Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight

Airbnb &#38; YC, just fix this please:<p>1. Get a new place for EJ. Furnish it fully. Pay for everything.<p>2. Help her restore her virtual identity. Use any resources at your considerable disposal.<p>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.<p>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.<p>5. Fuck the business models, projections, and funding rounds and just "do the right thing".<p>This appears to be a royal fuck-up. But nothing compared to the lost goodwill for Airbnb, YC, the startup community, and the "new order" in general. Many of us had thought that you all had deprecated the era of Ford Pinto thinking. Current data appears to be to the contrary.<p>Turn this lemon into lemonade before the window closes. Tick. Tick. Tick.<p>[EDIT: This has nothing to do with assigning blame; this incident was clearly an outlier and nobody's fault (except the obvious bad guys). And it has nothing to do with solving this class of problem. All I'm saying is that fixing this instance will lead to solving this class. It presents an excellent opportunity to fix things in a way that never could have been imagined before. Airbnb has a compelling business proposition with an obvious Achilles heel. This unfortunate situation presents an excellent opportunity to address that weakness head on. But only with a 179 degree change in thinking. I don't know what the ultimate solution to this problem is, but <i>now</i> is clearly the time for Airbnb to get moving on it...]

<i>He then addressed his concerns about my blog post, and the potentially negative impact it could have on his company’s growth and current round of funding. During this call and in messages thereafter, he requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access, and a few weeks later, suggested that I update the blog with a “twist" of good news so as to “complete[s] the story”.</i><p>If this is true it is downright appalling. Does he really think this woman that just had her life turned upside down gives a shit about his next round of funding?

I have a simple question for AirBnB.<p><pre><code> Did one of the founders ask this woman to take down or limit access to her blog post? </code></pre> When you cut through everything else I think the answer to that would be telling. If the answer is no, then it points to dishonesty on the part of EJ, if the answer is yes, then much has been learnt about how AirBnB dealt with this situation.

They must have totally messed this up for her to write a rebuttal post like that. This post absolutely torn apart all positive points from Chesky's response. I just still can't believe airbnb didnt see this coming, and stomp on the problem as hard as they can to get EJ on their side. If everything she said is true here, airbnb truly screwed up and deserve the negative PR coming their way.<p>Isn't this why you give up equity to have advisers on your team? Shouldn't they have predicted this?

So somewhere between, "we need to appear to have taken responsibility for this and done everything in our power to help the victim and prevent future incidents", and "we need to take responsibility for this and do everything in our power to help the victim and prevent future incidents", Chesky et al went seriously off the rails. If there's anything worse than doing nothing, it's saying you've done the right thing when, in fact, you clearly haven't.<p>I know pg isn't likely to talk about this while the situation is still ongoing, but it'd be nice to hear his thoughts on the matter. This is the kind of behaviour you expect from a major airline or telecom, not a YC startup. It certainly doesn't speak well of the character of the founders.

It is becoming so typical of the modern society to try to put spin on everything for our own narrow benefit rather than trying to get to the root cause and fix it.<p>This is another glaring example of it. A month after such a gruesome incident, nothing at all has been done by AirBnB. But they have gone out of their way in trying to put a positive spin on this whole sordid episode in order to protect their precious funding. When will somebody from AirBnB step up and say that we take responsibility for what happened and will do whatever it takes to help the victim and fix the system so that something like this does not happen again rather than wasting their efforts in trying to put a positive twist to this story? Doing such a thing will help them much more in the longer term than trying to simply sweep this story under the carpet.

It's a sad state of affairs, to be sure. But the answers are simple, although it's going to be a real pain for AirBnB's "frictionless" transaction model.<p>1) You MUST put down a CREDIT CARD. Not a bank card, not a debit card, not a prepaid card. No plasticky no rentee. A major credit card to make a transaction. No bitcoin, no cash, no BS. Airbnb then puts a hold equal to transaction cost + 20% for the duration of the stay. That 20% can be put toward insurance on both ends, paid out when satisfactory closeout of the transaction on <i>both ends</i> occurs. If renters balk at the 20% hold, they shouldn't be on vacation. If owners balk at the "hold" instead of cash in hand, they can take their business to craigslist or wherever.<p>2) AirBnB must then become an arbitrator, a mediator, a guarantor, and/or (unless they want to outsource this) an insurer.

