just read her blog & she said she had no contact w/ the CEO, Brian
Chesky so far. It was another co-founder who asked her to take down the blog
it seems.

------
TeMPOraL
Oh. My. God.

I really believed they're doing their best to help EJ. I trusted in that.

Yes, I liked AirBNB to the point of talking about it with friends and pretty
much advertising it all around as a great idea and a great company - just
because I liked them. They looked trustworthy and like a really nice company.

If what EJ wrote is accurate[1], then I find the way they handle this
situation outraging. It hurts my feelings and right now completely destroyed
my trust in AirBNB. If they won't fix it soon and start behaving like a real
human beings, theny I'm no longer caring about them, and will advice my
friends against them.

[1] - I try to not jump into conclusions too fast.

------
cageface
In our rush to disintermediate old industries we may discover that some of
those intermediaries are there for a reason.

~~~
pseudonym
What I don't get is how AirBnB vets the people leasing in the first place. I
have to get a background check when I get a job, when I rent an
apartment...does AirBnB really just let people sign up under pseudonyms
without doing any one-time identity or background checks? I realize a
background check may not have helped at all in this situation, and I don't
know how much personal info AirBnB has stored on the guy that did all of
this-- but how often is something like this going to happen when you know
you're going to be tied directly to the aftermath of it?

Is there anyone on HN who runs a hotel that can say how often you have trashed
rooms when you have accurate information on the people renting the room?

~~~
farrel
It's not just the issue of accurate information. Hotels have a security
infrastructure in place and the rooms are checked regularly.

Had the criminals who did this tried it in a hotel there is a very good chance
they would have been arrested straight away. They also have an agreement with
the guest that the guest is liable for damages.

~~~
pseudonym
To be fair. I'd think a guest-liability thing wouldn't be too hard to work
into AirBnB's infrastructure, although keeping the hosts honest is another
question entirely.

Thinking about it as a whole, I have to wonder if the proper response would be
to have a host-to-guest feedback system. As a host, you can request that
guests have a certain "level" of feedback, with the drawback of receiving a
reduced amount of money. Then on the other side, guests can get that as
discounts-- as they travel and get good feedback from the hosts, they then can
bunk at with the people who are, in essence, charging less.

Or maybe the whole system is untenable and couldn't possibly work without
webcams set up in every room of the host's house. I guess we'll find out where
it goes in the next week or so.

~~~
LogicX
They already have host and guest reviews and feedback. Granted, most people
are new to the system, and don't have feedback. As an AirBNB host, I screen
potential customers all the time, and definitely seeing positive reviews from
others is helpful.

~~~
hv23
Curious-- how does this incident affect your thoughts on being a host, if at
all?

------
niyazpk
Isn't this easily the most popular news about Airbnb this year?

I am surprised that they kept their mouth shut in all their public channels.
No mention in the blog, no direct message in twitter. And it looks they chose
to talk about this issue in TC only because TC wrote about the original story.
This is what they replied to people in twitter:

 _@joyandjoy EJ's blog post says, "They have offered to help me recover
emotionally and financially, and are working with SFPD"_

Yeah right. Now EJ's blog post says that they did not keep their promise.

This is what happens when you hesitate to help the victim of an incident like
this and instead start plotting and planning PR activities supposed to do the
damage control for your next valuation.

What a shame.

~~~
mattdeboard
No, the problem is they did NOT do any PR planning whatsoever.

------
moonlighter
EJ writes: "And I was - but no longer am - scared of Airbnb’s reaction, the
pressure and the veiled threat I have received from them since I initially
blogged this story."

Wow. That sounds quite different from what Brian Chesky claims here:
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-
airbn...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbnb/)

~~~
ColinWright
Chesky's claims are addressed directly in the blog post, and don't look good.

~~~
moonlighter
"...don't look good." is quite the understatement. If he tried to manage the
fallout, it totally backfired, and now they have a full-blown PR _nightmare_
to deal with, which could've been avoided.

~~~
pseudonym
>>Once our host’s safety was secured, our attention moved to further
strengthening our system.

In the context of this article, this sentence from their PR statement takes on
a new and depressing overtone-- that of "Okay, we think the guy is arrested,
so you're fine, right? We don't need to pay attention to you anymore, right?
By the way, can you take down that blog post now?"

~~~
alnayyir
I don't like to be vulgar, particularly on HN, but it really needs to be
asked.

Is anyone here really all that surprised Chesky is a douche?

~~~
nkassis
Or it might just be that the guy is under a lot of stress and making bad
decision. Watching your company potentially go up in flames with one incident
is probably not an easy situation in which to make decisions.

We don't know the whole story. I understand the host stance also, basically on
both sides they see things they've invested a lot into (her personal life and
belongings, the company) be destroyed.

I'm not saying they are on the same level here (Her personal life and stuff is
not easy to fix and she can't fail with that, at least not as easy as doing
another company to me).

~~~
Lucadg
I agree. I can't even start to imagine the pressure. It's easy for us to say
"he should have done like that" because we can think clearly from a distance.

This guy was one of us reading HN and hoping to make it a couple of years ago.
Now he's managing millions.

Nobody really prepared him for that. I can imagine phone calls from people
above him counseling to kill the story.

He may even had wanted to take a different approach but bend to pressure for
what we know. Money talks loudly.

I don't like the was he's dealing with it, I just want to say that it must be
very hard to take good decisions in such a situation.

~~~
suprgeek
If managing millions robs you of the empathy that is necessary in this
situation then there is something very wrong in the whole situation.

A user of your service had their life upended as a direct result of loopholes
in your vetting model. The LEAST you can do is reimburse them in full for
their loss, take the monetary hit, and plug the holes in your model. If you
are managing this in any other way you deserve to have your job forfeited.

------
bambax
> _And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to
> help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that
> instead, you keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe
> hotel room the next time you travel._

Will do.

------
vnchr
Just be a good company and take care of the customer. This isn't rocket
science. Hire someone who is her personal assistant through the process until
the process is over, help as much as possible.

Concerns for setting a cost-inefficient precedent? BS. Not helping her has
become the real cost-inefficient precedent set in this case. I had no idea
this had been going on for a month now.

This is a shame. Take care of your customers, so much more when they're in
your backyard.

