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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 resource

• tribeofone 15y ago
  How is this their fault? Your comments make no sense, because someone did not understand the inherent risks of using a service does not make it AirBnB's fault. "How could this happen? Why did this happen? Despite it not being in New York... I LOVED my apartment nonetheless. It was my own private retreat, my sunny, bright, cozy loft that I would melt into on those rare occasions when I wasn't traveling. The space was simply decorated, minimalist enough to reflect a home life that was all mine, a place that was peaceful, and safe. How could this happen? She decided to rent out her place - its not like AirBnB put it up on the market. Thats the difference between a rental property and your home. If its something precious, it should not be entrusted to others.
  • rmc 15y ago
    It might not be AirBnB who did this to her apartment, but it's definitly in AirBnB's commerical interest to kill the meme that "If you're happy to accept your place being trashed, then use AirBnB. If you don't want that to happen, don't use AirBnB"
    • sp332 15y ago
      Nope, this is something that everyone who rents out their place - on any service - must understand and come to terms with. Never gamble with more than you can afford to lose.
  • mattdeboard 15y ago
    This is ridiculously short sighted. It is AirBnB's commercial interest -- if nothing else -- to make this issue go away. Thinking like this is what keeps PR people in business.
    • tribeofone 15y ago
      I disagree, this is just a case of HYPER OMG!! This will not effect AirBnB business, investment, popularity or success even if it hits the front page of FT. You dont rent out your principal residence to someone you don't know and found on the net. Duh.
      • mattdeboard 15y ago
        You're conflating two issues. This isn't about whether or not it's sensible to rent out your living space to a stranger. (I happen to agree with you that it's reckless & irresponsible.) The issue isn't even whether or not AirBnB is responsible for what happened or not. (I happen to agree with you here as well that AirBnB is not legally or morally responsible.) The issue is that right now AirBnB's blood is in the water. The media sharks are starting to frenzy. They need to take immediate remedial action in a very public way that makes it clear in no uncertain terms that they share the moral high ground with the victim. This isn't about real culpability. It's about image and brand management. But, as I've said before, that is my perspective as a former PR & marketing guy.
• tpatke 15y ago
  Not sure why YC should be getting blamed here? I give them a lot of credit as it appears that hacker news broke this story. If there was anything sinister going on I think they could have just deleted the story. Airbnb is another matter. Asking the blogger to remove the post sounds like such a bone-headed move that I have trouble believing it is true. Airbnb has lost all credibility in my book.
  • ig1 15y ago
    It was a bit tacky that YC removed AirBnB's name from the title of the original story.
    • tpatke 15y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize.
    • palebluedot 15y ago
      It should be noted that when they changed that story title, they were changing it to the actual title of the blog posting. That is pretty standard practice here, to prevent editorializing via the title. Although, I can see how it would come across wrong in this case.
      • estel 15y ago
        The discussion was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813118 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813118
      • Arjuna 15y ago
        Thank you for pointing this out. The title was changed from "AirBnB: Crimes committed against a host" to "Violated: A traveler's lost faith, a difficult lesson learned" As you noted, this matches the title of the story on the blog. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it."
• sp332 15y ago
  1. Get a new place for EJ. Furnish it fully. Pay for everything. They should definitely be doing better, but I think this particular advice is wrong. They can't buy a new house for everyone whose home gets vandalized. And any kind of "policy" would make this incident seem more likely to happen in the future, so no one would use the service. Irrational, but people aren't good at thinking about small odds (about 10 million to one, if Airbnb's numbers are right). Not to mention the rampant fraud that will happen when people destroy their own places to get money from Airbnb.
  • randallsquared 15y ago
    about 10 million to one Well, maybe. As ry0ohki points out in another thread, maybe the reason they thought this would just blow over was that it happens fairly frequently, and most of the time no one ever hears about it other than the friends and family and local police.