What's telling about this whole story is how Airbnb tried to "manage" her.<p>I thought the whole point of being a startup is you don't need to fall in line with the dehumanizing bullshit that you find in big corporations.<p>That's why I'm in a startup at least and it works for me on that level.<p>But there's such a stench of insincerity about the Airbnb approach that I will never use their site now.

Oh. My. God.<p>I really believed they're doing their best to help EJ. I trusted in that.<p>Yes, I liked AirBNB to the point of talking about it with friends and pretty much advertising it all around as a great idea and a great company - just because I liked them. They looked trustworthy and like a really nice company.<p>If what EJ wrote is accurate[1], then I find the way they handle this situation outraging. It hurts my feelings and right now completely destroyed my trust in AirBNB. If they won't fix it soon and start behaving like a real human beings, theny I'm no longer caring about them, and will advice my friends against them.<p>[1] - I try to not jump into conclusions too fast.

In our rush to disintermediate old industries we may discover that some of those intermediaries are there for a reason.

Isn't this easily the most popular news about Airbnb this year?<p>I am surprised that they kept their mouth shut in all their public channels. No mention in the blog, no direct message in twitter. And it looks they chose to talk about this issue in TC only because TC wrote about the original story. This is what they replied to people in twitter:<p><i>@joyandjoy EJ's blog post says, "They have offered to help me recover emotionally and financially, and are working with SFPD"</i><p>Yeah right. Now EJ's blog post says that they did not keep their promise.<p>This is what happens when you hesitate to help the victim of an incident like this and instead start plotting and planning PR activities supposed to do the damage control for your next valuation.<p>What a shame.

EJ writes: "And I was - but no longer am - scared of Airbnb’s reaction, the pressure and the veiled threat I have received from them since I initially blogged this story."<p>Wow. That sounds quite different from what Brian Chesky claims here: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbnb/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbn...</a>

&#62; <i>And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that instead, you keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel.</i><p>Will do.

Just be a good company and take care of the customer. This isn't rocket science. Hire someone who is her personal assistant through the process until the process is over, help as much as possible.<p>Concerns for setting a cost-inefficient precedent? BS. Not helping her has become the real cost-inefficient precedent set in this case. I had no idea this had been going on for a month now.<p>This is a shame. Take care of your customers, so much more when they're in your backyard.

Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO) here. My heart goes out to our host. My co-founder has contacted her multiple times, as recently as last night, and we have again offered to help her in any way that she needs. We will continue to make ourselves available to her to do whatever she asks of us in this time of need. We have encouraged her to reach us so that we can help her through this, and we are standing by.

The internet is moving <i>really</i> fast, I've already seen non tech people I know commenting about this on Facebook. They might have lost already. When something like this happens I think you probably have hours to sort it out, rather than weeks. Remember that it was less than 24 hours from the story breaking that News Corp decided the best course of action was closing a business with ~7 million repeat customers. Of course there may be other reasons they did this but still...

From a comment on an earlier post by Brian Chesky:<p><i>We've created a marketplace built on trust, transparency and authenticity within our community, and we hold the safety of our community members as our highest priority.</i><p>I'm really not sure how he can reconcile that comment with the actions described in this post.

It seems like easy money, but being a landlord is a crummy business to be in. I haven't had an experience quite this bad, but we screen our tenants, don't keep our own valuables where they can get them, and take a large deposit up front. We have still had places trashed and had to pay repairs of well over $10k to return them to rentable condition when someone moves out...<p>Luckily we have much of the tenants information to try to collect from them. Un-luckily we can almost never collect damages from these types of people. They will quit their job to not have an income we can garnish.<p>You don't want to be a landlord. I don't want to be a landlord.

Hmm... At this point, AirBnB has gone beyond the point of reconciliation with this EJ. Either she is lying or AirBnB is lying.<p>The onus is on AirBnB to supply evidence to the contrary of what EJ has to say. They have more at stake. Their brand is now blowing in the wind along with the goodwill they have built up.<p>What we have so far is that you have indeed offer to help financially. What we don't have is evidence to support you did or you did and she turn down the offers. Appropriate receipts would easily discredit her. Any other response short of supplying document would only discredit AirBnB.

We've had the initial blogpost and Brian Chesky's response on Techcrunch. I would love to read what Airbnb CEOs have to say about the second blog post.<p>I think they should take credible steps as soon as possible to improve the author's situation. While they're at it, an explanation of how such incidents can be stopped from happening again would also be good.<p>If trust is so important for their business model, they have to demonstrate that Airbnb is trustworthy.