~~~
protomyth
I would change personal assistant to agency. People in these type of
situations tend to not deal as well with being assigned a person. A single
person in an agency is fine as the office and desk lends to creditability and
doesn't give the "another person invading my space" problem.

------
brianchesky
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.

~~~
codeglomeration
I think you need to act on this, rather than just keep making promises. I also
believe you would have helped already if you really wanted to.

You're essentially asking her right now to be a beggar, and putting her into
an even more degrading position. What do you expect her to do? Write you that
she needs $1000 for a new laptop, $100 for a new door, $50 for new locks?

Put yourself in her shoes. Doubt you would do that.

EDIT: Also, you can't have it both ways. If you state you're going to help
her, then help her. Otherwise just state it's out of AirBnbs' reach, and the
hosts should have insurance and pay carefull consideration to who they rent.

You're coming of as disingenuous in your remarks.

~~~
SkyMarshal
You're exactly right on this. She also simply lacks the energy to do
everything she needs to do to overcome this. AirBnB could really turn this
from a crisis to an opportunity by taking the bull completely by the horns
here, and making her whole again, at least emotionally. Waiting for an
emotionally scarred PTSD-victim to figure out and enumerate exactly what they
need is not going to cut it.

------
willyt
The internet is moving _really_ fast, I've already seen non tech people I know
commenting about this on Facebook. They might have lost already. When
something like this happens I think you probably have hours to sort it out,
rather than weeks. Remember that it was less than 24 hours from the story
breaking that News Corp decided the best course of action was closing a
business with ~7 million repeat customers. Of course there may be other
reasons they did this but still...

~~~
palish
Which incident are you referring to?

~~~
silverlight
The tabloid they owned that was tapping the phone lines of celebrities.

------
robtoo
From a comment on an earlier post by Brian Chesky:

 _We've created a marketplace built on trust, transparency and authenticity
within our community, and we hold the safety of our community members as our
highest priority._

I'm really not sure how he can reconcile that comment with the actions
described in this post.

~~~
nickolai
Thats just generic PR text. Almost boilerplate.

Isnt your BS-detector off the charts when reading 'trust' 'transparency'
'community' and 'highest priority' all in one sentence?

------
pontifier
It seems like easy money, but being a landlord is a crummy business to be in.
I haven't had an experience quite this bad, but we screen our tenants, don't
keep our own valuables where they can get them, and take a large deposit up
front. We have still had places trashed and had to pay repairs of well over
$10k to return them to rentable condition when someone moves out...

Luckily we have much of the tenants information to try to collect from them.
Un-luckily we can almost never collect damages from these types of people.
They will quit their job to not have an income we can garnish.

You don't want to be a landlord. I don't want to be a landlord.

~~~
LogicX
I would propose that being a landlord, and hosting on AirBNB have the
potential to be quite different things. My father is a landlord, he shares
similar stories of disaster. He also rents out in a low-income, remote area.

My AirBNB offering is near Boston, where 85% of my visitors are traveling here
as tourists from far away. I keep my nightly price reasonable, but on the
higher end. I ask plenty of questions about the visiting party, where they're
coming from, what they do for work, what they plan to do while here, and I
require a photo.

If I receive any questionable answers, they delay in providing the
information, or just anything seems off, I call it off with that prospect.

I've hosted well over 100 people in the last 18 months for over 100 nights.
With the exception of one of my first guests, I don't believe any of the
people who have stayed with us are the kind of people that would cause damage,
much less any trouble.

~~~
pontifier
What would you do if you had had the same sort of experience that EJ had? I
think you might change your mind.

Let's look at your numbers... I'll guess that you charge $150/night (minus the
$20 AirBNB fee = $130/night you had 100 nights in 18 months, for an average of
~$722/month.

That's a tidy sum. Is it worth the work, risk and headache? Would the value of
the extra property you are keeping and renting provide a better return if you
moved to a smaller place and put the value difference in another investment?

These are questions you have to ask yourself, and everyone will have different
opinions. My opinion is that being a landlord means having illiquid assets
that provide a low return with high risk and a lot of work.

------
chegra
Hmm... At this point, AirBnB has gone beyond the point of reconciliation with
this EJ. Either she is lying or AirBnB is lying.

The onus is on AirBnB to supply evidence to the contrary of what EJ has to
say. They have more at stake. Their brand is now blowing in the wind along
with the goodwill they have built up.

What we have so far is that you have indeed offer to help financially. What we
don't have is evidence to support you did or you did and she turn down the
offers. Appropriate receipts would easily discredit her. Any other response
short of supplying document would only discredit AirBnB.

~~~
Jd
It's not just AirBnB, it is the whole YC brand that is at stake. PG on this
thread is now on record coming out in defense of AirBnB -- and effectively
saying that EJ is lying when contrasted to those "nice guys" over at AirBnB.

------
codeup
We've had the initial blogpost and Brian Chesky's response on Techcrunch. I
would love to read what Airbnb CEOs have to say about the second blog post.

I think they should take credible steps as soon as possible to improve the
author's situation. While they're at it, an explanation of how such incidents
can be stopped from happening again would also be good.

If trust is so important for their business model, they have to demonstrate
that Airbnb is trustworthy.

------
vladd
"Airbnb was mentioning their funding to a victim of ransacking? OMG that's
bad..." (quote from TC comment)

------
jclampet
I'm much more inclined to believe EJ than Airbnb's spin. The week after EJ's
story appeared one of my writers (I'm an editor at a travel website)
approached EJ for a story we were doing about safety and vacation rentals. She
helped out on the story, but didn't want any more attention drawn to her case
at that point. She's been thrust back into the spotlight b/c of Airbnb's spin,
not because she's out to get them. If her story was fake, Airbnb wouldn't be
doing the serious damage control they're engaged in now.

I think they're seriously worried that the attention to the case will
highlight two big weaknesses of their product: 1. In many markets, it's
illegal to do short-term rentals, 2. Homeowners/renters insurance doesn't
cover damages in these situations. Many markets won't crack down on these
rentals (see the NYT story about SF rentals last weekend), but if they in the
name of safety or code violations, Airbnb's got a problem. And if people start
getting spooked about insurance issues, they're screwed from the other end.