  • juliano_q 15y ago
    I would change it to: 1. Get a temporary place for EJ. Pay for her stay for 6 months, so she can rent/sell/fix her place. When she moves to her new residence, furnish it fully.
  • CamperBob 15y ago
    If the odds are "about 10 million to one," then yes, indeed, Airbnb can afford to buy a new house for everyone whose home gets vandalized. Either the numbers work, or they don't. Which is it?
• scott_s 15y ago
  I get exactly what you're saying, but what about point 6? What do you do when this happens again? And I see absolutely no reason why it won't happen again. Let me put it another way: I think this problem kills the business model. What they currently do is not sustainable. They can't swoop in and replace everything for every person who is a victim of a scheme like this with their current model. If that becomes their strategy, then they're really an insurance agency. It's not unprecedented, ebay and PayPal spend most of their resources doing fraud detection. But it will completely change what AirBNB is. So, yeah, in this case, I think what you suggest is probably best. But they have to change their company to address this problem, even if what comes out the other side is not the company as it is today.
  • wheels 15y ago
    > And I see absolutely no reason why it won't happen again. It will happen again. And it was clear that it'd happen at some point. And worse will happen. Shit happens, especially at scale. > I think this problem kills the business model. Nah. Let's do a little back-of-the-napkining: • Let's assume that this is the first incidence of such. • Let's assume that Brian's quoted 2 million nights of rentals is accurate. • AirBnB's fees are 6-12%. To make things easy, let's assume an average rental of $50/night and 10% fees. • There. AirBnB has now made about $10 million in revenue. • Total cost of fixing this is maybe tops of $100k. So this eats into their margins by 1% assuming the numbers are roughly correct and assuming that insuring against such would cost about the same thing as paying out of pocket (but would also cover the more catastrophic cases). Maybe it's a bit more and it's a couple percent, but it doesn't destroy the model by any means. Also, if they offered insurance, they could do it as a default-on-with-scary-red-confirmation-text-if-you-uncheck upsell at a premium (say, cost + 20%) and make more money. > But they have to change their company to address this problem Going over the top on this one is the cost of waiting too long. They need to turn this story around. The next time, when they have a process in place for this, they just let the process take care of things and don't end up with a shit-storm on their hands.
    • scott_s 15y ago
      Once you do this as a matter of policy, you are open to fraud. Now you have to spend a significant amount of your resources on fraud detection - perhaps most of them. That's what I mean by they become an insurance company; their day-to-day operation would be indistinguishable fromt that of an insurance company. Both ebay and PayPay went through this, and that's what they spend most of their time doing. But ebay and PayPal don't need to support the open-ended kind of claim - "My entire apartment has been ransacked and my identity stolen" - that AirBNB does.
• brazzy 15y ago
  Please tell me you're not serious. What you're asking for goes well beyond taking responsibility and far into the realm of treatment given to pop stars. Yeah, Airbnb could probably afford doing this out of PR considerations this once. But not for every single problematic hosting. And I do not believe the extent and support and compensation for crime victims should depend on their ability / luck in drumming up a social media / startup community shitstorm. What Airbnb does need to do is find a sustainable method of dealing with incidents like this in the future.
  • mhw 15y ago
    > What Airbnb does need to do is find a sustainable method of dealing with incidents like this in the future. What Airbnb needs to do is find a method of preventing this type of incident in the future. They have to work out how to change the economics of the relationship so that the host isn't bearing all the risk and the visitor has some disincentives that keep their behaviour within acceptable bounds. At the moment their current business model is toast, because a large proportion of their potential hosts will start hearing about this kind of incident (search Google News for 'airbnb' and see how far the story has got so far) and think that the risk of it happening to them just isn't worth it, whatever kind of support they put in place to deal with the consequences.