"Airbnb was mentioning their funding to a victim of ransacking? OMG that's bad..." (quote from TC comment)

I'm much more inclined to believe EJ than Airbnb's spin. The week after EJ's story appeared one of my writers (I'm an editor at a travel website) approached EJ for a story we were doing about safety and vacation rentals. She helped out on the story, but didn't want any more attention drawn to her case at that point. She's been thrust back into the spotlight b/c of Airbnb's spin, not because she's out to get them. If her story was fake, Airbnb wouldn't be doing the serious damage control they're engaged in now.<p>I think they're seriously worried that the attention to the case will highlight two big weaknesses of their product: 1. In many markets, it's illegal to do short-term rentals, 2. Homeowners/renters insurance doesn't cover damages in these situations. Many markets won't crack down on these rentals (see the NYT story about SF rentals last weekend), but if they in the name of safety or code violations, Airbnb's got a problem. And if people start getting spooked about insurance issues, they're screwed from the other end.

This is such a tragic situation. I am shocked by the lack of response by Airbnb. The very least they can do is provide her assistance and connecting her with the right resources to move forward.<p>When I was in college, a classmate in a philosophy class found out I was a business major and turned to me and said "you guys are just so heartless." I resented the statement but brushed it off as a gross generalization. Situations like these just prove my classmates point to be more real than I was willing to admit at the time. Putting profit above the safety and well being of your customers/users is a terrible business practice that will certainly lead to the death of your business. This isn't even about PR, this is fundamental to the future of the Airbnb platform and they aren't even listening.<p>The hotel lobby has a huge opportunity here that I don't think they realize yet. With this being on the front page of the Financial Times today, the hotel lobby should be swooping in anytime to pick up the pieces of Airbnb's failure to act. If I were the manager of any hotel in the SF area, I'd be offering her a free stay until things got sorted out. Airbnb is going to be left in the wake wondering what the hell happened.

This is reminding me of the Soutwest Air response to the mistreatment they put Kevin Smith thru. When he went public, it was obvious they didn't give a damn about him and they were totally in damage control mode. Rather than apologize and recognize the error, they tried to turn it into a debate about whether fat people should fly, and they misrepresented the situation further.<p>I saw that comment on tech crunch and felt that Chesky was begin dishonest (based solely on having ready he previous blog post from ej) and now we see that AirBnB tried to get her to shut up!<p>As a frequent AirBnB customer (staying in a place rented via AirBnB at the moment, in fact) I'm finding that I'm having less and less faith in the company as these incidents unfold. (I'm not just talking about this, but Kutchner, the Craigslist, the fact that they keep their customers in the dark, etc.)<p>Frankly, as someone who has been online for two decades now, talking to people I can get a good feeling for how trustworthy they are. AirBnB inhibits this because it inhibits communication-- it can only happen thru their service which is not conducive to having a dialog.<p>The sole purpose of restricting this communication and restricting customer's ability to assess the risk in any of these transactions is AirBnB's desire to prevent the possibility that a deal might happen off of their site.<p>Reality is, this is silly. We found an apartment on AirBnB once and then found it on the internet (wasn't hard given knowledge of the details of the apartment.) We could have booked it that way and saved the AirBnB commission... but we booked it thru AirBnB anyway because we wanted them to escrow the funds. (Little did we know how little protection AirBnB provides in that regard.) But we were able to find out more about that apartment by looking at its website compared to the info on AirBnB.<p>And more importantly, having the owner's email address allowed us to discuss a lot of possible issues about the situation, and assess their trustworthiness... something impossible or difficult to do thru AirBnB.

We're lucky this was a property crime. I know the victim is feeling crushed right now, but property can be replaced (aside from some personal items). There is a huge potential for a sick property owner or vacationer to become violent with the other party. Imagine if they story was about a kidnapping, murder, assault, or rape. AirBnB better figure out the mechanism for their background check ASAP, becuase you can count people being good &#62;99.9% of the time, but that &#60;0.1% breaks your system.

<i>"...keep the money and use it to book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel. You’ll be glad you did."</i><p>Statements like this certainly fuel the hotel industry conspiracy theories from yesterday for me. It doesn't even make sense, as she claims the hotels will be safer for the travellers. The travellers safety was never at question here was it?