------
chrisgoodrich
This is such a tragic situation. I am shocked by the lack of response by
Airbnb. The very least they can do is provide her assistance and connecting
her with the right resources to move forward.

When I was in college, a classmate in a philosophy class found out I was a
business major and turned to me and said "you guys are just so heartless." I
resented the statement but brushed it off as a gross generalization.
Situations like these just prove my classmates point to be more real than I
was willing to admit at the time. Putting profit above the safety and well
being of your customers/users is a terrible business practice that will
certainly lead to the death of your business. This isn't even about PR, this
is fundamental to the future of the Airbnb platform and they aren't even
listening.

The hotel lobby has a huge opportunity here that I don't think they realize
yet. With this being on the front page of the Financial Times today, the hotel
lobby should be swooping in anytime to pick up the pieces of Airbnb's failure
to act. If I were the manager of any hotel in the SF area, I'd be offering her
a free stay until things got sorted out. Airbnb is going to be left in the
wake wondering what the hell happened.

------
econgeeker
This is reminding me of the Soutwest Air response to the mistreatment they put
Kevin Smith thru. When he went public, it was obvious they didn't give a damn
about him and they were totally in damage control mode. Rather than apologize
and recognize the error, they tried to turn it into a debate about whether fat
people should fly, and they misrepresented the situation further.

I saw that comment on tech crunch and felt that Chesky was begin dishonest
(based solely on having ready he previous blog post from ej) and now we see
that AirBnB tried to get her to shut up!

As a frequent AirBnB customer (staying in a place rented via AirBnB at the
moment, in fact) I'm finding that I'm having less and less faith in the
company as these incidents unfold. (I'm not just talking about this, but
Kutchner, the Craigslist, the fact that they keep their customers in the dark,
etc.)

Frankly, as someone who has been online for two decades now, talking to people
I can get a good feeling for how trustworthy they are. AirBnB inhibits this
because it inhibits communication-- it can only happen thru their service
which is not conducive to having a dialog.

The sole purpose of restricting this communication and restricting customer's
ability to assess the risk in any of these transactions is AirBnB's desire to
prevent the possibility that a deal might happen off of their site.

Reality is, this is silly. We found an apartment on AirBnB once and then found
it on the internet (wasn't hard given knowledge of the details of the
apartment.) We could have booked it that way and saved the AirBnB
commission... but we booked it thru AirBnB anyway because we wanted them to
escrow the funds. (Little did we know how little protection AirBnB provides in
that regard.) But we were able to find out more about that apartment by
looking at its website compared to the info on AirBnB.

And more importantly, having the owner's email address allowed us to discuss a
lot of possible issues about the situation, and assess their
trustworthiness... something impossible or difficult to do thru AirBnB.

------
krschultz
We're lucky this was a property crime. I know the victim is feeling crushed
right now, but property can be replaced (aside from some personal items).
There is a huge potential for a sick property owner or vacationer to become
violent with the other party. Imagine if they story was about a kidnapping,
murder, assault, or rape. AirBnB better figure out the mechanism for their
background check ASAP, becuase you can count people being good >99.9% of the
time, but that <0.1% breaks your system.

------
Simon_M
_"...keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room
the next time you travel. You’ll be glad you did."_

Statements like this certainly fuel the hotel industry conspiracy theories
from yesterday for me. It doesn't even make sense, as she claims the hotels
will be safer for the travellers. The travellers safety was never at question
here was it?

~~~
nickolai
I read it as just an elaborate way of saying "Thanks, but no thanks", and
"dont use AirBnB"

------
jeswin
Just like everyone else, I hope the AirBNB guys will do the right thing.

I don't know if many of you have seen her Jan 2nd post titled 'New Year. New
Home.'

"As 2011 sets in, I find myself curled up on a new couch in a new apartment in
a not-so-new city, reading today’s (and yesterday’s) New York Times, and
listening to the rain fall against the skylight overhead. A Duraflame log
burns in the fireplace, a bar of dark chocolate sits half-eaten on the
counter, and a lull of soft music whispers from the stereo. I am cozy,
comfortable and perfectly content. I am home."

".... unpacking dusty boxes, unloading suitcases and scouring the internet for
furniture. Something along the lines of a home began to take shape, and with
it came that invaluable feeling of being at peace."

"....For the time being anyway, it's my home. And - surprisingly or not - a
pretty great home it's turning out to be."

It is a tragedy.

------
farrel
Does AirBnB educate hosts on the risks involved?

Does it encourage them to remove valuables and non-replaceable items from the
apartment being rented?

Does it tell them that any damages incurred will probably not be covered by
their homeowners insurance? Does it provide information on how to attain extra
insurance?

Does AirBnB hold the guest liable for any damages to a hosts property?

------
giardini
I think this is a shakedown, even if it occurred as EJ said.

Renting one's own living space to someone sight unseen is absurdly naive. It
is incumbent upon the owner of the property to protect his own. Hotels do it,
B&Bs do it, but EJ did not. That is sheer stupidity. There should have been
someone to meet the renter and to monitor their stay.

The relationships here are business relationships and there are certain
minimal precautions one should take. EJ took none. I don't believe she is
justified in insisting that Airbnb fix everything. She learned a lesson (and
luckily, so did many others vicariously). A normal person would stand up,
clean up and learn. A nutball would get a lawyer (and eventually lose).

Also, doesn't she have insurance? Although I would imagine that most policies
would not cover renting one's dwelling to a complete stranger sight unseen
without a special rider ("hotel insurance" maybe).

Finally EJ might look at her property's deed restrictions. Is she allowed to
run a business at her residence? Is she allowed to rent her home? Is she
required by the state or city to to pay a "hotel tax", a "business
registration fee", etc.? EJ may be in violation of any number of municipal and
state laws.

------
ericelias
Upon reading the article about TaskRabbit, I think Airbnb can apply the same
type of checks:

"Since many common tasks are carried out in the senders’ homes, runners are
vetted through a three-step process..

which starts with an application form and progresses to an automated phone or
video interview that poses a series of questions designed to weed out
deadbeats.

Finally, TaskRabbit pays the database giant Acxiom to perform a federal
criminal background check on each prospective worker."

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_taskrabbit/>

------
msluyter
I guess I'm weirdly cynical, but I never though airbnb had a viable model.
Perhaps for rental properties, but I would never rent my own home. I see a
certain analogy between this and hitchhiking. Hitchhiking used to be safe in
America, but now you rarely see it because it's perceived to be dangerous. I
always figured airbnb would follow the same trajectory.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I think I remember reading that pg had the same reaction, and was surprised at
how many users they got, then decided to invest. I too thought it was a
terrible idea, and was (and still am) surprised that people would want to do
this.

I am not saying this single incident is proof either way, but that was my
initial reaction to the idea.

------
covercash
It would be great if some journalist would do a bit of fact checking on both
sides of the story instead of just blindly republishing what they both claim
to be the truth. I'm sure someone must have a SFPD source that could verify
some of this story, even off the record would be better than nothing.

------
16s
My advice would be to forget PR, forget trying to spin it. Just tell the
truth, do the right thing for the victim, and figure out how to prevent it
going forward.

 __ _That's all they have to do._ __

------
watty
Awful customer service and PR failure on Airbnb's part, they should be
ashamed. Not only did they NOT do anything to help this poor woman but they
lied about it for positive PR and asked her to remove/edit the blog? Wow,
that's about as low as it gets.

------
estel
I doubt I'm the only one that was interested in using AirBNB with their
growing traction and successes.

No way will that happen now. It's hard to imagine how they could have handled
this worse.

