AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB | Hacker News Reader

AirBNB why did you terminate my account? – An Open Letter to AirBNB

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181 pointscitizen42871 comments

What a shitty termination notice and a shitty way of handling things from an account that has clearly been one of their better hosts. If you're going to ascribe the "superhost" appellation, you'd think they'd actually give a fuck before algorithmically cancelling the user's account, or maybe work through a warning or validate their concerns or literally ANYTHING before turning things up to 11 and nuking the account from orbit.

Even if AirBNB had a perfectly legitimate reason (which, to be clear, would make the author a borderline sociopath to publish like this, but isn't out of the question), the termination notice and the complete lack of transparency is so Kafkaesque and needlessly horrible that this just makes AirBNB look awful.

I've considered going the host route, but reading through something like this makes me seriously second guess using them. I understand that it's their platform and they can de facto rule by fiat, but that doesn't mean it's good policy and that potential hosts shouldn't have some sort of communication or chance to rectify an issue or any level of transparency.

It's also disappointing when a company effectively has to be shamed into taking anything resembling a human approach to a problem. It's been a week of "we can't tell you anything, sorry" which is bullshit. There's simply no reason for that, and it's disheartening to say the least.

You know how the web 2.0 companies have a massive amount of revenue per worker?

It's because the normal rough edges of handling customer complaints is shoved out the door, because that didn't really matter, right?

"For your convenience your account has been closed. Do not reply to this email."

This is a tough read, because someone's livelihood and in some part happiness combine with their AirBnB business, and losing it is painful.

The hell of it is that there are many circumstances in which the customer would not be allowed to know why the cancellation.

I'm most familiar with Bank Secrecy Act rules; some of which definitely apply to AirBnB.

So, for instance, an algorithm flags the house as a likely money laundering location. AirBnB response: notify FinCEN, Thai authorities, turn off customer account without explanation. In the US even telling your employees down the line why the account was canceled might lead to fines and jail time for the compliance folks. I am not making this up, or exaggerating. That's just how it is.

Or, perhaps a repeat customer is the target. Same stuff. Or, perhaps the owner is a small time pornographer / drug dealer / etc in Thailand, and Thai authorities notify the bank, which notifies AirBnB's bank.. Of all the employees contacted, only the CTO would know, but even he might be told "flagged, don't ask." And, that will be all. No matter how much he might care that a good customer stay happy and with the company, getting rid of them is infinitely better than being deposed over a BSA violation and information leakage.

It's the way they deliver that message that is really messed up. If you need to fire somebody, do it swiftly, and cleanly.

Anti-money laundering regulation was my first guess as to why, but it doesn't really fit because companies are not allowed to do anything to warn customers that they are under investigation. Cancelling their account could certainly tip them off to this and so it seems unlikely that it would comply.

Having said that, I don't know what the Thai regulations are. Perhaps this fits better under those.

I read a FATF report that stated it was still far to easy to launder money in Thailand's cash economy.

Reporting starts at 2 million baht ($56k)

http://www.bangkokbank.com/BangkokBank/WebServices/AMLRegula...

We've been considering doing the whole AirBnB thing (also in Thailand), but the problem with all of these online services is that you just aren't in any control of your income.

I've kept only to business models where I bill directly. This rules out google adsense, Apple and Android paid apps, AirBnB etc. I won't even use anything like PayPal to collect money for me -- there's just far too much risk for capricious loss of the business through factors that you have absolutely no control over.

Building a business is hard, it seems utter folly to give another entity this sort of control over what you're doing.

Google "amazon seller account suspension" or "amazon shut down my seller account" if you want to read some horror stories.

This type of behavior on the part of internet giants is absolutely wrong.

Apparently even buyer accounts can be terminated, https://onlinestuffblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/amazon-the-...

Reading that article makes me furious -- of course, there are many things we don't know, and this person may be full of it, and she may have crossed a line (knowingly... or unknowingly), etc.

But, even if that's true, not giving reasons why you're kicking users out is infuriating.

No due process, no appeal, just a big "fuck you" with no explanation whatsoever. These companies apparently think it's a normal way of dealing with users -- and something they can do with total impunity once they have acquired near-monopoly status.

Let's hope for a big backlash some day soon.

Indeed, Stripe for example built its entire business on people's frustration with similar behavior by Paypal.

Absolutely, yet they closed accounts for no good reasons too.

Airbnb is a short-term rental company, not a f*ing nation state.

It amuses/disgusts me when the default position of companies like this is to treat their security policies as some sort of state secret, leading to these Kafka-esque scenarios.