Just like everyone else, I hope the AirBNB guys will do the right thing.<p>I don't know if many of you have seen her Jan 2nd post titled 'New Year. New Home.'<p>"As 2011 sets in, I find myself curled up on a new couch in a new apartment in a not-so-new city, reading today’s (and yesterday’s) New York Times, and listening to the rain fall against the skylight overhead. A Duraflame log burns in the fireplace, a bar of dark chocolate sits half-eaten on the counter, and a lull of soft music whispers from the stereo. I am cozy, comfortable and perfectly content. I am home."<p>".... unpacking dusty boxes, unloading suitcases and scouring the internet for furniture. Something along the lines of a home began to take shape, and with it came that invaluable feeling of being at peace."<p>"....For the time being anyway, it's my home. And - surprisingly or not - a pretty great home it's turning out to be."<p>It is a tragedy.

Does AirBnB educate hosts on the risks involved?<p>Does it encourage them to remove valuables and non-replaceable items from the apartment being rented?<p>Does it tell them that any damages incurred will probably not be covered by their homeowners insurance? Does it provide information on how to attain extra insurance?<p>Does AirBnB hold the guest liable for any damages to a hosts property?

I think this is a shakedown, even if it occurred as EJ said.<p>Renting one's own living space to someone sight unseen is absurdly naive. It is incumbent upon the owner of the property to protect his own. Hotels do it, B&#38;Bs do it, but EJ did not. That is sheer stupidity. There should have been someone to meet the renter and to monitor their stay.<p>The relationships here are business relationships and there are certain minimal precautions one should take. EJ took none. I don't believe she is justified in insisting that Airbnb fix everything. She learned a lesson (and luckily, so did many others vicariously). A normal person would stand up, clean up and learn. A nutball would get a lawyer (and eventually lose).<p>Also, doesn't she have insurance? Although I would imagine that most policies would not cover renting one's dwelling to a complete stranger sight unseen without a special rider ("hotel insurance" maybe).<p>Finally EJ might look at her property's deed restrictions. Is she allowed to run a business at her residence? Is she allowed to rent her home? Is she required by the state or city to to pay a "hotel tax", a "business registration fee", etc.? EJ may be in violation of any number of municipal and state laws.

Upon reading the article about TaskRabbit, I think Airbnb can apply the same type of checks:<p>"Since many common tasks are carried out in the senders’ homes, runners are vetted through a three-step process..<p>which starts with an application form and progresses to an automated phone or video interview that poses a series of questions designed to weed out deadbeats.<p>Finally, TaskRabbit pays the database giant Acxiom to perform a federal criminal background check on each prospective worker."<p><a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_taskrabbit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_taskrabbit/</a>

I guess I'm weirdly cynical, but I never though airbnb had a viable model. Perhaps for rental properties, but I would never rent my own home. I see a certain analogy between this and hitchhiking. Hitchhiking used to be safe in America, but now you rarely see it because it's perceived to be dangerous. I always figured airbnb would follow the same trajectory.

It would be great if some journalist would do a bit of fact checking on both sides of the story instead of just blindly republishing what they both claim to be the truth. I'm sure someone must have a SFPD source that could verify some of this story, even off the record would be better than nothing.

My advice would be to forget PR, forget trying to spin it. Just tell the truth, do the right thing for the victim, and figure out how to prevent it going forward.<p><i></i><i>That's all they have to do.</i><i></i>

Awful customer service and PR failure on Airbnb's part, they should be ashamed. Not only did they NOT do anything to help this poor woman but they lied about it for positive PR and asked her to remove/edit the blog? Wow, that's about as low as it gets.

I doubt I'm the only one that was interested in using AirBNB with their growing traction and successes.<p>No way will that happen now. It's hard to imagine how they could have handled this worse.

Parallels with DropBox and their no password login disaster? Bad processes and a botched PR response.<p>Methinks these super-hot startups may be reaching critical mass before they develop business maturity.

Update: SF police arrest suspect in trashing of Airbnb rental<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20085741-245/sf-police-arrest-suspect-in-trashing-of-airbnb-rental/" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20085741-245/sf-police-arr...</a>

What a huge missed opportunity for AirBnB! For a drop in the bucket of time &#38; expense, they could have easily come out of this looking stellar &#38; likely would have gained the business of many people who have been on the fence.<p>Instead the come out looking like they're trying to hide the flaws in their model.

Now wait for the mainstream media to jump on this.

Just to kick off an alternate perspective on the situation: up until reading about this incident, airbnb and the whole business model of "borrow my home" has somehow escaped my attention, and even though what has happened in EJ's situation is really horrible and she has my sympathy, I definitely recognise that her case is an extreme minority case that potentially wouldn't affect me as a user of the service. After reading about airbnb following this incident and browsing their website a bit, I am actually quite keen on trying the service! So perhaps any publicity really is good publicity!