    • untog 15y ago
      > What Airbnb needs to do is find a method of preventing this type of incident in the future. They have to work out how to change the economics of the relationship so that the host isn't bearing all the risk and the visitor has some disincentives that keep their behaviour within acceptable bounds. I'm not sure that's possible, though. And the host isn't bearing all of the risk- a guest could rent out a room and have the host murder them in their sleep. It's fundamentally a risky proposition, though I'm agree that the host bears more risk than the guest. (search Google News for 'airbnb' and see how far the story has got so far) Eh, search Google News for 'craigslist killer'- Craigslist is still doing alright for itself. No doubt it's a giant hurdle to overcome, but this isn't the end of AirBnb.
• microcentury 15y ago
  The way things are right now, maybe this blows over and the AirBnB business model continues just the way it was, with its associated massive valuation. If they help everyone in the way you are suggesting, the model is _definitely_ finished, because you cannot create the expectation that AirBnB will pick up the pieces every time something goes wrong. And the more people use the service, the mores cases like this there will be. Also, AirBnB are almost certainly getting legal advice that says not to have any unnecessary communication with EJ in preparation for a law suit that looks to me like it's inevitable. So your sentiments are admirable, but not practical. My heart goes out to that girl too, I have to say. She's clearly a sensitive soul, and this has really messed her up. I hope she can get over it and move on.
  • markh 15y ago
    Agreed AirBnB can't create the expectation of covering the cost of apartments being "trashed" for fear of abuse of the policy. You can be sure that their lawyers are vetting all messages too, for fear of creating a chain of liability, should they start covering the costs. That said, what about offering a generous bounty? Say $1m in this case for the successful apprehension and prosecution of the guilty party (or parties). This figure would have to be ratcheted down after the initial PR success for fear of people committing such crimes in future with the intent of enriching their friend/relative who turns them in.
  • forgotAgain 15y ago
    Fuck the model, it's broken.
    • deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    • jeffgreco 15y ago
      100% agree. At a certain point, when a service is in violation of numerous local laws and is facilitating harm to its users with no recourse, maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board.
• mbrzuzy 15y ago
  It's not a woman, it's a man. He even cleared that up in this article.
  • nbpoole 15y ago
    "It's not a woman, it's a man. He even cleared that up in this article." From the blog post: "I do exist. I am a real person using a nickname my parents stuck me with long ago. I do not work for the hotel industry, though I admit I love a Four Seasons as much as the next girl. Oh and on that note, I am female." Sounds like a woman to me.
    • mbrzuzy 15y ago
      Yeah, my mistake. I have a tendency to misread things (a lot). Carry on.
• brianchesky 15y ago
  we are standing by, and we just contacted her again telling her that we will do whatever we can to help.
  • jcunningham 15y ago
    What does "standing by" mean? What does "whatever we can" mean? Why did you say yesterday there is a suspect in custody if the victim claims the suspect was released a month ago? Do you think it's a problem that we have to parse your words so carefully now?
    • mattdeboard 15y ago
      I think the real problem is that too many people are all in on believing that the blogger's version of events are 100% accurate. Please note I am not saying she's lying, omitting or otherwise distorting the truth -- only providing her perspective on the relationship between herself and AirBnB. Just for the record, I also think AirBnB has utterly fumbled the ball here. However, I don't think this type of tone is appropriate. If you review my comment history, I am firmly on the side of AirBnB sucking it up and making this right. Unfortunately, this is starting to smell like a witch hunt.
      • mikecaron 15y ago
        Whatever happened to "the customer is always right?"
        • puredemo 15y ago
          The customer is definitely not always right. But this one is very convincing.
          • vacri 15y ago
            The best comment I heard on that slogan was from a businessman whose name I unfortunately forgot. It went along the lines of "The customer in not always right, that's nonsense. The customer does have a right to be heard."
• DanielStraight 15y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Deal with the "if I give you a cookie, everyone else will want one too" problem if and when you actually have it. This isn't about business. It's about helping someone who needs help.
  • hnal943 15y ago
    This is about business. Airbnb can't be sustained for free. It will cease to exist if it can't make money.
