

Top 5 Airbnb Home-Rental Horror Stories - joxie
http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/06/top-5-airbnb-home-rental-horror-stories.html

======
cperry
"Airbnb has a $50,000 guarantee that will cover loss or damages caused by
guests"

Are they talking about the $1MM host guarantee?
<https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee>

If so, they could use some fact checking.

------
will_brown
I am very curious to know how often and how smoothly claims for damages happen
with AirBnB. I admit I was very lazy on this front and I did not verify if
AirBnB discloses the number of claims filed versus paid or the amounts or at
least the average amount of claims.

As far as the "leveraging of under monetized assets/sharing economy" goes I
think this type of transparency would be very important to the asset owners -
so really in a sense I would be surprised if this information was not
disclosed but I would equally be surprised if it was disclosed...is that a
paradox or what.

------
steven777400
Useful only as a "worst-case" fearmongering. Any service/system with a
substantial number of users is going to have horror stories. You can find
horror stories, for example, of bedbugs and foul rooms for every major hotel
chain with a quick search.

Of course, being cautious about who you let in your home should be common
sense. You can't trust an automated website to do anything more than make the
connection.

------
bluetidepro
5 horror stories in what, thousands and thousands of transactions? I
personally don't see that as a bad thing, because it's obvious these types of
things are the exceptions and not the rule. I'm also sure AirBnB did a great
job with "fixing these things" for those people who had ruined experiences,
because they are known for having fantastic customer service.

~~~
larrys
"5 horror stories in what, thousands and thousands of transactions?"

No 5 horrors stories that rose to the level of being interesting enough to
make a good newspaper story. There is most certainly a higher number of fail
transactions, the exact number of course is the question which we don't know
the answer to.

------
helipad
Did the hosts of these properties do any vetting of these burglars, meth
addicts or prostitutes they allowed into their home?

------
realdlee
It's not surprising that some unfortunate incidents have happened with Airbnb
now that it has become mainstream. Hosts should definitely take precautions,
but these 5 cases should be viewed in the context of the 5+ million stays that
have been positive (<https://www.airbnb.com/global-growth>).

------
milesskorpen
Four of these stories are from 2011, and one is from 2012 ... but also seems
somewhat innocuous: As long as there isn't other damage, I'm not sure how
having sex in an AirBnB apartment is that big a deal, unless there are
potential liability issues.

Given this, I'd think that AirBnB has fixed the issues it had in 2011, and is
killing it.

------
beedogs
Seems like the site is being DDos'd, or has just coincidentally gone down at
the same time this hits the front page.

------
gotofritz
The horror stories are not half as interesting as I thought they'd be.