~~~
pseudonym
>>It's hard to imagine how they could have handled this worse.

At least they had the foresight to take down the snarky "nobody'll steal a
grand piano" comment off their FAQ.

------
G5f3
Parallels with DropBox and their no password login disaster? Bad processes and
a botched PR response.

Methinks these super-hot startups may be reaching critical mass before they
develop business maturity.

~~~
RossDM
Very true - though look at some large companies and you see them make the same
mistakes. It all trickles down.

------
niyazpk
Update: SF police arrest suspect in trashing of Airbnb rental

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20085741-245/sf-police-
arr...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20085741-245/sf-police-arrest-
suspect-in-trashing-of-airbnb-rental/)

------
btucker
What a huge missed opportunity for AirBnB! For a drop in the bucket of time &
expense, they could have easily come out of this looking stellar & likely
would have gained the business of many people who have been on the fence.

Instead the come out looking like they're trying to hide the flaws in their
model.

------
Zakuzaa
Now wait for the mainstream media to jump on this.

~~~
spazmaster
Here's one: [http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-not-safe-the-renter-
st...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-not-safe-the-renter-stolen-
identity-and-destroyed-her-life-2011-7) and it showed up on the first page
when i searched for AirBnB on Google. And there's a Techcrunch post on the
bottom of the first page as well.

~~~
redthrowaway
That's from a couple days ago. I somehow doubt future stories will paint
airbnb in such a positive light.

~~~
spazmaster
True it's from two days ago. But the title is 'AIRBNB HORROR' (yes in all
caps). I wouldn't want that showing on a Google's first results page when
googling my companies name.

------
Herald_MJ
Just to kick off an alternate perspective on the situation: up until reading
about this incident, airbnb and the whole business model of "borrow my home"
has somehow escaped my attention, and even though what has happened in EJ's
situation is really horrible and she has my sympathy, I definitely recognise
that her case is an extreme minority case that potentially wouldn't affect me
as a user of the service. After reading about airbnb following this incident
and browsing their website a bit, I am actually quite keen on trying the
service! So perhaps any publicity really is good publicity!

------
runjake
The people who did this are horrible, and Airbnb definitely has areas they
could improve their process.

That said, I'm more shocked at "EJ's" naivety and passing of all
responsibility on Airbnb. You're renting your place out to complete strangers,
not only that, you're leaving all of your valuables there with them. You don't
know their real (or the fake one they stole) name until you're already aboard
an outbound plane?! That is insanity to me.