    • mbreese 15y ago
      You're right. And if they don't fix this and find a way to deal with it in the future, they won't have any one renting their homes out. Then they'll be out of business. It is in their best interest to fix this, call it a first-time problem, and then find a long term fix. Otherwise, their model is gone.
    • Hisoka 15y ago
      The girl who's house got ruined doesn't care if AirBnB falls apart, and the founders have to work for a red-tape, boring organization for the rest of the lives.
• iamelgringo 15y ago
  In all my years working in health care as an ER and trauma nurse, I learned one thing: Do the right thing for the patient. If the doctor is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient. If the hospital is doing it wrong... do the right thing for the patient. If a police officer is doing the wrong thing... do the right thing for the patient. The ultimate policy is... Do the right thing for the patient. AirBnb... Do the right thing. Stop the spin. Don't tell the world what your security features are. Don't tell the Financial Times you are shocked. Pull out all the stops and make this right, or this will be the end of you. I've talked countless times with people about your service, and one of the things that comes up all the time is wondering what will happen, "When the first AirBnB murder happens". It's not a question of "If it happens" it's a matter of "what are you doing to do _when it happens". People get murdered in Hotels. People get murdered in rental cabins. I've been an ER nurse for years. Murders happen all the time. Someone is doing to die while using AirBnb. You're lucky this was just a robbery. Learn from this. Your policy needs to be: Do the right thing for the person. Build a crisis response swat team that can get on a plane within the hour, fly to a destination and evaluate a crisis situation like this. For the love of gods you need to have 24 hour customer service. Give those people the authority and the responsibility to do the right thing then and there, on the spot. Stop writing Tech Crunch posts. Don't worry about telling us that you made it right. That's not important. Don't worry about the press. If you do the right thing, the press takes care of itself. Don't post in this comment thread. Ask your customer, "What do you need me to do to make this right?" "Is there anything at all that I can do to help?" Assign two or three people to the job of fixing this. Do the right thing. Don't stop until this is right. Do it now.
  • juliano_q 15y ago
    I was going to write a lot about it, but your reply is everything I would write and more. I really hope they do the right thing.
  • tomlin 15y ago
    I think all of this crossed their minds. Honestly, I don't think Airbnb wants to leave this person hanging. If they pay for this incident, they are possibly opening the door for the kinds of schemes people pull on insurance. You know, the whole "rob my place and I'll collect the insurance" schemes. If Airbnb pays for this incident, they effectively become an insurance company. Maybe what they should do is offer some type of actual insurance package on checkout. This way, they are providing a much needed service and indemnify themselves. Making their customers aware of this possibility rather than pretend it doesn't exist would also help create a safer environment. EDIT: Let me be clear. I don't honestly think this person should be left high and dry. What I am saying is, to a criminal, the headline "Airbnb pays for all loss and damages", is enough to commit the crime again. We know criminals of this kind bet on low odds, otherwise there wouldn't be so many obvious ones. You might think on the side of a flexible entrepreneur, but criminals aren't looking at how Airbnb is going to look.
• adw 15y ago
  The only explanation I can come up with is that they're in at the deep end in a way they weren't expecting. It's happened to more grizzled operators than any of us – look at the family Murdoch right now – but as long as they give the impression of either not caring, or of flailing wildly, then confidence in their marketplace is going to keep dropping. Marketplaces live on liquidity, and lack of confidence kills liquidity, so it's existential crisis time.
• mbreese 15y ago
  6) Say you're sorry. Not because you caused this, but because a bad thing happened to a customer and it wasn't prevented and you weren't prepared. Saying that you're sorry doesn't mean it was your fault or even have legal liability (which they might), it just means that you have a heart.
  • bdunbar 15y ago
    Saying that you're sorry doesn't mean it was your fault or even have legal liability (which they might), it just means that you have a heart. Saying 'I'm sorry' does legally imply it was your fault and you are liable, legally. I am not a lawyer, but I have read my insurance documentation where it clearly says 'Don't say 'I'm sorry' if you are in an accident because ...'.
