The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed. Important updates to post at end Until now everything has been just great for Airbnb, a service that lets people rent out their homes and become a sort of mini-hotel.
The company launched in 2008 and has grown rapidly. They’ve been cloned by the Germans, which is always a mark of success. And they’re now a part of the billion dollar valuation club. Even the clone raised $90 million. Which is all super great. The facts: Last month “EJ” wrote a long blog post about how a renter spent an entire week carefully robbing and trashing her home. They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card and grandmother’s jewelry I had hidden inside. And The kitchen was a disaster – the sink piled high with filthy dishes, pots and pans burnt out and ruined. The creepiest part of this is that the renter was sending cheerful emails during the week’s rampage: Yet now I ask myself this: for what, exactly, did I pay a service fee to Airbnb.com?
On Safety: A Word From Airbnb. Brian Chesky is the CEO of Airbnb.
In this guest article he discusses the recent Airbnb user safety incident we reported on earlier today. On June 22nd, we learned that the home of one of our San Francisco hosts was vandalized by an Airbnb guest. We were devastated when we received this news. With a single booking, one person’s malicious actions victimized our host and undermined what had been – for 2 million nights – a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good. As soon as we learned what had taken place, our first concern was to make sure our host was safe. Once our host’s safety was secured, our attention moved to further strengthening our system. Trust and safety are our highest priorities. As a response to this incident, we have begun development on improvements to increase the safety of Airbnb, including: Airbnb Victim Speaks Again: Homeless, Scared And Angry. Yesterday we wrote about “EJ,” a woman who had her San Francisco apartment burglarized and vandalized by someone who rented her home for a week via Airbnb.
There was some confusion about how Airbnb was and is dealing with the situation. See the updates to that post above, and CEO Brian Chesky’s post here on TechCrunch later yesterday talking about the situation. The event happened, which is a terrible blow to the company’s reputation. The confusion seems to be around whether or not Airbnb will compensate her for her losses. The company at first said no, then said yes, and clarified that they made the offer last month when it happened, not in response to the PR storm yesterday. And EJ seemed to confirm that in her initial post on June 29, three days after she returned home, saying: I would be remiss if I didn’t pause here to emphasize that the customer service team at airbnb.com has been wonderful, giving this crime their full attention.
Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere” This last week we’ve all watched in horror as the story unfolded about an Airbnb user who had her home ransacked a month ago.
Other than the sideshow of us getting dragged into the story, it seemed to be winding down yesterday. The company appears to be bending over backwards to compensate the victim and avoid another of her blog posts where she writes about how scared she is, still homeless and shaken after the ordeal. Now another victim has come forward. Troy Dayton first wrote about how his Oakland home was rented by a meth addict with a stolen identity in a comment to one of our posts about the company. I contacted Troy and we spoke by phone today about what happened.
Here’s Troy’s original comment: Something very similar happened to me about 2 months ago. By phone today Troy told me about how the woman brought in friends to his home. They also stole his birth certificate, and left evidence behind that they were running a identity theft operation. Remarkably, Troy was happy with that. Our Commitment to Trust & Safety - The Airbnb Blog. Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest.
The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down. When we learned of this our hearts sank. We felt paralyzed, and over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings. So here we go.There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. With regards to EJ, we let her down, and for that we are very sorry.