If a person NEEDS Craigslist-style warnings about being careful, that person
should probably not rent their place out on Airbnb. This is just very poor
judgement on her part.

~~~
SkyMarshal
True. I've used AirBnB a few times and it was always while the host was still
in the apartment. It never occured to me that people would rent their
apartment via AirBnB without actually being there.

I do wonder now whether EJ's 'DJ Pattrson' knew she would be away and planned
to ransack the place whether she were home or not. If she were home, what
would they have done, tied her in the closet, or worse?

------
flocial
The real nightmare is Airbnb's handling of this situation. Slow and inadequate
response, a founder trying to put a spin/silence the victim (this is called a
coverup) and another founder sending a feeble email stating he/she"would enjoy
meeting" the victim. Sure, if I was the victim I would love to grab a cup of
coffee with the founder of the company that created a service that was the
direct catalyst of the most traumatic event of my life in recent years to
"touch bases" and get to know each other. How about, "I would like to
personally meet you to apologize and talk about how we can make this situation
right. Here's my phone number, please call me any time of the day." You're in
the same neighborhood, surely you can get in touch personally in five weeks if
you tried hard enough.

And pg doesn't seem to have a clue when it comes to the "personal touch"
either. "Fix it", in this case doesn't mean compensating all damages
financially and maybe adding a little extra money for trouble. The victim's
home and sanctuary was violated by people. If this was a natural disaster,
maybe money would go a long way, but this person's trust in people was
violated and she also lost "priceless" memorabilia etc. to vandals who are
either social misfits and/or drug addicts that methodically deceive unknowing
victims.

This situation is reminiscent of Sony's reaction to cracker attacks. The
criminals attacked a glaring hole in the security model, company shifts blame
to criminals. "A community built on trust" without security? What about trust
and verify? The victim clearly states that Craigslist has a better security
model and for all we know that couch surfing site too.

The lack of security measures in this case illustrate a glaring hole in the
founder's approach to the problem. Any casual observer would conclude that the
safety of users is only secondary to the company's goals of generating more
revenues and obtaining more funding.

Airbnb, please come out of the state of denial and just simply admit:

A. We messed up big time

B. Any compensation will never truly fix this situation but we will do
everything within reason to remedy it

C. Lessons from this disaster will be applied immediately to ramp up security
and formalizing the response of such crises in the future.

------
larrys
Even though Fred Wilson said "We couldn't wrap our heads around air mattresses
on the living room floors as the next hotel room and did not chase the deal."

...with regards to not funding airbnb I somehow feel that that might not have
been the case.

I think Fred's age (49?) and experience in life basically made it hard to
understand how an idea like this couldn't have potential problems such, as
only one example, this situation.

Hold on a second before you say "it only happened this one time".

How do we know that? People seem to think that either your place gets trashed
or it's absolutely fine.

It's not digital it's analog. There's an in between state.

Something could get stolen that you don't know even about until much later. It
won't always be the obvious thing like jewelry (and why would you leave that
actually) it could be one of many little things you don't realize you have
until missing. Or something could be broken.

The fact is there is no way for airbnb to insure against any number of minor
type things that could happen. Where minor becomes your problem and your
aggravation.

Have you ever seen how big of an industry shoplifting prevention is? Do you
really think that only a minor % of the population commits petty type crimes?

And there is the reverse situation.

If you stay at someones place what if they honestly think that you stole
something of theirs because they can't find it? Honest mistakes like this
happen all the time. And the most obvious culprit tends to be blamed.

------
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"

------
tinbad
Last paragraph of the blogpost: EJ doesn't want other people to help her and
strongly advises them to book a hotel room instead of using airbnb.. after all
that happened to her, shouldn't that be of latter concern? I mean being in her
shoes, I would welcome any donations from people willing to help.. unless of
course it's not a true story.

I can't be sure of course, but all the anonymity around it makes it kind of
suspicious.

------
Omnipresent
Airbnb should look at,this situation as an opporrunity to turn bad publicity
into a good one. Some bucks taken out from huge funding rounds and spent
towards ej would go a long long way. This should also be combined with better
identity measures implemented to avoid airbnb from having to cover cost of any
more cases like these.

------
veyron
Question: Suppose that I use airbnb to rent out my apartment to someone, and
that person leaves the door unlocked and a third person goes in and steals my
imac. Who takes liability here? Is there something in the airbnb agreement
which explicitly waives rights to pursue airbnb for the losses?

------
nakkal
Airbnb should probably read their 6th golden rules of thumb

<http://www.airbnb.com/home/goldenrules>

"If something goes wrong unexpectedly, be accessible to help remedy the
situation. Be a hero to your guest!"

------
gallerytungsten
"He requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access"

If true, that's really sleazy.

------
Firebrand
Airbnb's Terms & Privacy section states that "We are not involved in the
actual face-to-face contact between users," have "no control over the conduct
of our users or the truth or accuracy of the information that users post," and
" do not investigate any user's reputation, conduct, morality, criminal
background, or verify the information that any user submits to the Site."

It's a business, they're supposed to be money driven. Although it's sad to see
someone abuse the system, she agreed to those terms when she put her apartment
up there. The owners aren't obligated to recompense the lady.

~~~
lyudmil
Absolutely and let's assume they don't. If the facts of the case are as
stated, then Airbnb acted unethically in my opinion. Since their lack of
ethics cannot be punished in a court of law, the author claims her right to
smear the company publicly. That's all this post is meant to do and I think
that's just.

------
blumentopf
What's totally missing here is some kind of compassionate reaction from
Airbnb.

Regarding that joke in the FAQ about guests stealing the grand piano: I think
it's okay to make such a joke IF AND ONLY IF the reaction to a case like this
is in the same vein: The minute they learned about this ordeal, they should
have stopped working, cancel all meetings and help her. And if that means
mopping her floors themselves then do it. They did the opposite, they acted
greedily and stingily and thereby didn't just let down the girl, but everyone
in the startup community who admired and rooted for them.

~~~
dctoedt
> _The minute they learned about this ordeal, they should have stopped
> working, cancel all meetings and help her. And if that means mopping her
> floors themselves then do it._

Doing so might well be appropriate, but they'd probably want to downplay that
fact---otherwise, they'd risk raising the bar for their response the next time
something happens. Gotta try to manage expectations, difficult as that is.

------
jvc26
I'm slightly concerned that AirBNB are spinning this rather than just sorting
stuff out. Veiled threats to the victim, whilst spreading incorrect stories
are a concerning development in an already distressing case. If the guy in
custody is the guy responsible, why are AirBNB and EJ not in sync? This smells
massively of a total PR disaster for AirBNB, whatever is said about
compensation or no, threatening victims, or telling them to 'limit access to
their blog' is as naive as it is stupid - how does the internet usually react
to 'limiting access'?

------
pressurewasher
_And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to
help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that
instead, you keep the money and use it to >> book yourself into a nice, safe
hotel room the next time you travel <<. You’ll be glad you did._

Devil's advocate (not being inconsiderate): doesn't the hotel industry have an
enormous interest in the demise of Airbnb? Interesting how the blog posts
makes this suggestion after the heart strings have been tug.

------
marcamillion
Oh boy....this is going downhill fast!

------
jh3
This is pretty awful. I'm hoping Airbnb takes care of her. They are in a
pretty tough position, though.

If they go under because of this I personally hope it is not until August. So,
first and foremost, fix EJ's situation, but also for all of the people who are
still using the service, currently using the service, or have plans made in
the next few weeks through this service, take care of this. Don't leave her
hanging.

Also, it is unfortunate that Airbnb will be known by a lot of new people
because of this incident.

------
uladzislau
Did anyone see this as an utter failure of handling customer expectations by
Airbnb? Don't make promises if you're unable to keep them. I feel very sorry
for this poor lady.

------
cpg
Noone has commented this yet. What are the chances this is all in some way a
PR play (possibly gone bad) to get on the news during a round of funding? (The
"there's no such things as bad publicity" kind)

Not saying it is .. but I do wonder. The only thing that would make it
doubtful is that part where she says he told her about _the impact on Airbnb
round of funding_. But then again, if your mind is twisted ...

------
TWAndrews
Between this and the spammy--potentially illegal--posts to Craig's List
([http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-
sal...](http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-sales-team-
used-craigslist-for-stealthy-property-drive/)) to generate rentals, it's very
hard to think of AirBnB as a well run company.

------
rumpelstiltskin
Prediction: She will sue Airbnb. And win.

~~~
jamesteow
How so? I don't think Airbnb is liable for any damages to her property.

~~~
hnal943
I'm not sure why this being downvoted. What liability does Airbnb have?
Financially, the burden for the damage should be covered by the host's
renter's insurance. If she wasn't properly insured, how is that the fault of
airbnb?