• mbertrand80 15y ago
  As someone who has spent a lot of time trying to "make it right" for the customer, I completely agree. They must absolutely take care of this RIGHT NOW. And, in a personal, non-public way. If they try to make any more public statements about what they are doing, it will just look flat out like a publicity stunt. This is obviously the best and only possible customer service and goodwill move at this point (to me anyway). Every single day that this conversation continues to happen they are going to become less trustworthy. I do have one adjustment. They need to make it clear that this was an obvious hole in their model and while they take care of this user, this is a unique case and immediately going forward offer insurance as an add on option. I'm certain there must be a third party insurance partner out there who would absolutely love this business.
• dbuizert 15y ago
  Damage control. That should have been in place for things like this. And it looks like there isn't. I wonder how their risk analyses looked like.
• Aqua_Geek 15y ago
  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. I highly doubt she wants to work for them, given what happened to her and Airbnb's response.
• jacquesm 15y ago
  > Airbnb & YC, just fix this please: Second that, and please do not try to instruct the victim in a way that can be construed as trying to cover things up, 'the cover up is worse than the crime' will come back to haunt you big time. > 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. Yes, and if what was written about 'a suspect is in police custody' was nonsense then apologize for that publicly and get it behind you as soon as possible. If it wasn't connect EJ to the right person at the police department. Your stories not being 'in sync' is a huge problem. > 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. That's one I really disagree with. She's not an expert in anything, she's a writer. AirBNB should not hire her, they should concentrate on fair compensation and then have her get on with her life as soon as possible. Any associations with AirBNB will likely be traumatic for her past the point where she's been compensated adequately. After all that's done (and it should not take more than 72 hours starting now) if she comes around and writes a blog post on how great you guys handled this in retrospect that's great but do not ask for it and do not ask her to sign an NDA, it will make you look bad again. Finally, make a point of linking to this story prominently (and how you dealt with it) from your terms of service / signup page as an example of how bad it can get (and let's be really happy she wasn't raped or killed, this is not the worst that could have happened by a long shot) and that you were able to fix this once but given that the people that own inventory on AirBNB have now been warned make it perfectly clear that you will not be able to do so again. You may have to scale down a couple of notches but it's better to be sustainable at a slightly lower level than dead.
  • edw519 15y ago
    She's not an expert in anything, She's the world's foremost authority on personal suffering from the elephant right on Airbnb's critical path. Do not underestimate the power of this. I can visualize a team of people working on this issue and thinking that they're done with EJ saying, "No we're not. This isn't right yet." Sometimes the pain of experience provides enough determination to outweigh all of our business plans, projects, and code. She'll keep going when others want a break. Which is exactly what's needed on this issue right now. I'd hire her in a heartbeat. [EDIT: I'd recruit her in a heartbeat. Only she could decide what's best for herself. It's just that when I say, "Turn lemons into lemonade," the OCD in me takes over and wants to go all out.]
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• rdl 15y ago
  I was trying to avoid commenting, but I totally agree. One thing I'd do is rent her an apartment, not a hotel room. She really seems like someone who values the "home" aspect of it, vs. just the monetary or functional aspect. I'd she would be willing to rent it via airbnb for $0 that would be even better for them (direct from Joe or Brian).
• justinmares 15y ago
  It's interesting, but it seems like as these startups grow bigger they become much like the corporations they are displacing - seemingly caring much more about profits than about doing the right thing.