The people who did this are horrible, and Airbnb definitely has areas they could improve their process.<p>That said, I'm more shocked at "EJ's" naivety and passing of all responsibility on Airbnb. You're renting your place out to complete strangers, not only that, you're leaving all of your valuables there with them. You don't know their real (or the fake one they stole) name until you're already aboard an outbound plane?! That is insanity to me.<p>If a person NEEDS Craigslist-style warnings about being careful, that person should probably not rent their place out on Airbnb. This is just very poor judgement on her part.

The real nightmare is Airbnb's handling of this situation. Slow and inadequate response, a founder trying to put a spin/silence the victim (this is called a coverup) and another founder sending a feeble email stating he/she"would enjoy meeting" the victim. Sure, if I was the victim I would love to grab a cup of coffee with the founder of the company that created a service that was the direct catalyst of the most traumatic event of my life in recent years to "touch bases" and get to know each other. How about, "I would like to personally meet you to apologize and talk about how we can make this situation right. Here's my phone number, please call me any time of the day." You're in the same neighborhood, surely you can get in touch personally in five weeks if you tried hard enough.<p>And pg doesn't seem to have a clue when it comes to the "personal touch" either. "Fix it", in this case doesn't mean compensating all damages financially and maybe adding a little extra money for trouble. The victim's home and sanctuary was violated by people. If this was a natural disaster, maybe money would go a long way, but this person's trust in people was violated and she also lost "priceless" memorabilia etc. to vandals who are either social misfits and/or drug addicts that methodically deceive unknowing victims.<p>This situation is reminiscent of Sony's reaction to cracker attacks. The criminals attacked a glaring hole in the security model, company shifts blame to criminals. "A community built on trust" without security? What about trust and verify? The victim clearly states that Craigslist has a better security model and for all we know that couch surfing site too.<p>The lack of security measures in this case illustrate a glaring hole in the founder's approach to the problem. Any casual observer would conclude that the safety of users is only secondary to the company's goals of generating more revenues and obtaining more funding.<p>Airbnb, please come out of the state of denial and just simply admit:<p>A. We messed up big time<p>B. Any compensation will never truly fix this situation but we will do everything within reason to remedy it<p>C. Lessons from this disaster will be applied immediately to ramp up security and formalizing the response of such crises in the future.

Even though Fred Wilson said "We couldn't wrap our heads around air mattresses on the living room floors as the next hotel room and did not chase the deal."<p>...with regards to not funding airbnb I somehow feel that that might not have been the case.<p>I think Fred's age (49?) and experience in life basically made it hard to understand how an idea like this couldn't have potential problems such, as only one example, this situation.<p>Hold on a second before you say "it only happened this one time".<p>How do we know that? People seem to think that either your place gets trashed or it's absolutely fine.<p>It's not digital it's analog. There's an in between state.<p>Something could get stolen that you don't know even about until much later. It won't always be the obvious thing like jewelry (and why would you leave that actually) it could be one of many little things you don't realize you have until missing. Or something could be broken.<p>The fact is there is no way for airbnb to insure against any number of minor type things that could happen. Where minor becomes your problem and your aggravation.<p>Have you ever seen how big of an industry shoplifting prevention is? Do you really think that only a minor % of the population commits petty type crimes?<p>And there is the reverse situation.<p>If you stay at someones place what if they honestly think that you stole something of theirs because they can't find it? Honest mistakes like this happen all the time. And the most obvious culprit tends to be blamed.

It seems to me that what AirBnB should do is just this:<p>1. Announce they are instituting a (possibly optional) insurance policy. At most, there should be a checkbox when I rent my place out that says 'insure it' and if I check it they take the cost of insurance out of what I'd get paid otherwise. If insurance is cheap enough (I don't know what 'cheap enough' is) they can simply make it mandatory.<p>(The decision to self-insure or use an external insurance agency is not germane to this discussion... that's something they need to figure out internally.)<p>2. Offer this person some sum (say, 5x what insurance would have paid) for her silence.<p>Now, I'm sure they are working on 2. but I think #1 is actually more important, because many of us are not going to be willing to do this negotiation in public to get compensation... so insurance is better all around. The people renting out the houses know they can get paid with minimal hassle, and AirBnB knows exactly how much it is going to cost ahead of time. If you can find an insurance company that insures hotels, they might also be able to help with risk mitigation efforts.<p>I really think that instituting some sort of insurance policy is a good way for AirBnB to accept responsibility for the problem, and a realistic "and this is what we are doing to mitigate the problem going forward"

Last paragraph of the blogpost: EJ doesn't want other people to help her and strongly advises them to book a hotel room instead of using airbnb.. after all that happened to her, shouldn't that be of latter concern? I mean being in her shoes, I would welcome any donations from people willing to help.. unless of course it's not a true story.<p>I can't be sure of course, but all the anonymity around it makes it kind of suspicious.