~~~
foxit
One cannot be insured for this occurrence. Neither homeowner's nor renter's
insurances cover paid guests in the home.

~~~
hnal943
Homeowner's and renter's insurance are not the only types of insurance there
are. Who insures traditional BnB's?

~~~
foxit
From the earlier conversations on this particular issue, business insurance
(i.e. landlord insurance, hotel insurance) is needed. You can't get business
insurance to run an unlicensed business in a private residence, particularly
if a) your home isn't zoned for it, and b) if it violates your lease (in the
case of a rental)/HOA (in the case of homeownership)/local law (in the case of
NYC/SF/Paris et al.). Is there an opportunity there for someone to step up and
insure Airbnb-style rentals? Yes. Meanwhile, though, these rentals are not
insurable.

------
ajays
The solution for AirBnB is (or was...) simple.

1\. Make this person whole, at least in terms of material possessions and
safety, to the extent possible. And do it __FAST __

2\. Ask them to take down the blog, and replace it with something along the
lines of "my situation is resolved. Thank you AirBnB. But I can't discuss the
terms".

3\. Work on strengthening your internal processes to make sure the chances of
a similar incident are further reduced by a couple of orders of magnitude

4\. Improve your customer-service department.

But it's been almost a month, and they still haven't done any of this. They
just seemed too concerned about what this will do to their valuation. This is
pure bullshit on their part! It shows that they have absolutely no idea how to
operate in a customer-facing industry.

------
rdouble
This story is beginning to smell fishy. I was burglarized in a similar, but
not as extreme manner. My landlord was involved immediately. Why is there no
mention of the property owner in any of these stories?

In my case, the "investigation" was over in about 1.25 days. There's not much
the police can do. SFPD would not spend 2 months investigating a burglary in
an illegal sublet.

Furthermore, there are no photos of the damage, the victim is anonymous, and
there is no description of the neighborhood or apartment complex. If someone
was bent on catching the burglars, more info would be disseminated, not less.
The articles are written as though the author has an axe to grind with AirBNB,
not that she wants to catch the thieves.

~~~
lambda
Why not mention the landlord? Maybe because it's not particularly relevant? I
mean, what would she say about the landlord? "I told the landlord, and he
commiserated with me, and helped me change the locks." And heck, she already
mentioned changing the locks.

As far as the investigation, Airbnb has claimed that a suspect has been
apprehended, but apparently neither the SFPD nor Airbnb have contacted her
with any further details. She's not necessarily blaming the SFPD for not
having caught the suspect; but she's arguing that the spin that Airbnb has put
on this story is untrue, that everything has not been resolved, and they have
not been as helpful as they claim.

And why would someone who had just been victimized by someone anonymous they
connected with on the internet want to publish a whole bunch of personal
details all over the internet? Internet vigilantism is not some silver bullet;
publishing more information may lead her to be more vulnerable, not less. Her
intent is not to get "the internet" to help catch the thieves; her intent is
to warn people about the risks of using Airbnb's service, and that Airbnb will
basically do nothing to mitigate those risks.

And it's not like this story is completely made up. Brian Chesky wouldn't have
written a response confirming many of the details and contesting none of them
if the story were untrue. All he did was try to put a positive spin on it,
which this second post demonstrates is just spin, with no real content.

~~~
rdouble
This is a 37 year old woman who lived in NYC for 6 years and then spent two
year traveling to places like Brazil and Bogota, Columbia. At this point she
knows that people suck and shit happens. She definitely does not have PTSD
from this experience. I take back any thing that might have suggested I agreed
with the conspiracy theorists. This woman is BROKE and she's trying to spin
this hard to get some sort of payout from AirBNB.

~~~
bethling
There's a world of difference between seeing shit happen to other people and
having it happen to you. You might think you're ready to handle it, but the
moment you're violated it will likely affect you in ways that you could never
really imagine. (and that's not to say that everyone will fall apart - but
it's almost never what you expected)

~~~
rdouble
In my previous post I mention a similar burglary DID happen to me. Honestly,
one cleans up and gets over it.

------
learc83
My first thought is that you'd might actually have a higher chance of having
someone trash your house if you leave it unoccupied for week vs. letting
someone rent it on Airbnb.

~~~
rmc
If you leave it unoccupied for a week and it gets trashed you can probably
claim from your insurance company. If you rent it out to a randomer online,
the insurance company probably won't cover any damages.

~~~
learc83
True, didn't think of that.

------
guildchatter
Does anyone actually know the "real" story? I feel like Airbnb/YC is saying
one thing, and EJ is saying something else.

Is this a case of miscommunications that got blown out of proportion?

------
olaf
I never understood any hype around AirBnB, my hunch was and is "stay at a
distance, this is somehow dirty".

As an afterthought, I think, they sell an illusion, sack in money and let
their customers alone take at least one huge risk.

For me they have already passed the point of no return, they have shown who
they are (instead of supporting the victim full heartedly they play an evil
game), I will not use their service.

Could this help: "As a gesture of goodwill and without acknowledging any legal
obligation."

------
steilpass
Scary how fast a startup can get a bad company.

------
kabdib
Wow.

AirBnb is /done/.