Sadly, I don't really know what the person here can do except write articles like these. Probably doesn't have much of a legal leg to stand on.

Commercial companies often seem to be more opaque and arbitrary than governments.

Kafka-esque is the perfect qualifyer for this situation. Absurd things like this make me feel queesy, sort of like vertigo.

Some of the Stripe cancellation messages are the same. It might be that their bank partners requires this of them.

I tried to help a friend figure out why their account was terminated, and it would have been nice if their e-mail said: "Your account was terminated because you violated terms of conditions x,y,z".

Could be because they are afraid of lawsuits that they aren't more specific?

"Sharing economy" = shareCROPPING economy. (look up "sharecropping" to understand )

But basically, sharecroppers were exposed to all the risk, and the landowner got the initial first dibs on the crops. The landowner often times had complete ability to be completely arbitrary ( like AirBNB is in this case )

You are not running a business if you don't have direct access to your clientele. You are a shareCROPPER. Look it up.

Use AirBNB, as a marketing vehicle, not your only income source.

Woo hoo, I love these downvotes. Seriously, peeps...give me your hate. And while you are doing that - please tell me which bit of my statement is factually incorrect.

I looked it up.

"a tenant farmer especially in the southern United States who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges"

There are no crops involved in the posted story. Further, AirBNB doesn't own the land so I'm not sure the term even makes sense as a metaphor.

Take a look at http://olivierblanchard.net/stop-calling-it-the-sharing-econ...

perfectly said.

I don't like to be the "I told you so" guy. But I told you so.

I wrote this a couple of years ago:

"All Eggs in One Airbnb" http://www.adormo.com/blog/marketing/all-the-eggs-in-one-air...

because I keep meeting hosts who say "I'm fine with just Airbnb". The build a whole business based on a single website, a single failure point.

Disclosure: we help hosts be present in several platforms, including Airbnb.

Often in these articles, you read through to some sort of detail hidden at the end which reveals why the company actually did cut ties, and the aggrieved party is blind to it or trying to talk around it. In this case, there's nothing.

My guesses were assault, theft or maybe some effort to actively sabotage Airbnb by promoting a competitor. But if any of those things happened, they're not detailed or hinted at all.

I imagine Airbnb are vague for legal reasons. But it must feel hugely unfair to be in the position of the author and lose a significant portion of your life and livelihood.

The sense I get is just that they don't cancel successful accounts very often; given the escalations, I have to believe they have some strong reason. It sounds like they will have some host community issues now, but what got me was how they cancelled guests. It sounds like they just used the host cancellation process, but if I found out AirBnB did that masked as the host, I'd go from annoyed at the world to very angry at AirBnB...

AirBnB's ability to handle failure modes is beyond bad.

If a host fails to accommodate you, you better have a hotel in mind for a plan B.

Their UK customer service phone line drops calls after 300 seconds in the waiting queue. Go and try it: +448435047257

Form replies to e-mails, never enough detail, multiple days' response times.

What's the procedure for documenting a host has checked in, or hasn't? That's right, there isn't one. They do everything by hand, and is't a he said/she said, I will take a week to deliberate, and then cut the baby in half kind of deal.

When I have had a host screw me over in a major city where finding accommodation in a peak time is incredibly difficult, I've complained to Airbnb very persistently and aggressively, and they've compensated me.

That's exactly the point I'm trying to get across: there should be a well-defined business process, reflected in the UI in their app/website, for getting refunds. That there isn't speaks volumes.

True of almost every large company until you complain like a bastard. I've been stonewalled by Dell, Airbnb, airlines, etc but eventually won through sheer stubbornness.

In the meantime you may upload your apartments in Housetrip, Wimdu, Booking.com, Homeaway and so on. None is as good and smooth as Airbnb but they work. When hopefully Airbnb reopens your account, keep these portals too, so you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

The iPhone logging in all over the US sounds like it's probably the cause. The account may well have been shuttered for being a conduit of fraud or the like and thus the account got canned. It'll be interesting to hear any follow-up to this.

Imagine if they dealt with their employees in the same way.

Your fired, leave. I'm not telling you why.

The unicorn paradox:

  1. Create a small startup to disrupt the corporations
  2. Create a loyal user base
  3. Ride the hockey stick on your unicorn
  4. Treat your users as a commodity as you scale
  5. Become a terms & conditions black box
  6. Congratulations, you are a corporation.

