In the wee hours of yesterday morning, I found a link to an absolutely horrible story on Hacker News about a person named EJ and her accounts of the Airbnb rental she provided last month. I noted on Twitter that while the idea for Airbnb seems interesting, I’d never rent my apt (or part thereof) to someone I don’t know. Airbnb has blown up over the past year receiving tons of press and $100 million in VC. Other startups are now referring to their companies as the, “Airbnb of xxxx”. I think part of Airbnb’s appeal pulls on our greed card and the ability to generate some quick cash.
You can read EJ’s original story, her update and Techcrunch’s combined snippet copy with Mike’s commentary. The short version is that EJ rented her apartment to a person while she was out of town and the apartment was completely trashed, very valuable items were stolen and the apartment ransacked. Just an absolutely horrible story as the criminal actually went through all of her stuff. EJ’s update seems to suggest serious differences between what she and Airbnb staff have publicly reported.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky posted on Techcrunch an overview of what Airbnb is doing with regards to safety.
First, let me play the other side…where is EJ’s renter’s insurance? I am curious, if you become a “seller” on Airbnb, do you let your renter’s insurance company know? Does that make your apartment a B&B? I wonder how many sellers on Airbnb do this research before renting. Video learning site Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis notes that EJ should have, “understood the risks”. He goes on to say that hotel rooms are trashed all the time and that, “this is such a BS issue”. I am not sure that comparing trashing a hotel room with stealing and ransacking an apartment is even remotely the same.
So why do I think this rental mess isn’t about the stuff that so many are making it out to be about? To me the biggest fear I have of ever using Airbnb is physical crime. What if EJ came home when the criminal was in her apartment? Many of the rental experiences I’ve heard about on Airbnb are where the owner rents out a part of his or her home which could just open the doors to physical crime. I hate to even think about it – I’d like to hear what Airbnb is doing to make sure this type of crime never happens for their customers. I should note that Airbnb claims over 2 million rental nights to-date with no issues of this nature.
Airbnb notes that they have a social connections service that shows mutual friends on Facebook. I think their rental service is going to have to allow for the creation of trusted circles.
It will be interesting to follow what happens with this story and if god forbid anything worse happens in the future. I hope EJ is able to get the help, both financially and emotionally, to help her move past this horrible incident.
Update: I like Patricio Robles’ post on eConsultancy. He talks about how criminals will flock to Airbnb and how the service may change as regular users leave. He also notes that it is apparently against the law in San Francisco (where EJ is located) to rent out a home for a short period of time.
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This story posted on CenterNetworks.