Airbnb should look at,this situation as an opporrunity to turn bad publicity into a good one. Some bucks taken out from huge funding rounds and spent towards ej would go a long long way. This should also be combined with better identity measures implemented to avoid airbnb from having to cover cost of any more cases like these.

Question: Suppose that I use airbnb to rent out my apartment to someone, and that person leaves the door unlocked and a third person goes in and steals my imac. Who takes liability here? Is there something in the airbnb agreement which explicitly waives rights to pursue airbnb for the losses?

Airbnb should probably read their 6th golden rules of thumb<p><a href="http://www.airbnb.com/home/goldenrules" rel="nofollow">http://www.airbnb.com/home/goldenrules</a><p>"If something goes wrong unexpectedly, be accessible to help remedy the situation. Be a hero to your guest!"

"He requested that I shut down the blog altogether or limit its access"<p>If true, that's really sleazy.

Airbnb's Terms &#38; Privacy section states that "We are not involved in the actual face-to-face contact between users," have "no control over the conduct of our users or the truth or accuracy of the information that users post," and " do not investigate any user's reputation, conduct, morality, criminal background, or verify the information that any user submits to the Site."<p>It's a business, they're supposed to be money driven. Although it's sad to see someone abuse the system, she agreed to those terms when she put her apartment up there. The owners aren't obligated to recompense the lady.

What's totally missing here is some kind of compassionate reaction from Airbnb.<p>Regarding that joke in the FAQ about guests stealing the grand piano: I think it's okay to make such a joke IF AND ONLY IF the reaction to a case like this is in the same vein: The minute they learned about this ordeal, they should have stopped working, cancel all meetings and help her. And if that means mopping her floors themselves then do it. They did the opposite, they acted greedily and stingily and thereby didn't just let down the girl, but everyone in the startup community who admired and rooted for them.

I'm slightly concerned that AirBNB are spinning this rather than just sorting stuff out. Veiled threats to the victim, whilst spreading incorrect stories are a concerning development in an already distressing case. If the guy in custody is the guy responsible, why are AirBNB and EJ not in sync? This smells massively of a total PR disaster for AirBNB, whatever is said about compensation or no, threatening victims, or telling them to 'limit access to their blog' is as naive as it is stupid - how does the internet usually react to 'limiting access'?

<i>And for those who have so generously suggested a donation fund be set up to help me recover, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and suggest that instead, you keep the money and use it to &#62;&#62; book yourself into a nice, safe hotel room the next time you travel &#60;&#60;. You’ll be glad you did.</i><p>Devil's advocate (not being inconsiderate): doesn't the hotel industry have an enormous interest in the demise of Airbnb? Interesting how the blog posts makes this suggestion after the heart strings have been tug.

Oh boy....this is going downhill fast!

This is pretty awful. I'm hoping Airbnb takes care of her. They are in a pretty tough position, though.<p>If they go under because of this I personally hope it is not until August. So, first and foremost, fix EJ's situation, but also for all of the people who are still using the service, currently using the service, or have plans made in the next few weeks through this service, take care of this. Don't leave her hanging.<p>Also, it is unfortunate that Airbnb will be known by a lot of new people because of this incident.

Did anyone see this as an utter failure of handling customer expectations by Airbnb? Don't make promises if you're unable to keep them. I feel very sorry for this poor lady.

Noone has commented this yet. What are the chances this is all in some way a PR play (possibly gone bad) to get on the news during a round of funding? (The "there's no such things as bad publicity" kind)<p>Not saying it is .. but I do wonder. The only thing that would make it doubtful is that part where she says he told her about _the impact on Airbnb round of funding_. But then again, if your mind is twisted ...

Between this and the spammy--potentially illegal--posts to Craig's List (<a href="http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-sales-team-used-craigslist-for-stealthy-property-drive/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-sal...</a>) to generate rentals, it's very hard to think of AirBnB as a well run company.

Prediction: She will sue Airbnb. And win.