Quick read the AirBnB terms (termination). Seems like they can basically terminate you however/whenever they want. IANAL but that seems rather flimsy. Aren't they essentially an infrastructure provider (website, app, booking etc.) that should have service contracts?

That pretty much means you should not and cannot depend on AirBnB as a major source of income. Risk management wise that's just insane. It puts a decent amount of theoretical "extortion power" in their hands. "Oh yeah we see you make X which likely means you heavily depend on this income. Would you kindly agree to these new terms/new rates or be screwed?"

Independent of all of this it is horrible style to terminate someone without further notice or reason. Writing this into ToS is a pretty bad sign. It generally seems better to have a policy that defaults to explaining the reason for termination except in special cases (funny money laundering laws etc.).

Makes me wonder, is there is any "ToS" ranking site out there? X,Y,Z in ToS are a bad sign, here's why? Kind of like the sites calling out bad UX practices that are meant to trick people into buying extra stuff.

The problem here is that this sort of termination clause is basically standard practice these days. For instance, Google's TOS just says "Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time": http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ - That's pretty damn scary given that I (and most people I know) have a Gmail account as their primary contact!

Everyone just accepts it on the assumption that it's a last-ditch protection against 'bad people', and hopes that in their case if anything goes wrong the company will deal transparently and fairly with them.

It's good to be the king.

Google is king of search and can cut you off without reason or explanation. AirBNB is king of home sharing and can cut you off without reason or explanation.

Companies that have a virtual monopoly can treat their ecosystem this way because there's no reason not to.

If this is the way they treat their very best hosts, can you imagine how rock bottom badly you'll be treated if you're anything less than a stellar superstar.

An obscure, not fully tested algorithm applies a filter to all users. Maybe it's an internal beta, maybe some integrator that should have considered account history pulled a blank table instead of real values. Whatever. It happened.

Your account gets canned. No one at the company knows why. Nobody even can know why. No one has the authority to fix it because it was never supposed to happen like that in the first place. Nobody wants the responsibility for dealing with it.

So there you have it.

If you have algos in place to flag an account and forget to implement the reason why that algo came to the conclusion, you should seriously rethink your setup.

That may not always be possible. For example, if you have a neural network doing the flagging, you might not be able to figure out exactly 'why' a particular account was flagged.

This reminds me of a similar story of an Airbnb host in London who's suing Airbnb for cancelling his account.

Basically, it comes down to allegations made against him by a guest.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/homeowner-massaged-by-his-air...

Perhaps the Thai government asked them to close the account.

Sadly, this is probably the likely scenario and the reason why they are acting like it's a national security concern.

It's always possible, but doesn't seem like the sort of thing they'd do. If it's a domestic problem they'd sort it out themselves.

"So far the emails have been opened and read over 350 times, from multiple places around the world. Who knows who these email addresses really go to."

1)How can you track this in a reliable way? 2)So 350 read this email and did not answer it? Do I read that correctly?

You could embed a tracking pixel and email clients that don't block remote content will fetch it from the server where you'll see the number it's been accessed.

I recently went through the exact same experience. Absolute shit.

What was the point of having someone phone the account holder but not act like a human being? If you're going to hide behind the algo (and hopefully do an investigation and apology) isn't it better not to have any human contact? If you phone someone, the person on the other end tends to expect some humanity (ability to ask questions, commitment to investigate).

No mention of whether the Paris talk invitation by AirBNB was cancelled. That would be an entertaining forum to raise this topic in.

"I really cannot understand why I am being kicked out of a community I loved, promoted and cared for so passionately."

It's not a community - it's people meeting on a commercial platform who's in for the big money.

Still, as a previous host and renter, I am disgusted.

I guess most communities aren't communities then.

Yes they are communities. No, AirBNB is not a community. They can't be a community when participation is subject to veto by a single entity/person.

Communities are determined by a collective decision, not a unilateral decision.

Anyone one talking about the "AirBNB community" is lying to themselves or to the person they are talking to.

If AirBNB wanted a community, they would have visible, due process procedures in place that allow for appeals and the community to arbitrate disputes.

"They can't be a community when participation is subject to veto by a single entity/person."

Says who? This is not any requirement of any commonly accepted definition of community.

You certainly can just make crap up and define words however you like, but you can't expect others to go along with you :)

In the olden days they used to be called User Groups - most big tech corps had them, run mostly by the customers. But that's an unfashionable term these days, just like my beige cords and jumpers with elbow patches.

