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> 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

> 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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  > 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.

krschultz 15y ago

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 15y ago
> 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.