------
racerrick
Is it possible that she made the story up?

~~~
AlexandrB
Of course it's possible. Is it likely? No. Especially since airbnb already
responded and acknowledged the situation.

------
newchimedes
I think the most disturbing part is how they tried to get her to take her blog
or limit access to her blog post. The reason? Because it would hurt their
funding round. So instead of a $5 billion valuation they now get $4.5 billion.

Please. The fact is this incident happened on their watch. Trying to pretend
they are the hero in this mess and spin it their way bothers me tremendously.
I mean, she got robbed as a consequence of using their site. That stuff
happens and honestly I don't think anyone really believes they can stop all
bad things from happening. But this whole let's try to hide this under the rug
deal makes them look 1000x worse I think than her getting robbed (which still
sucks!)

------
jcunningham
So Chesky dropped the "suspect is in custody" line to give the press the
impression of closure?

Foxy move on his part.

Looks like he just got busted though or the victim would surely know of the
existence of a suspect.

------
Hisoka
Just a side note.. have you guys ever wondered what the impact of this story
would've been if AirBnB was not an YC company? That's a big reason why AirBnb
is always talked about here. If this was just a regular, non-YC, non-funded
company, I doubt this would be a big story. I doubt Techcrunch would talk
about it and I doubt we here would vehemently argue about this... In the end,
it's about a woman who's room got trashed.. Yes, very unfortunate, but let's
face it, this would not make big headlines if this was just a regular company.

------
gobongo
All of this discussion about what airbnb should or shouldn't do is ultimately
moot now. Unless they can prove "EJ" is totally fictional and/or an insane
liar the company is essentially dead in the water already (at least as a US
operation). Not just because of the PR hit (though that is substantial), but
because of the inevitability of media, lawyers & politicians circling the
wagons around this story.

Airbnb's business will be explicitly illegal throughout much of the US by
year's end, and honestly in its current incarnation I'm not convinced that it
is a bad thing (for obvious reasons this is clearly a market which needs more
regulation and process than they provide).

Nice experiment... too bad about all of that flushed away money though.

------
jsavimbi
tl;dr: Devil's Advocate.

This is not going to be very popular, but I'm just going to go on the record
and say that this whole story may be a hoax.

And I highlight "maybe". What we have here are two blog posts from someone we
know nothing about who epitomizes a concentration of fears (woman, home,
identity, violation) and manages, in two blog posts over the past seven months
to bring about a PR nightmare for AirBnB. Is Chesky and idiot and/or
sociopath? Probably not, and this could be some crappy CYA on AirBnB's behalf,
but the second blog post in response to Chesky's On Safety release does
nothing but reinforce and add onto the imagined fetal-curling fears the author
expressed in her first post, but also systematically tries to disprove any
actions mentioned by Chesky while simultaneously smearing unnamed AirBnB reps.

Two blog posts over seven months. Talented writer with no writing history able
to communicate and project emotions and elicit visceral responses from
complete strangers.

Am I the only one whose bullshit alarm is going off?

Disclaimer: I have no connection to YC, pg, AirBnB, Chesky, Starwood Hotels
nor have I participated in AirBnB's program or any similar
crashpad/couchsurfing/hosteling schemes.

~~~
krschultz
That doesn't really make any sense. If it was a hoax, AirBnB would have come
out and said that in their TC post. Instead they came out and said effectively
'yes, this happened, we're fixing it'. The victim is now disagreeing with
AirBnB's assertion that they are fixing it.

Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. So
you are basically arguing that she trashed her own house and committed the
crime of filing a false police report in an all out effort to crush AirBnB.
Occam's Razor tells me the odds of that being the true angle here are slim.

As for your comments 'someone we know nothing about' and 'talented writer with
no writing history'. You know nothing about her. You have never seen her
writing before. But why should you know a random stranger? And most writers
are not bloggers. The internet is not the universe. I've won a bunch of awards
for my fiction writing, yet you probably can not find more than my HN posts
online from me. Believe it or not, some things exist out there that Google
can't find.

~~~
jsavimbi
> Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police.

Sorry, but I've seen no proof of either and I doubt that you have. Even if
AirBnB has seen the damage as reported by the host and the SFPD have a person
in custody, what we have is the alleged destruction of property and alleged
identity theft. Alleged, not proven.

> You know nothing about her.

Exactly, but what I do know is that there's a person who has made use of her
blog three times this year: 1/22, 6/29 and 7/28. Two of those posts relate to
AirBnB, drawing attention to the intense emotional trauma she's currently
suffering and inattention and callousness that AirBnB is displaying towards
her situation. Prior to that, we have an entry from 8/3/10. Nothing much to go
by in order to assess who this person was prior to the AirBnB incident. Except
we do have a blogroll link for "My year of getting published" dated one month
ago. How odd.

Another thing that we have, and I'm drawing my own conclusions here, is the
perfect recipe to get noticed in a sea-full of nerds: single vulnerable white
female, lives alone in SF, violated by the actions of an unknown person or
persons and who is crying out for help, appealing to the crowd who'll most
like empathize with her: nerdy single guys who'd jump at the chance to put on
their cape and save the day. It's too perfect of a recipe to ignore.

So what I'm saying is that she should get herself a lawyer, today, and have
them handle her case and public relations going forward, because we all know
that she's going to sue AirBnB and due to the amount of buzz she's been
generating on the Twitters, my guess is that many a TV producer has been
tasked with tracking her down for an interview. We'll see how that plays out.

If it took Chesky a whole month to address these issues of hers and implement
changes in the organization to address them and those issues were real and
valid, then shame on him, but something tells me that they may have expected
this problem to go away.

I'm not trying to draw and links between this woman's complaint and those of
the Groupon cafe owner, but it sees to me that, as always, people are engaging
in activities whose potential consequences they know nothing about and in
response they take to the web to generate outrage in support of their
situation, but in those cases that I'm aware of, the stories start to unravel
once they undergo any scrutiny beyond reading a blog post or two.

And if I'm still able to gauge public opinion correctly amongst the normals,
most are going assume that you get what you deserve for handing the keys to
your apartment to a total stranger for a whole week. It's something that is
simply not done in the real world.

~~~
krschultz
What do you mean it's not something done in the real world? What is VRBO.com
(vacation rental by owner). I've taken a half dozen vacations where I rented
someone elses house - long before AirBnB. There have been vacation houses in
ski towns for decades, on the shore for literally hundreds of years. The only
twist AirBnB provides is that it competes with regular hotels - not just
vacation homes. And I know more than one vacation home owner who has a similar
story to the one told here. People trash vacation homes. People trash normal
rental apartments. It happens all of the time.

The apartment I live in now had $15,000 in damage done by the previous tenant
when he was evicted for not paying rent. He took a sledgehammer to the toilets
and walls. He spray painted the ceiling and burned the curtains. My friend's
vacation house at Disney World had all of the furniture stolen by someone
renting it. This stuff happens all the time.

