
How airbnb lost me as a customer - ARobotics
I don't have a blog where this story would be appropriate, but since I know airbnb founders/investors read HN, I figure my story might be valuable to them.  This is how my first experience with airbnb is also going to be my last.<p>I recently rented out my apartment for a 2 week stay.  With my nearly $3,000 payment being held by airbnb, I received an email asking me to "send in a scanned copy of your government issued ID and a copy of a utility bill".  No form to do so, just the vague "send".  I'm not really comfortable sending as much personal info as my drivers license contains (height, weight, eye color, DL number, photo) especially over unencrypted email, and when this requirement wasn't mentioned before listing my space.<p>Here is where they lose me as a customer though- I snapped a photo of a utility bill and responded to their email.  Two days go by, my payment is still 'pending' now several days after the guest has arrived.  I send a second email inquiring if the photo was ok (I don't have a scanner handy) and why they still haven't paid me, and get no response.  More days go by with airbnb holding my payment, and I try to use their live chat.  Live chat fails silently in firefox (clicking the button does nothing).  I try in chrome and it tells me everyone is busy.  Try again later and it opens a window... then 30 seconds later tells me everyone is busy and to email my request.<p>Finally, now 9 days after my guest arrived, I receive another email from airbnb which ignores all my previous messages and tells me to once again "send" them scans of gov't id and utility bill.  Apparently my only option to get them to release my funds is to send highly personal information over unencrypted email, a requirement which was never made clear when I made my listing.<p>Airbnb seems like a great idea with an ideal set of founders and backers, but unexpected requirements and terrible customer support have turned me off their site.
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socmoth
It sounds like their customer support failed you. Whatever tool they were
using to track your email thread failed or someone acted too hastily and
responded to the thread inappropriately by asking for the same information.
You are right they made a mistake in sending you two emails and it is annoying
they are holding your money.

I have no inside information about Airbnb, but I'd guess they are slowing
moving the money to try and prevent fraud on their system. Basically, A stolen
card being used for a high value amount. Obviously that is annoying to anyone
who is waiting for money, but I've seen it happen in many situations where
money is transfered.

Are you a frequent hoster? If you have a lot of money coming in for your
apartment, it is much more likely that it would be transfered quickly.

If you are a frequent hoster, is this a unusually large amount at once? Or is
it from someone who is using Airbnb for the first time?

In the end, it sounds like your experience wasn't so great. But I'd hope you
remember that it is just people on the other end answering your email and
trying to prevent fraud. Many of those people answer hundreds of emails a day
and probably make mistakes as often as anyone else. I hope everything works
out for you.

------
mootothemax
Look at it from the other side of things: how would you react if AirBnB
_weren't_ doing these checks?

If I'm staying somewhere, I'm leaving my luggage, and there's plenty of
opportunities for stuff to go missing, whether in the middle night or
otherwise.

That's just the petty crime aspect, leaving aside other opportunities for much
more serious badness.

It's bad that their customer service failed you, but I'd much rather there was
a tiny bit of hassle for people renting out apartments for the safety of those
staying there.

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

~~~
whichdan
Pedantic note: I'm not excusing them for lacking something as critical as a
secure way to transmit sensitive information, but it's certainly more involved
than "ten dollars worth of PHP."

You're probably looking at setting up a dedicated server to store the images
(since you want the server locked down tighter than a normal web server, and
you need to think about having different backups in place, etc) and then have
one of the engineers spend a few days developing a system to upload the images
and allow secured access to their support staff. Sure, writing the code to
upload files is easy, but the security and UI take a good bit of effort.
You're probably looking closer to $1k excluding the cost of hardware and the
SSL cert.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Whoa $1K? I think I just spent that on hats for my dog last quarter.
Seriously, there is NO EXCUSE FOR THIS.

------
stuffihavemade
If anything, I'm surprised they allowed you to rent out your place without
that verification in hand. There is enough possible legal/liability quandaries
around the idea of AirBnB that is seems risky to sanction the rental of a
place without confirmation of the owner's identity.

------
tptacek
(1) You refer to your "apartment", which by convention refers to a domicile
that you are leasing. While other HN readers will contest this point, I'd be
willing to put money on the fact that you violated your lease by renting out
your apartment on Airbnb at all.

(2) HN is not a forum for complaints about YC companies, and while I didn't
flag this post, you shouldn't overreact if it is killed. Nobody is trying to
censor you; if it happens, just move your post to Tumblr.