The solution for AirBnB is (or was...) simple.<p>1. Make this person whole, at least in terms of material possessions and safety, to the extent possible. And do it <i></i>FAST<i></i><p>2. Ask them to take down the blog, and replace it with something along the lines of "my situation is resolved. Thank you AirBnB. But I can't discuss the terms".<p>3. Work on strengthening your internal processes to make sure the chances of a similar incident are further reduced by a couple of orders of magnitude<p>4. Improve your customer-service department.<p>But it's been almost a month, and they still haven't done any of this. They just seemed too concerned about what this will do to their valuation. This is pure bullshit on their part! It shows that they have absolutely no idea how to operate in a customer-facing industry.

This story is beginning to smell fishy. I was burglarized in a similar, but not as extreme manner. My landlord was involved immediately. Why is there no mention of the property owner in any of these stories?<p>In my case, the "investigation" was over in about 1.25 days. There's not much the police can do. SFPD would not spend 2 months investigating a burglary in an illegal sublet.<p>Furthermore, there are no photos of the damage, the victim is anonymous, and there is no description of the neighborhood or apartment complex. If someone was bent on catching the burglars, more info would be disseminated, not less. The articles are written as though the author has an axe to grind with AirBNB, not that she wants to catch the thieves.

My first thought is that you'd might actually have a higher chance of having someone trash your house if you leave it unoccupied for week vs. letting someone rent it on Airbnb.

Does anyone actually know the "real" story? I feel like Airbnb/YC is saying one thing, and EJ is saying something else.<p>Is this a case of miscommunications that got blown out of proportion?

I never understood any hype around AirBnB, my hunch was and is "stay at a distance, this is somehow dirty".<p>As an afterthought, I think, they sell an illusion, sack in money and let their customers alone take at least one huge risk.<p>For me they have already passed the point of no return, they have shown who they are (instead of supporting the victim full heartedly they play an evil game), I will not use their service.<p>Could this help: "As a gesture of goodwill and without acknowledging any legal obligation."

Scary how fast a startup can get a bad company.

Wow.<p>AirBnb is /done/.

Is it possible that she made the story up?

I think the most disturbing part is how they tried to get her to take her blog or limit access to her blog post. The reason? Because it would hurt their funding round. So instead of a $5 billion valuation they now get $4.5 billion.<p>Please. The fact is this incident happened on their watch. Trying to pretend they are the hero in this mess and spin it their way bothers me tremendously. I mean, she got robbed as a consequence of using their site. That stuff happens and honestly I don't think anyone really believes they can stop all bad things from happening. But this whole let's try to hide this under the rug deal makes them look 1000x worse I think than her getting robbed (which still sucks!)

So Chesky dropped the "suspect is in custody" line to give the press the impression of closure?<p>Foxy move on his part.<p>Looks like he just got busted though or the victim would surely know of the existence of a suspect.

Just a side note.. have you guys ever wondered what the impact of this story would've been if AirBnB was not an YC company? That's a big reason why AirBnb is always talked about here. If this was just a regular, non-YC, non-funded company, I doubt this would be a big story. I doubt Techcrunch would talk about it and I doubt we here would vehemently argue about this... In the end, it's about a woman who's room got trashed.. Yes, very unfortunate, but let's face it, this would not make big headlines if this was just a regular company.

All of this discussion about what airbnb should or shouldn't do is ultimately moot now. Unless they can prove "EJ" is totally fictional and/or an insane liar the company is essentially dead in the water already (at least as a US operation). Not just because of the PR hit (though that is substantial), but because of the inevitability of media, lawyers &#38; politicians circling the wagons around this story.<p>Airbnb's business will be explicitly illegal throughout much of the US by year's end, and honestly in its current incarnation I'm not convinced that it is a bad thing (for obvious reasons this is clearly a market which needs more regulation and process than they provide).<p>Nice experiment... too bad about all of that flushed away money though.

tl;dr: Devil's Advocate.<p>This is not going to be very popular, but I'm just going to go on the record and say that this whole story may be a hoax.<p>And I highlight "maybe". What we have here are two blog posts from someone we know nothing about who epitomizes a concentration of fears (woman, home, identity, violation) and manages, in two blog posts over the past seven months to bring about a PR nightmare for AirBnB. Is Chesky and idiot and/or sociopath? Probably not, and this could be some crappy CYA on AirBnB's behalf, but the second blog post in response to Chesky's On Safety release does nothing but reinforce and add onto the imagined fetal-curling fears the author expressed in her first post, but also systematically tries to disprove any actions mentioned by Chesky while simultaneously smearing unnamed AirBnB reps.<p>Two blog posts over seven months. Talented writer with no writing history able to communicate and project emotions and elicit visceral responses from complete strangers.<p>Am I the only one whose bullshit alarm is going off?<p>Disclaimer: I have no connection to YC, pg, AirBnB, Chesky, Starwood Hotels nor have I participated in AirBnB's program or any similar crashpad/couchsurfing/hosteling schemes.

