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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

Air BNB is specifically not an insurrance company.

They technically have no obligation to pay in the case of any damage.

For them, the best possible course of action was to bury this case. However, now that it's come into the public light they're torn between (a) trying to re-iterate to everyone that they do not have liability and (b) trying to look good by doing the "Right Thing".

As a business owner, I feel for them. As a human being, I feel for her. I too am torn, and think that there is going to be no satisfactory resolution to this situation. Someone is not going to come away 'whole', and most likely it will be AirBNB.

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The irony of course is that the story didn't go viral for almost a month after it was written. That was plenty of time for them to make things right, take good care of the woman, and get an NDA and non-disparagement agreement in place. Based on her account they didn't even attempt to do so. Instead they chose to "let it ride" and as a result have lost way more in goodwill than this could have ever cost them "making things right."

I think there is a pretty good legal argument that they had a duty to know the actual identity of each party. They failed to do that. When her house was trashed the first thing she did is ask them the real identity of the person who rented and then they revealed they had absolutely no idea whatsoever. This is a huge surprise to me, it was to her, and it is to everybody that isn't trying to defend this company's massive incompetence. The fact that they don't know the identity of the parties is openly misrepresented by their materials which indicate that the transaction is safe and intentionally try to distract the customer with jokes about the difficulty of moving grand pianos, which are an item few people would have in their house anyway.

> I think there is a pretty good legal argument that they had a duty to know the actual identity of each party.

I think that's absurd. Would you say the same thing about Craigslist?

> The fact that they don't know the identity of the parties is openly misrepresented by their materials which indicate that the transaction is safe and intentionally try to distract the customer with jokes about the difficulty of moving grand pianos

That's not how I read it at all. They don't claim to know the identity of the other party; they claim that the transaction is safe. Which, it appears, it is. If they've had 2 million nights booked, that's maybe a quarter of a million bookings, and (they claim) this is the first time anything like this has happened. That's pretty safe!

I read the joke about the grand piano as an admission that the only thing that's preventing people from using Airbnb to rob people is that robbing people is generally hard and unprofitable.

The insurance company technically had no obligation to be as humane as they were. That's the point :D

True. But the people getting the checks weren't writing blog posts warning people not to buy apartments in NYC either. I'm not saying Airbnb is right or wrong, but to make a matter like that a public spectacle might influence insurance companies to behave differently, not just Airbnb.

Not only are they not an insurance company, but they aren't mental health professionals either. I understand the woman wants help but it sounds like initially the CS reps were very kind and asking her how she's doing etc. Then, a co-founder gets involved and it's all business and that's when things took a turn.

I've ripped on them for asking her to take down the blog -that was a huge d-bag move. But, it's not their jobs to be this woman's counselor. I imagine if I was in a similar position I would rely on family & friends. Not a company & their investors. I mean, after they cut a check (which doesn't sound like it's happened) how often are they supposed to call and ask how she's doing?

Absolutely.

I'm not one of those who feels that Airbnb has to compensate her for everything or even anything.

BUT, I do think Airbnb needed to do more to inform potential users about the risks involved. No, I'm not talking about a microsite or bolding fine print on their terms of use... I'm talking about messaging along the process.

As I said in another part of this thread, Craigslist does a good job of messaging on the search results page and on the actual posts itself by displaying links on how to avoid being scammed.

On an eBay product page, there is a large buyers protection module and additional text near the product description like "Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing."

While some people aren't going to read them, they at least help set expectations.

> As a business owner, I feel for them. As a human being, I feel for her

Separating the two is what causes situations like this.

Now you have to be an insurance company to do the "right thing"? Airbnb had a chance to take care of this from the very beginning and we wouldn't even be talking about this right now if they had. That's the point.

The thing that you're describing as "the right thing" is the function of an insurance company.

I'm describing Airbnb averting a PR nightmare (which this has become). This is a pretty valuable lesson for any startup.

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