I am not making crap up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Community... "who mutually define that relationship (subjectively) as important to their social identity and social practice."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community :

1. a unified body of individuals: as a : state, commonwealth b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself <the problems of a large community> c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society <a community of retired persons> e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests <the international community> g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society <the academic community> 2 : society at large 3 a : joint ownership or participation <community of goods> b : common character : likeness <community of interests> c : social activity : fellowship d : a social state or condition

Notice that in the dictionary definition of community is that there is lots of references to "group of people", "unified", etc. but no reference that allows for a single entity to determine membership.

Therefore people hosting for AirBNB are not part of a community.

No, but you can have a community of AirBnB users that help each other out. Doesn't always necessitate direct involvement from the company.

If you are booted out as a host - you are booted out. How many people wish to continue this relationship after being discarded like this person was?

She should just take the educational value of being booted and realize that she needs to independently build revenue and marketing.

The dictionary definition clearly has no requirement that it be a mutually defined membership, just a common group of people.

You are saying "because the dictionary does not say one entity can control who is a member, it's not allowed".

But the dictionary definition neither requires nor disallows a single entity from defining membership, and definitions don't fall into the "that which is not referenced is not permitted" category of things. In fact, it's the opposite. If you meet at least the minimum requirements of some definition, you are that thing. You may also be other things that are more specific.

So they are completely within the dictionary definition of a community. They are a group of people with a common characteristic (they are airbnb hosts) scattered through a larger society.

Whether this is defined by airbnb or not doesn't matter.

Claiming anything else is simply ridiculous to me.

Do you also believe the daughters of the american revolution are not a community, because the daughters of the american revolution defines who is part of their membership?

Is hacker news not a community because contributing requires accounts HN reserves the right to remove accounts at any time (thus controlling participation)?

I'm not sure why you are not just willing to admit you are being silly.

chinathrow is right.

A community is a body of people who respect and act in each other's best interests or for the collective good.

A company is not a community, it's a for-profit enterprise, and it does not give a fuck about respecting you or your best interests if there is profit to be made, or even if there is internal bureaucracy to be followed.

Loyalty to business and corporate interests is seldom well placed.

The company is not a community (arguable) but it has a community.

To the fine folks at AirBnB who for sure are watching this thread:

- You fucked up badly in 2011 with that wrecked apartment in SF

- You cleaned up nicely eventually, introduced insurance and whatnot

Now, you absolutely seriously need to clean this up the proper way. The shitstorm is already brewing.

This definitely sounds like some agency was using/used the home as a safe house.

So, what's the situation now? Has AirBnB contacted the author? There seems to be no update yet on the blog that I can see.

Sounds to me like there's fraud activity observed or reported, likely by more than one guest in the same location.

Why did this item get burried?

<conspiracy>YCombinator is an investor in AirBNB and doesn't like to see negative stories about them</conspiracy>

Nobody who knows dang or follows his comments would think this is true.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10094289

Does Airbnb have two factor login ? If so use it.

This item was on the front page just a minute ago with 11 points. It grew to 134 but is now all the way on the fourth page. Something is suspicious.

No admin touched this post. It dropped in rank because of user flags and the flamewar detector, which is algorithmic and treats all posts the same way.

HN admins don't penalize posts for being anti-YC or anti-YC-startup.

Ok, that's a possible reason. But shouldn't there be some amount of human intervention for false positives? There wasn't a flamewar brewing in this thread.

'Flamewar detector' is a catchy name that stuck, but it isn't only about flamewars. It's about damping, on HN, the kind of low-quality, unsubstantive discussions that swell up quickly and would otherwise flood this site the way they do most of the internet.

Indignation is a common driver of these. Look at the top comment in this thread, beginning "What a shitty", or the one that, with admirable forthrightness, says "Reading that article makes me furious". Such discussions do often lead to flamewar-like behavior (e.g. the argument about the definition of 'community'), so "flamewar detector" isn't exactly wrong, either.

We do look several times a day at the stories that are penalized by this software, because sometimes there are genuine false positives that need rescuing. I wouldn't say that this article and thread rise to that level, though.

Appreciate your feedback on why it get burried.

A little meta, that an algo said to flag the thread down while the airbnb host in the linked article likely got flagged down by an alogrithm.

> while the airbnb host in the linked article likely got flagged down by an alogrithm

We really don't have the slightest basis for that assessment, do we?

That highlights the deep problem with posts like this: they invariably have only one side of the story. That's not the authors' fault—why shouldn't they tell their side of the story? But it makes objective discussion impossible. Since the internet abhors a vacuum, what rushes in to replace the missing information is speculation and rage, and those things make for poor HN discussions no matter what the topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com