A summary:<p><i>As of today, July 28, I have received no confirmation from either the San Francisco Police Department or the District Attorney that any culprit is in custody for my case.</i><p><i>I received a personal call from one of the co-founders of Airbnb. We had a lengthy conversation, in which he indicated having knowledge of the (previously mentioned) person who had been apprehended by the police, but that he could not discuss the details or these previous cases[sic] with me, as the investigation was ongoing.</i><p><i>Too much about this case remains unknown and unresolved, and according to both the District Attorneys and the police, it could be many more months before the criminal investigation moves forward.</i><p>Edit: This is clearly a problem with a thief, with society, with criminal behavior. This woman wants to throw her story and passive aggressive attitude around to destroy Airbnb, and it is blatantly obvious. Come on people.<p>I have been robbed. I have been a victim. I didn't flee to the internet to write a story about the gas station parking lot where it took place. Why? I would have gotten <i>no attention</i> for it, <i>no sympathy</i>, and the gas station would have not been to blame <i>at all</i> and everyone knows that.<p>Not to be insensitive, but this is reminiscent of the type of people that sue McDonalds for spilling hot coffee all over themselves. Not entirely the same, but it feels oddly familiar.<p>Airbnb tries to offer a good service. That doesn't mean they can keep the murderers out of Disneyland. She made a good point that craigslist makes warnings of scams more obvious on their website than Airbnb. She should have honestly just left it at that. Because at this point she is just doing more damage on the perpetrator's behalf and <i>I think she knows it.</i><p>The knee-jerk reaction to this story is showing itself to be very far from this, so go ahead and downvote me, but nonetheless my opinion here is valid. Your next stay at Airbnb may very well be a scene out of the movie Hostel. It is just as likely however that it may happen at the next apartment you rent, the next hotel you stay at, or the next ski lodge. It doesn't matter that it was Airbnb.<p>I understand that she feels the reaction piece to her initial post was disingenuous, but with writing like this, it is clear she is just out to watch Airbnb burn. She should go hire a private detective and find the guy if she is so hell bent on revenge. She is after the wrong people. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. This woman has no target and her anger is entirely misdirected.<p>This is what insurance in our society is for. Get some. Be happy for what <i>didn't</i> go wrong and could have. She should be happy she didn't get raped when she got back to her apartment, as she <i>obviously crossed tracks with a very bad person</i>. Seriously. Shit happens in life. Everyone in this world has to deal with deceit, robberies, theft, and lies. She is no different, nor are you. She is playing out the sympathy excuse far too well. Her reaction is more similar to that of the McDonald's hot coffee victim than that of a robbery victim at this point. And like I said previously, I'm pretty sure she knows it.<p>Good luck Airbnb.

Fuck this shit. This is like when a Facebook user gets contacted by a raper using it; this is like when a Gmail account gets completly deleted.<p>Shit happens, and it will continue to happen to someone from time to time, but one case between thousands should not damage so much a single company.

Who really cares?

Isn't Airbnb's reaction a normal one? Wouldn't anyone do the same if it could have adverse effects on their current round of funding?

I feel badly for the person whose placed got trashed, and it seems Airbnb is doing what they can to remedy the situation - but am I the only one who feels there's a certain risk to be assumed with online transactions such as this?<p>If a girl meets a man on match.com who claims to be single, but after getting into a relationship with him she finds out he's married - is match.com to blame for this? Could they have done more to verify his background - perhaps, but that's also the risk we take.<p>It's an unfortunate incident, but trust me other than hacker news, techmeme and techcrunch (that's where the FT got it from) this is not really headline news, and it's not going to affect airbnb's performance in the long run.<p>On a separate note, I hope pg realizes with 423 comments on here it's hard to make heads or tails of what to read - hopefully the comments rating system will be brought back.

This time her blog title is direct and to the point, and mentions Airbnb by name. It seems she's learning some SEO tactics during the course of this ordeal. Personally I'm glad as it seems obvious this story didn't deserve to be mostly unnoticed for most of a month after the first blog post went up.