5 ms·

Airbnb Apologizes and Offers $50,000 Guarantee to Home Owners

18 points by jeanhsu 15y ago

mashmac2 15y ago
From AirBnB source: http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and-safety http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and-safety
dasht 15y ago
Are you kidding me?!?! a) Airbnb needs to recognize the risks they are creating for guests - this move is purely a reactionary response to placate public perception about the risks to hosts. They do not care about safety so much as the supply of the product they broker. b) $50K is a pretty good prize for anyone who can game them on this one. The "apology" says: "There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. In the last few days we have had a crash course in crisis management." If crisis management is something you're only just now learning about, in this highly risk inducing business, what does that say about your founders, investors, and your investors' funders? I honestly now wonder if there aren't already any guest victims who we haven't heard from because, well, they're gone. I seriously wonder if this company hasn't already killed someone.
- dasht 15y ago
  I know that the rules state the rule of thumb that one should not post explaining down-votes but I am curious about these, if an exception might be carved out. Looking at airbnb over the past week, and winding up with this recent move, I feel like I'm watching a slow-motion train wreck that is so predictable I can't imagine how they got to this state. I'm also quite sincere, wearing my "engineering hat", at least as I understand it, that there are serious life-critical mistakes getting papered over here.
  - kragen 15y ago
    My downvote was in response to what I perceived as an unrealistic (and hysterical) assessment of risks on your part. Airbnb now claims to be the size of, say, Albuquerque: one of the cities where I grew up, with somewhere around half a million people. In Albuquerque, there are 200 reports of vandalism, 100 stolen cars, 100 burglaries, 50 aggravated assaults, 10 kidnappings, 10 forcible rapes, two acts of arson, and one homicide, according to http://www.cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/ http://www.cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/. Every week. EVERY WEEK. A murder every week. Fifty aggravated assaults every week. 200 reports of vandalism every week. From this we can draw three conclusions: 1. You're probably right that there are other incidents. Probably some vandalism and assaults, maybe even some homicides. 2. Airbnb is a lot smaller than it appears to be. Maybe it's more like a 10 000 person town than like a million-person city. Maybe that's because their average user only use their service for a week every year as either a guest or a host. 3. Even so, Airbnb is a hell of a lot safer than Albuquerque, or actually any city in the US. An Airbnb user is a more likely to get kidnapped or murdered just at random than by someone they met through Airbnb. And that's probably still true even if you just consider the time they're actively using Airbnb.
    - dasht 15y ago
      Ok, well, thanks for answering. The comparison to Albuquerque makes no sense to me. We could as well guess that Airbnb is less safe than riding a roller coaster at Disneyland -- so what? Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing. Because of its inherent structure, we can reasonably suspect that Airbnb is far, far riskier than current measurements yet show. I think of lots of nasty crimes that it facilitates and I'm sure you can as well. There is next to nothing in it that would prevent much higher rates of crime. It's structure is attractive to crime. The toll of the kinds of crime it is well suited for is incredibly high. Unless the basic model is significantly changed, none of those risks will go away or much diminish. Meanwhile the attractive potential for abuse of Airbnb is now well advertised to all potential criminals. I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. It is as if the designers of this product want glibly to overturn common sense about how far to trust strangers and it wants to ignore the many rules and regulations that are designed to prevent precisely this kind of business activity -- all on the basis that "most people are basically good" or something. That's socially irresponsible engineering.
PaulHoule 15y ago
big question: Will EJ settle for $50k or will she try to get more in court?
joebadmo 15y ago
Actually, I'm impressed. The apology is pretty comprehensive with no weasel words, and the new features seem pretty serious. My personal chances of using the service as a host have gone from 'just might try it' a few weeks ago to 'yeah, no' a few days ago, back up to 'I'll think about it' after reading this blog post.
- kragen 15y ago
  I feel the same way reading this — but there's a small voice in my head asking whether they're being honest even now. Both EJ and Arrington have accused them straight out of lying in their efforts to manage this, and it looks like at least one other Airbnb host has had something similar happen, so I wonder how many other people this has already happened to. Are we going to find out in three months that there's no $50k, no customer support team, etc.?
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    Maybe that's what's keeping me from immediately jumping in, too. But I can't imagine such a high profile startup with serious funding and such public statements would really be straight-up lying about this. And in light of the blog post, it seems likely to me that while their initial reaction was poor and, well, reactionary, they've scrambled not just to address the specific incident but to put systems into place that address the underlying causes.
    - kragen 15y ago
      Either they have been straight-up lying about it, or Arrington and EJ have been.
jsavimbi 15y ago
> Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of suspicious activity. I just finished reading the businessinsider piece and maybe they'd want to hire an outside firm to manually review all suspicious activity, from both the host and renter perspective and Airbnb itself. Also, and this may be a little bit of closing the barn door a couple of months too late, but one assumes that guest/host welfare would've been paramount right from the beginning, as one case like EJ's demonstrated how vulnerable a publicly-facing business model can be, as any real life business/insurance executive could've explained. Is it me or did the idea of making off with $50,000 in renovations cross anyone else's mind? I think telegraphing the intent to pay a guaranteed specific amount sets the new minimum for fraudulent activity and removes the burden of responsibility from the hosts, whose relation to Airbnb is that of a customer, not a business partner. And yes, back in the old days and out of necessity, people did stay in other people's homes, but not every apartment was a rooming house and the landlord was usually on the premises.