~~~
ARobotics
Your comments always make me smile Thomas, you seem like the real life
embodiment of the "Lawful Neutral" alignment, always following the letter of
each rule. My lease allows subletting, but there may be a provision which I'm
not following, I can double check.

If this post gets killed, that's fine. I was hesitant to write it, but I
thought it might be valuable to share. There's a fine line between useful
critique or sharing an experience and ranting/complaining, perhaps my post
leaned too far to the latter.

~~~
gte910h
>Your comments always make me smile Thomas, you seem like the real life
embodiment of the "Lawful Neutral" alignment

I've been trying to think of a good label for him for a long time, and I think
that hits it on the nose.

~~~
tptacek
I always kind of thought of myself as Neutral Good. I'm not a believer in
rules for their own sake, but the good that comes from ignoring a rule should
outweigh the harm incurred by surreptitiously changing the rules on everyone
else. The most pernicious harms caused by breaking rules are the ones that
aren't obvious, but rather confer an advantage to the parties that broke the
rule that the rest of society can't easily detect, until those unscrupulous
first movers have managed to roll the advantage up into a competitive moat.

I'm only commenting because I think it's interesting to think about why we
think the things we do. I think it's a weird that anyone would want to fit an
AD&D alignment onto me. :)

~~~
gte910h
I can tell you why: You're clearly a (very) net positive contributor, however
"strident" is a predictable default for any post of yours that's overly
anything, combined with writing in a classical style.

Why people are trying to label you is you're hard to characterize yet are
notably present.

------
ARobotics
It's too late for me to edit my original post now, but for posterity - airbnb
contacted me and resolved the issue. The final customer service rep I spoke to
was friendly and helpful, and they refunded the 3% listing/service fee as
amends for the slow support.

------
4qbomb
It's amazing what some companies ask you to send via email. The inherent trust
people put in email systems is honestly scary. envex seems not worried if
someone has their eye color or height. I can promise you every bit of
information someone can obtain on you IS useful.

Dear AirBnB,

Sending utility bills and drivers licenses over email is NOT appropriate!!!

This makes me want to pentest AirBnB and find their vulnerabilities before
someone evil does....

~~~
specialist
> It's amazing what some companies ask you to send via email.

My state allows people to cast ballots via email.

During the hearing, some retired National Guard General testified that
"security has gotten really good". I assume he's on the payroll of the vendor,
but I didn't bother to check (this time).

------
k-mcgrady
Although AirBnB customer service was bad here it seems you also were at fault.
They asked for two documents. You didn't want to send one of them over email
(understandable). At that point you should have cancelled the rental. Hoping
they would get back to you and waive a requirement wasn't a good idea.

Not sure HackerNews is the right place for this. Emailing AirBnb's customer
service/complaints department would be better.

------
radley
As one of many start-up peeps here on HN we've very sorry you had to jump
through those hurdles. Your post is on the main page and is certain to get the
right attention quickly.

For the rest of us, the only responses required is someone who knows ABNB lets
us know they contacted them, and then ABNB following up here with an apology
to the user & HN.

Don't talk on and on about it. Just fix it.

------
envex
Are you really worried that they'll have your height and eye color?

You've already let a "stranger" into your house, but these details to too
sacred?

Just take photos off all and black out any info you don't think is
appropriate.

~~~
ARobotics
It's more the principle of requiring additional information after a
reservation has been booked instead of being up-front about it, and sending it
over unencrypted email.

The biggest issue is that I responded to their original email within 24 hours,
but have now waited 10 days without resolution or any feedback.

------
jpdoctor
> _and a copy of a utility bill_

What a dumbass requirement. As if somebody with access to a printer would not
be able to produce one.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I have seen people photoshop utility bills, proof of insurance, etc.

Requirements like this are hilarious.