• kerryfalk 15y ago
  Like others I have been following this and others passively as it's progressing. I'm not convinced the issue is as extreme as others are predicting. I do agree that AirBnB should do more in this case though - from afar it looks like their reaction is based out of fear (Oh f%$k it happened, now what?! Let's get rid of it fast!) rather than compassion, it's impossible to say for sure, that's just what it looks like to me as an outsider. Compassion for the customer/victim/human being seems like a no brainer. I, too, agree with the sentiment that people are generally good and want to do the right thing. I'm hoping that the reason there has not been the level of support that seems to be expected is the result of fear. Fear for what others will expect when it happens again. If they choose to not change their approach as a result or do anything at all here will it kill the company? At this point I doubt it. It's not good but I don't think it's a company killer, they're more at risk from being killed by regulation than bad PR I think. As an opportunistic entrepreneur like others here my instinct is to look at it as an opportunity for good PR but that is quickly overcome by simple empathy, someone has been hurt by the product. Even if you consider it to be indirect someone still got hurt while interacting with the system. I personally choose to do business with companies and individuals who are people first and professionals second. That means businesses acting to Cover My Ass first are weak and those who act to do the right thing are atrong. I conduct my own business with the same thinking. At this point it doesn't look like Chesky and company are the latter but rather acting with thinking from the former. The question I'm curious about is simply: why? I don't understand what circumstance would cause me in Chesky's shoes to not call her and at the very least be a compassionate human being until it was resolved to a reasonable extent. Something is amiss. edw519, some of your suggestions might be a bit extreme but surely something can be done to help her as it seems not enough has been done. Why not?
• prpon 15y ago
  Absolutely actionable advice for Airbnb. Screw business, if this happened to my clients, I would go spend a week with her, try and help restore her life back, be on the phone for her with credit agencies, police, lawyers, anyone. Isn't that the reason why we start companies? To make lives of others better? Do you need better examples to drop your stuff and go help others?
  • hv23 15y ago
    Well said.
• fleitz 15y ago
  Couldn't agree more, and if you look at the history of horrific moments for companies and brands these incidents become turning points for the companies involved. This is rapidly spinning from a Tylenol crisis to a Ford / Firestone crisis. This could have been a positive moment for the company as the FT had a front page article about AirBNB making the situation right. However, AirBNB failed to get infront of the story and now they are in the FT in a very negative light.
• pg 15y ago
  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?
  • estel 15y ago
    How does this fit with the linked article, where the lady in question claims her personal liason at the company hadn't even contacted her in a month? How does that possibly match up with "doing everything they could be doing to help this woman" when she herself clearly feels ignored? Edit: I'm not accusing the AirBNB guys of being bad guys: I don't know them. But this doesn't seem to address, and seems somewhat contradicted by, the concerns raised by the linked blog.
    • pg 15y ago
      Brian told me that someone from Airbnb called her just a few hours before she published this most recent post.
      • dlss 15y ago
        With respect, I don't see how this answers estel's question. Is she crazy? Did she stop checking email, SMS, and phone? (or maybe change number post break in?) Did you misinterpret what the AirBnB guys told you? How can these two drastically different accounts make sense together? (edit: if you only read the TC coverage, the link you are replying to is EJ's account)
• rkalla 15y ago
  Ed, you put it exactly right. Airbnb's "wrap this up, get rid of it" response is what I would categorize as a typical, immature response to a problem. Make it go away, I don't want to look at it. A responsible, empathetic response would be exactly what you typed up. The co-founder that talked to her on the phone should realize that embracing his principles in times like these will catapult him (or her) to success faster than trying to slide your way past problems as best they can. Anything they do "nice" at this point I'll perceive as damage-control, which is unfortunate. They missed that window of opportunity to shine weeks ago. Now it is just them trying to cover their hides and avoid a lawsuit.
