How airbnb lost me as a customer
I recently rented out my apartment for a 2 week stay. With my nearly $3,000 payment being held by airbnb, I received an email asking me to "send in a scanned copy of your government issued ID and a copy of a utility bill". No form to do so, just the vague "send". I'm not really comfortable sending as much personal info as my drivers license contains (height, weight, eye color, DL number, photo) especially over unencrypted email, and when this requirement wasn't mentioned before listing my space.
Here is where they lose me as a customer though- I snapped a photo of a utility bill and responded to their email. Two days go by, my payment is still 'pending' now several days after the guest has arrived. I send a second email inquiring if the photo was ok (I don't have a scanner handy) and why they still haven't paid me, and get no response. More days go by with airbnb holding my payment, and I try to use their live chat. Live chat fails silently in firefox (clicking the button does nothing). I try in chrome and it tells me everyone is busy. Try again later and it opens a window... then 30 seconds later tells me everyone is busy and to email my request.
Finally, now 9 days after my guest arrived, I receive another email from airbnb which ignores all my previous messages and tells me to once again "send" them scans of gov't id and utility bill. Apparently my only option to get them to release my funds is to send highly personal information over unencrypted email, a requirement which was never made clear when I made my listing.
Airbnb seems like a great idea with an ideal set of founders and backers, but unexpected requirements and terrible customer support have turned me off their site.
69 comments
[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadYou've already let a "stranger" into your house, but these details to too sacred?
Just take photos off all and black out any info you don't think is appropriate.
The biggest issue is that I responded to their original email within 24 hours, but have now waited 10 days without resolution or any feedback.
But yeah, I suppose listing it more clearly would have been nice :) (and better communication, something most tech startups need to learn to scale)
Asking me to send them over email after a reservation is much more frustrating. Not responding for two weeks when I do email them a photo of utility bill is more frustrating still.
Dear AirBnB,
Sending utility bills and drivers licenses over email is NOT appropriate!!!
This makes me want to pentest AirBnB and find their vulnerabilities before someone evil does....
My state allows people to cast ballots via email.
During the hearing, some retired National Guard General testified that "security has gotten really good". I assume he's on the payroll of the vendor, but I didn't bother to check (this time).
I have no inside information about Airbnb, but I'd guess they are slowing moving the money to try and prevent fraud on their system. Basically, A stolen card being used for a high value amount. Obviously that is annoying to anyone who is waiting for money, but I've seen it happen in many situations where money is transfered.
Are you a frequent hoster? If you have a lot of money coming in for your apartment, it is much more likely that it would be transfered quickly.
If you are a frequent hoster, is this a unusually large amount at once? Or is it from someone who is using Airbnb for the first time?
In the end, it sounds like your experience wasn't so great. But I'd hope you remember that it is just people on the other end answering your email and trying to prevent fraud. Many of those people answer hundreds of emails a day and probably make mistakes as often as anyone else. I hope everything works out for you.
(2) HN is not a forum for complaints about YC companies, and while I didn't flag this post, you shouldn't overreact if it is killed. Nobody is trying to censor you; if it happens, just move your post to Tumblr.
Again though: it's not. It's a mostly orthogonal point.
The morality and ethics behind AirBnb is far from clearcut. The landlord-tenant relationship is also not so easily moralized - I'd take a flying leap off the high horse unless I knew more.
edit: nevermind, beaten to the punch.
If this post gets killed, that's fine. I was hesitant to write it, but I thought it might be valuable to share. There's a fine line between useful critique or sharing an experience and ranting/complaining, perhaps my post leaned too far to the latter.
I've been trying to think of a good label for him for a long time, and I think that hits it on the nose.
I'm only commenting because I think it's interesting to think about why we think the things we do. I think it's a weird that anyone would want to fit an AD&D alignment onto me. :)
Why people are trying to label you is you're hard to characterize yet are notably present.
the guy is getting $3k from a transaction that breaks all kind of rules, and is upset that a _SCAN_ of his Driver's License might be intercepted in a "man in the middle" attack on a sent email!?!?!?