~~~
codegeek
except that if you are caught, it is a federal offense at least in the US to
forge things such as utility bills etc. It is more of a deterrent than
anything else against outright fraud.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Citation?

------
spaghetti
Airbnb should have a phone number that people who are renting out their homes
can call 24/7 for help, advice etc. If they do have this why didn't the author
use it?

------
mindstab
You're essentially acting as a hotel business. I'm not sure you can do that
with the level of anonymity you require to a legal corp like airbnb to remain
legit. You may have unreasonable expectations. Try something even more
underground next time I guess. There probably isn't anything they can do.

But yeah, I suppose listing it more clearly would have been nice :) (and
better communication, something most tech startups need to learn to scale)

~~~
ARobotics
It's not about anonymity - they have a verified phone number and email
address, they have my address and name. My payment is in the form of a check
sent to the address being rented, paid to the name on the account. When I
created the account, if they had said "We need a credit card number to confirm
your identity" or "Use this secure form to submit a copy of utility bill" I
would have gladly complied.

Asking me to send them over email after a reservation is much more
frustrating. Not responding for two weeks when I do email them a photo of
utility bill is more frustrating still.

------
smurph
I think you were right to avoid sending that info because that's an identity
thief's gold mine. On the other hand, I wonder how many times airbnb has been
scammed. Hopefully this is some kind of knee-jerk reaction to problems they
are having and not just an unprovoked screw up.

------
austenallred
I'm a little shocked that you overcame all of the other concerns of using
AirBNB but balked at a failed firefox plugin. I'm sure there's a logical
explanation and probably a little bit of mismanagement on behalf of AirBNB,
but that's something that can be corrected.

------
thisnewacct
i would not want to send my photo id over the internet either, they should
announce before any transaction has taken place that this is a requirement

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001sky
Isn't there a telephone number? any business dealing in multiple Nxthousands
of dollars should have a telephone-help-line. There's no excuse for that
(confirmed customer, confirmed booking = $3,000 deal | vs x Prob (1/n)x$15/hr
service rep?). Assuming there is someone on the other line available, scan a
photo, layer, lock it in a psd or pdf (ie, add further security as
appropriate)...send it to them, provide password over the phone, to make it
visible, etc).

------
amino
I think this raises another point... shouldn't email be a secure method of
communication? Do you think its time for mail servers to start supporting
encryption as a default?

------
Apreche
Small claims court.

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papsosouid
This would be why the ycombinator startup churner is bad. It is entirely
focused on having people with no technical skills create companies that rely
very heavily on a solid technical foundation. My 8 year old knows not to send
sensitive information over unencrypted channels, and that email is completely
insecure. Why are people who don't know this making sites like airbnb?

~~~
thesausageking
It's not that they can't; it's that they don't care. Airbnb has a great
engineering team who could definitely setup a more secure way to do this.

The issue is that they only do things that will make them money. Until a lot
of customers complain and hurts customer acquisition or revenues, they're not
going to change it.

This is exactly the MVP / "lean startup" approach: do the absolute minimum.
It's a smart way to deploy capital. But customers of these kinds of companies
should be careful but they're usually complete products (by design) and may
have sharp corners.

I normally stay away from buying anything from startups for this reason.

~~~
papsosouid
By definition they can not possibly be a great engineering team if they
demonstrate that they are completely and totally incompetent like this. "I
don't care about doing important things correctly" is a statement of
incompetence.

------
witoldc
Heaven forbid someone learns your highly secretive height, weight, eye color
and DL license number which is completely meaningless.

They communication does appear to suck, but your paranoia is unfounded.

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variousbagels
Maybe quit being a little bitch and send them your info? The fuck are they
gonna do with your eye color and height?

------
rekoros
Wait, are you sure it's airbnb and not citimortgage?