The only thing I'm shocked by is that this is the FIRST incident on AirBnB
that we've heard of. They should have had a plan to deal with it. I'm not
exactly deep in the rental scene and I have two stories to tell of this
happening from people I personally know. This stuff must happen every week.

~~~
jsavimbi
> vacation houses

Renting out your apartment to include all of your worldly belongings, not a
vacation-purposed structure, or loaning your car to a complete stranger
through a scaled web application is a relatively new phenomenon and the
normals, who often view their vacation lodgings as part of the experience,
simply do not participate in this type of activity as AirBnB wishes to scale.
It's a very new and unique concept.

I'm shocked as well and I'm sure that incidents and misunderstanding have
already occurred in the past and they've obviously been able to deal with
them. And I'll bet that the AirBnB crew are shocked at what they're seeing
right now, given the exposure that two blog posts have been able to generate.

Spats between businesses and customers rarely get this type of hype from a
venerable institution like the FT this early in the story. This is the kind of
exposure that you plan and pay for.

------
funthree
A summary:

 _As of today, July 28, I have received no confirmation from either the San
Francisco Police Department or the District Attorney that any culprit is in
custody for my case._

 _I received a personal call from one of the co-founders of Airbnb. We had a
lengthy conversation, in which he indicated having knowledge of the
(previously mentioned) person who had been apprehended by the police, but that
he could not discuss the details or these previous cases[sic] with me, as the
investigation was ongoing._

 _Too much about this case remains unknown and unresolved, and according to
both the District Attorneys and the police, it could be many more months
before the criminal investigation moves forward._

Edit: This is clearly a problem with a thief, with society, with criminal
behavior. This woman wants to throw her story and passive aggressive attitude
around to destroy Airbnb, and it is blatantly obvious. Come on people.

I have been robbed. I have been a victim. I didn't flee to the internet to
write a story about the gas station parking lot where it took place. Why? I
would have gotten _no attention_ for it, _no sympathy_ , and the gas station
would have not been to blame _at all_ and everyone knows that.

Not to be insensitive, but this is reminiscent of the type of people that sue
McDonalds for spilling hot coffee all over themselves. Not entirely the same,
but it feels oddly familiar.

Airbnb tries to offer a good service. That doesn't mean they can keep the
murderers out of Disneyland. She made a good point that craigslist makes
warnings of scams more obvious on their website than Airbnb. She should have
honestly just left it at that. Because at this point she is just doing more
damage on the perpetrator's behalf and _I think she knows it._

The knee-jerk reaction to this story is showing itself to be very far from
this, so go ahead and downvote me, but nonetheless my opinion here is valid.
Your next stay at Airbnb may very well be a scene out of the movie Hostel. It
is just as likely however that it may happen at the next apartment you rent,
the next hotel you stay at, or the next ski lodge. It doesn't matter that it
was Airbnb.

I understand that she feels the reaction piece to her initial post was
disingenuous, but with writing like this, it is clear she is just out to watch
Airbnb burn. She should go hire a private detective and find the guy if she is
so hell bent on revenge. She is after the wrong people. Hell hath no fury like
a woman scorned. This woman has no target and her anger is entirely
misdirected.

This is what insurance in our society is for. Get some. Be happy for what
_didn't_ go wrong and could have. She should be happy she didn't get raped
when she got back to her apartment, as she _obviously crossed tracks with a
very bad person_. Seriously. Shit happens in life. Everyone in this world has
to deal with deceit, robberies, theft, and lies. She is no different, nor are
you. She is playing out the sympathy excuse far too well. Her reaction is more
similar to that of the McDonald's hot coffee victim than that of a robbery
victim at this point. And like I said previously, I'm pretty sure she knows
it.

Good luck Airbnb.

~~~
carbonica
> This is what insurance in our society is for. Get some.

No homeowner's insurance will cover an Airbnb rental. Hell, finding a _lease_
which _permits_ an Airbnb rental would be tough, let alone finding someone to
insure an apartment where strangers show up and pay you for it. You must know
this, because it's been discussed to death all over this issue.

> Your next stay at Airbnb may very well be a scene out of the movie Hostel.
> It is just as likely however that it may happen at the next apartment you
> rent, the next hotel you stay at, or the next ski lodge.

This logic is incredibly faulty. This is the same as saying "you might get
ripped off meeting a stranger on craigslist. It is just as likely however that
it may happen at a Best Buy." The structure of airbnb lends itself toward
antisocial behavior far, far more than a _hotel_. That kind of comparison is
just deceitful.

In fact, to turn your "point" around, I find it more likely you're an airbnb
employee/pg fanboy shilling than EJ being out to destroy airbnb. You've
demonstrated complete disregard for logic and facts to defend airbnb in this
situation. She's just told a story.

------
AltIvan
Fuck this shit. This is like when a Facebook user gets contacted by a raper
using it; this is like when a Gmail account gets completly deleted.

Shit happens, and it will continue to happen to someone from time to time, but
one case between thousands should not damage so much a single company.

~~~
AltIvan
BTW She is making more damage to the AirBnB employees (and their families)
than the raiders did to her.

------
tribeofone
Who really cares?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I do.

------
pathik
Isn't Airbnb's reaction a normal one? Wouldn't anyone do the same if it could
have adverse effects on their current round of funding?

~~~
palish
Step 1) have home utterly destroyed via Airbnb

Step 2) write a blog post sharing how terrible the situation is, and to
indicate you're _slightly_ upset about this

Step 3) get cut off from Airbnb customer service, then receive call from
Airbnb co-founder asking to remove the blog post because "it might impact our
funding"

No. I wouldn't do the same.

------
dr_
I feel badly for the person whose placed got trashed, and it seems Airbnb is
doing what they can to remedy the situation - but am I the only one who feels
there's a certain risk to be assumed with online transactions such as this?

If a girl meets a man on match.com who claims to be single, but after getting
into a relationship with him she finds out he's married - is match.com to
blame for this? Could they have done more to verify his background - perhaps,
but that's also the risk we take.

It's an unfortunate incident, but trust me other than hacker news, techmeme
and techcrunch (that's where the FT got it from) this is not really headline
news, and it's not going to affect airbnb's performance in the long run.

On a separate note, I hope pg realizes with 423 comments on here it's hard to
make heads or tails of what to read - hopefully the comments rating system
will be brought back.

------
alanfalcon
This time her blog title is direct and to the point, and mentions Airbnb by
name. It seems she's learning some SEO tactics during the course of this
ordeal. Personally I'm glad as it seems obvious this story didn't deserve to
be mostly unnoticed for most of a month after the first blog post went up.

~~~
Zakuzaa
SEO? Come on man.