Again though, issue number 1 is unresponsive, unhelpful technical support.
The user in question looks like he/she has been here for a while, so isn't just someone signing in to bitch about a company. People also regularly use HN to complain about Google, since they are generally not that great at customer service, so it's hardly a precedent.
Ultimately, you are correct that it's not the purpose of this site, but as long as it's an occasional thing, done with respect and tact, and aims to improve the service, I don't think it's such a bad thing. I'm not sure this post is the best example of all those qualities, but AirBnB is also big enough to handle it, too, no? It's not like he's picking on someone just starting out.
I'm going to assume "temporarily leasing my place to make $3,000" won't qualify, but I'm no lawyer. There are liability issues associated with people subletting, and I'm doubtful AirBnB has all those bases covered.
Of course you could just stop paying rent and your tenancy will be terminated much faster and you won't have to go through the hassle of finding someone to sublet.
Edit: The above applies in the case of legitimate sublet request - a two week AirBNB guest wouldn't count.
so what do you call a self-contained living area (several rooms - like a house, but it's not stand-alone) in a larger building if you own it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium 'Colloquially, the term is often used to refer to the unit itself in place of the word "apartment". A condominium may be simply defined as an "apartment" that the resident owns as opposed to rents.'
I'm not versed in the details, but in co-ops, group administration seems to have a stronger role. For example, you may need formal approval of the co-op in order to sell your unit, with respect to the particular sale at hand. In other words, if they don't like the prospective buyer (and can argue this on a non-discriminatory basis, I imagine), you have to find another buyer.
Some friends bought into a co-op, and I was solicited to write a letter of recommendation. In addition to a good and well-worded argument for their tenancy, I "punched it up" by placing it on company letterhead and emphasizing the formal role. Apparently, that did the trick. My point being, they had to sell not just the owner but the co-op on their purchase of the unit.
As I think about this, I imagine many co-ops might have some strong opinions on their members' prospective use of AirBNB.
What a dumbass requirement. As if somebody with access to a printer would not be able to produce one.
Requirements like this are hilarious.
Similarly when I went to renew my drivers license, they required proof of my social security number. My old license (with a picture of me, holograms, etc.) wasn't acceptable, but a health insurance card that could have been printed by anyone with access to a laminating machine was perfectly fine.
If I'm staying somewhere, I'm leaving my luggage, and there's plenty of opportunities for stuff to go missing, whether in the middle night or otherwise.
That's just the petty crime aspect, leaving aside other opportunities for much more serious badness.
It's bad that their customer service failed you, but I'd much rather there was a tiny bit of hassle for people renting out apartments for the safety of those staying there.
You're probably looking at setting up a dedicated server to store the images (since you want the server locked down tighter than a normal web server, and you need to think about having different backups in place, etc) and then have one of the engineers spend a few days developing a system to upload the images and allow secured access to their support staff. Sure, writing the code to upload files is easy, but the security and UI take a good bit of effort. You're probably looking closer to $1k excluding the cost of hardware and the SSL cert.
The issue is that they only do things that will make them money. Until a lot of customers complain and hurts customer acquisition or revenues, they're not going to change it.
This is exactly the MVP / "lean startup" approach: do the absolute minimum. It's a smart way to deploy capital. But customers of these kinds of companies should be careful but they're usually complete products (by design) and may have sharp corners.
I normally stay away from buying anything from startups for this reason.
Disagree. I don't need to know how to send/receive encrypted information, just that I need it. Someone else can get their hands dirty on the problem. No "technical foundation" necessary, just common sense.
For the rest of us, the only responses required is someone who knows ABNB lets us know they contacted them, and then ABNB following up here with an apology to the user & HN.
Don't talk on and on about it. Just fix it.
Not sure HackerNews is the right place for this. Emailing AirBnb's customer service/complaints department would be better.
They communication does appear to suck, but your paranoia is unfounded.