18 points by jeanhsu 15y ago

From AirBnB source: http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and-safety http://blog.airbnb.com/our-commitment-to-trust-and-safety

dasht 15y ago

Are you kidding me?!?! a) Airbnb needs to recognize the risks they are creating for guests - this move is purely a reactionary response to placate public perception about the risks to hosts. They do not care about safety so much as the supply of the product they broker. b) $50K is a pretty good prize for anyone who can game them on this one. The "apology" says: "There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. In the last few days we have had a crash course in crisis management." If crisis management is something you're only just now learning about, in this highly risk inducing business, what does that say about your founders, investors, and your investors' funders? I honestly now wonder if there aren't already any guest victims who we haven't heard from because, well, they're gone. I seriously wonder if this company hasn't already killed someone.

dasht 15y ago
I know that the rules state the rule of thumb that one should not post explaining down-votes but I am curious about these, if an exception might be carved out. Looking at airbnb over the past week, and winding up with this recent move, I feel like I'm watching a slow-motion train wreck that is so predictable I can't imagine how they got to this state. I'm also quite sincere, wearing my "engineering hat", at least as I understand it, that there are serious life-critical mistakes getting papered over here.
- kragen 15y ago
  My downvote was in response to what I perceived as an unrealistic (and hysterical) assessment of risks on your part. Airbnb now claims to be the size of, say, Albuquerque: one of the cities where I grew up, with somewhere around half a million people. In Albuquerque, there are 200 reports of vandalism, 100 stolen cars, 100 burglaries, 50 aggravated assaults, 10 kidnappings, 10 forcible rapes, two acts of arson, and one homicide, according to http://www.cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/ http://www.cabq.gov/onlinesvcs/crimestats/. Every week. EVERY WEEK. A murder every week. Fifty aggravated assaults every week. 200 reports of vandalism every week. From this we can draw three conclusions: 1. You're probably right that there are other incidents. Probably some vandalism and assaults, maybe even some homicides. 2. Airbnb is a lot smaller than it appears to be. Maybe it's more like a 10 000 person town than like a million-person city. Maybe that's because their average user only use their service for a week every year as either a guest or a host. 3. Even so, Airbnb is a hell of a lot safer than Albuquerque, or actually any city in the US. An Airbnb user is a more likely to get kidnapped or murdered just at random than by someone they met through Airbnb. And that's probably still true even if you just consider the time they're actively using Airbnb.
  - dasht 15y ago
    Ok, well, thanks for answering. The comparison to Albuquerque makes no sense to me. We could as well guess that Airbnb is less safe than riding a roller coaster at Disneyland -- so what? Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing. Because of its inherent structure, we can reasonably suspect that Airbnb is far, far riskier than current measurements yet show. I think of lots of nasty crimes that it facilitates and I'm sure you can as well. There is next to nothing in it that would prevent much higher rates of crime. It's structure is attractive to crime. The toll of the kinds of crime it is well suited for is incredibly high. Unless the basic model is significantly changed, none of those risks will go away or much diminish. Meanwhile the attractive potential for abuse of Airbnb is now well advertised to all potential criminals. I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. It is as if the designers of this product want glibly to overturn common sense about how far to trust strangers and it wants to ignore the many rules and regulations that are designed to prevent precisely this kind of business activity -- all on the basis that "most people are basically good" or something. That's socially irresponsible engineering.

PaulHoule 15y ago

big question: Will EJ settle for $50k or will she try to get more in court?

joebadmo 15y ago

Actually, I'm impressed. The apology is pretty comprehensive with no weasel words, and the new features seem pretty serious. My personal chances of using the service as a host have gone from 'just might try it' a few weeks ago to 'yeah, no' a few days ago, back up to 'I'll think about it' after reading this blog post.

kragen 15y ago
I feel the same way reading this — but there's a small voice in my head asking whether they're being honest even now. Both EJ and Arrington have accused them straight out of lying in their efforts to manage this, and it looks like at least one other Airbnb host has had something similar happen, so I wonder how many other people this has already happened to. Are we going to find out in three months that there's no $50k, no customer support team, etc.?
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Maybe that's what's keeping me from immediately jumping in, too. But I can't imagine such a high profile startup with serious funding and such public statements would really be straight-up lying about this. And in light of the blog post, it seems likely to me that while their initial reaction was poor and, well, reactionary, they've scrambled not just to address the specific incident but to put systems into place that address the underlying causes.
  - kragen 15y ago
    Either they have been straight-up lying about it, or Arrington and EJ have been.

jsavimbi 15y ago

> Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of suspicious activity. I just finished reading the businessinsider piece and maybe they'd want to hire an outside firm to manually review all suspicious activity, from both the host and renter perspective and Airbnb itself. Also, and this may be a little bit of closing the barn door a couple of months too late, but one assumes that guest/host welfare would've been paramount right from the beginning, as one case like EJ's demonstrated how vulnerable a publicly-facing business model can be, as any real life business/insurance executive could've explained. Is it me or did the idea of making off with $50,000 in renovations cross anyone else's mind? I think telegraphing the intent to pay a guaranteed specific amount sets the new minimum for fraudulent activity and removes the burden of responsibility from the hosts, whose relation to Airbnb is that of a customer, not a business partner. And yes, back in the old days and out of necessity, people did stay in other people's homes, but not every apartment was a rooming house and the landlord was usually on the premises.