• TheCondor 15y ago
  Hasn't the window already closed? Short of doing everything you listed at considerable expense, how does this get made right? is that even enough? The heirlooms are gone at this point, you had a chance a few weeks ago but that stuff is long gone now. There should have been a plan for this before it happened. part of that would be "hey, we'll do all these things, x, y, and z, in exchange please take your blog down" or at least "please blog that you've been made whole by the company, without mentioning specifics" or if you're a real pro, you present the victim with a contract before it even occurs to them to blog about it and you put that in it. It's too late now. Not just too late, but they've added to the "wrong" done to this woman. Plus if you "fix it" the pressure will be to reveal what was done, complete with rumors and misinformation bouncing around, rumors you can't control or fix. I think it's business 101 in some line of work. Look at the LA Dodgers, a fan was nearly beaten to death at a game earlier this year and the team had reduced the security, fired the chief of security and done some otherwise stupid things prior to this (read: the dodgers may be responsible.) They can't stop the news, it made the news, but they swooped in, made some undisclosed financial arrangements and the news is about catching the criminals now. FWIW, this fan will never make a full recovery. The Dodgers have other problems and they aren't glossing over the beating but it's clearly not the focus it could be. I've seen a remarkable number of tech companies do the same thing regarding security, to the point of even knowing they have problems and choosing to ignore them and hope for forgiveness rather than spend the time and money to fix them. If you're going to take that risk at least be prepared for when you lose. You have to come correct and offer up enough that it doesn't make sense for people to be angry, it has to be a legitimate apology with some contrition.
• tptacek 15y ago
  How do they "just fix this" if her lawyer is saying "let's find the highest possible clearing price for this transaction"? In my experience, that's what a good lawyer is going to say. "This is just business." Like in any negotiation, anything Airbnb offers is now the price floor. Her best interests are served by turning the pain dial to 11 for as long as the offer is on the table. You don't even have to know anything about this person to wonder about this. You don't have to psychoanalyze her. You can just read between the lines. Even before 'pg said Airbnb offered to make her whole, reread her post. How does it even make sense for Airbnb to suggest she add a "happy ending" to her story unless they actually offer her something? But in the same post, she says she hasn't talked to them in a month and makes no mention of any offer. It doesn't add up. There's nothing Airbnb can do here other than soak up the punches until they hit a number they can agree on. Unfortunately, this problem is likely to recur until Airbnb figures out the business model tweak that mitigates it.
  • lawnchair_larry 15y ago
    If she was being coached by a lawyer, said lawyer would surely not let her write another word about it. That's his payday she will burn. I doubt she has one.
    • tptacek 15y ago
      Why's that? What has she written so far that would jeopardize settlement negotiations, or her ability to bring a case to court? Companies are invariably advised to clam up in the face of litigation, but that's because they have a lot to lose and because they have to maintain message discipline across the whole company. Also, because they usually don't want to talk about it.
      • lawnchair_larry 15y ago
        I'm not saying she has written something bad so far, I'm saying that an ambulance chaser lawyer seeking a settlement would not let her take that chance. The only way that would fly is if the lawyer is vetting everything before it is posted, which is more work for the lawyer. Since lawyers in cases like this are not paid hourly, and taking a cut of the settlement, they are not going to waste their time with that unless they think it increases their payout. I think Occam's Razor suggests that she genuinely feels ruined, and that is why she is posting. Your attitude is borderline victim-blaming, and to suggest she is faking tears for money is kind of cold.
• dmlevi 15y ago
  So nicely put. I could not have said it better myself. Airbnb has the social responsibility to help restore this woman's life and make sure this doesn't happen again. Im concerned with all the attention this topic is receiving, that it will influence other bad people to leverage the missing link in their business model.
• nhangen 15y ago
  Why should AirBnB offer to replace her stuff, when she made the mistake of not properly screen the person, and left everything free for the taking while away during the rental period. Sure, maybe they need better security, but no one forced her to rent out her place, and no one forced her to hand the keys over while she was gone.
• mkramlich 15y ago
  And what happens the next time? And the time after that? Will AirBNB be legally/financially responsible every time some guest trashes a host's place? Shouldn't the guest be responsible? Does the former line of thinking scale? I find the whole issue a bit of comic opera because I remember the first time I learned of AirBnB's business model I realized this kind of thing could and would happen. And now it has. Shocking! Not.