That would be true if the only service AirBnB were marketing was search and publishing - like Craigslist. But they also advertise selection and insurance.
If you have an entire club of XXX sex fest freaks, you could likely easily get fake reviews by having your other club members sign up for AirBNB, all "stay" at each others places, and all leave positive reviews for each other.
The tough part is convincing one of them to get verified before destroying someone's apartment. It's pretty hard to walk away from the damages after giving up your payment info, a copy of your drivers license, and a link to an established (not newly created) social media profile on Facebook or LinkedIn, which are part of AirBNB's verification.
And if I use AirBnB legitimately for a while, then decide to do this, then what? It's AirBnB's fault for matchmaking?
That seems similar to blaming Google Search, not the site itself, for returning a site that has ranked well for a long time, but has just now started serving malware.
Your point is fair, but IMO it would not be incorrect to blame both the site as well as Google Search, obviously for different reasons.
'Verified' should eventually mean verified, with no qualifiers. If it can't be guaranteed then it's better to say so.
edit: I see from jamesroseman's comment below that 'verified' only means that their ID is verified, not the reason they require the accommodation. (https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/450) If that's clear from the UI (and not just buried in a FAQ), it invalidates my point.
I think I understand your point of view, it was my initial point of view as well. I thought, "well, you used a website that offers to connect you with people who want to use your home and you blame the website for the person who ruined your home instead of that actual person?".
The author here will probably pursue legal recourse against that individual as well. It's a two-part problem: 1.) The leaser may have violated the lease as laid out by the author by effectively ruining the home. 2.) AirBNB reported a leaser as 'verified', which is important because of the implication that the leaser won't do certain things like ruin your home during their stay.
Unfortunately per 2, this isn't actually what AirBNB claims to mean by "verified" [0]. It's unfortunate because of what happened, but you are indeed correct -- technically speaking AirBNB is not responsible here. It sucks, and it certainly means I won't be using AirBNB, but they've done their job of protecting themselves.
Unfortunately, this is why there's hotel regulations. I think AirBnb is net-good, but it certainly is going to make a few people's lives miserable in the meantime. Hopefully AirBnb finds a way to mitigate these issues.
That being said, I guarantee you were violating your lease when you used AirBnb. And, you approved the person to stay in your house. If anyone should be mad, it's your neighbors and apartment owner -- they followed the rules. This is really unfortunate, but it's not all AirBnb's fault.
Imposing rules on your own users for the good of your other users is not at all the same thing as imposing rules on everyone for the good of those who paid for your reelection campaign.
My initial thought is to draw the line at rules which are enforced by a group that uses violence to prevent other groups from offering alternative rules and/or is funded by taxation.
any condominium, townhouse, co-operative, apartment, or other unit within a multiple-dwelling structure, complex, or similar type development to the extent owned in whole or in part by anyone other than you
Since he mentioned a landlord, I'm doubtful that he owned his apartment.
It's remarkable if the guarantee was an honest attempt to protect hosts, but makes a lot of sense as a cynical PR stunt designed to convince people to let AirBNB customers into their homes without the actual cost of protecting them.
"you can't do illegal stuff without violating a lease"
This is speculation and not true. Not to mention that the criminal code and the civil code are distinct bodies of law. In general, it would be more likely to be evicted for a "quality of life" violation (such as that citation) than for any ramdom infraction of the criminal code. Furthermore, to the extent relevant, a landlord usually reserves "the right, but not the oblication" to take action or not. And crap like this is more likely to warrant eviction than a mere legal infraction (which need not even be disclosed).
Is porn fest an illegal stuff? Of course there is property damage for which they are responsible, but other than that? I lived a long time in Prague, and there are porn fests once every few days in every block and nobody seems to worry.
I'd be more worried about lying in the contract, but that's just me. If I sub lease you a real-estate parcel for non-commercial use and then you charge money, that's you using my property for a (unauthorized) commercial transaction. Not to mention the provision of alcohol (commercially) which is seperately regulated. Etc.
Not only does this demonstrate lack of integrity in the direct relationship, it creates problems with thrid-party contracts and service providers. Ie, insurance claims etc. So, yeah I would be making you sign an open ended imdeniication for any breech such as this. And you're lawyers wouldn't like that.
Also, there is repuataional damage to my brand. Again, if you did this in breech of my contract, I would put you on the hook for this via the terms of the contract.
Of course, we might never sign a deal If I was this well protected and your intentions were not above board.
Yea, it is illegal. Even if you are allowed to sublet your apartment, renting it out for any period of time less than 29 days is classified as running a hotel, which you aren't allowed to do in an apartment.
Update: I am not entirely correct. It is only illegal if you are not present in the apartment at the time, so people renting out rooms in a multi-room apartment can do so legally, although they are likely still in violation of their lease.
If you lease is written on the back of a napkin, maybe, but most landlords use boilerplate leases, and every boilerplate lease has a sublet clause. It's one of the most important clauses in the lease; why bother with the rest of the terms if the lease simply delegates all authority to the renter?
A sublet clause, yes. Perhaps I misunderstood your original comment because it sounded like you were saying that landlords personally vet all subletters. My previous lease did not have such a clause.
What did your sublet clause say, if it didn't say you needed landlord approval for a subletter? Think about what a lease that doesn't require approval for subletters is really saying.
Pretty sure that the law supersedes the lease. In NYC (possibly NY State), subletting is permitted unless the landlord can raise a reasonable objection within 30 days of being told you are subletting.
Which probably means you also have to let your landlord know so they have that opportunity.
Even then, I kind of suspect "a person I've never even met in person, have no personal access to his id, have not vetted his references, and I don't even know what he looks like for sure" probably gives a landlord plenty of reasonable grounds to object.
Basically, you can't just sublet. You still have to inform the landlord. And in the case of informing him that you are operating through Airbnb, illegal in NYC, an objection would be reasonable.
The fact that he's getting evicted is a pretty good clue. While it's possible to get evicted for a one time noise incident, it's highly unlikely. Violating the sublet terms on the other hand is a slam dunk. Also, I've never seen an NYC rental contract that allowed for subletting without the landlord's permission. Finally, in the very unsual circumstance that he had a lease that would allow for short term sublets, I'd think he would mention it.
So all and all the grandparent's guarantee is pretty solid. This guy isn't a victim, he's one of the co-conspirators, as are AirBnb. His landlord and neighbors are the victims.
I believe in NYC, while the lease may say they require permission to sublet, the law says otherwise. So long as they don't have any reasonable reason to restrict you it's permitted.
The law forbids a landlord from unreasonably refusing permission to sublet, which is quite a bit different from not requiring permission in the first place.
2. (a) A tenant renting a residence pursuant to an existing lease in a dwelling having four or more residential units shall have the right to sublease his premises subject to the written consent of the landlord in advance of the subletting. Such consent shall not be unreasonably withheld.
(b) The tenant shall inform the landlord of his intent to sublease by mailing a notice of such intent by certified mail, return receipt requested. Such request shall be accompanied by the following information: (i) the term of the sublease, (ii) the name of the proposed sublessee, (iii) the business and permanent home address of the proposed sublessee, (iv) the tenant's reason for subletting, (v) the tenant's address for the term of the sublease, (vi) the written consent of any cotenant or guarantor of the lease, and (vii) a copy of the proposed sublease, to which a copy of the tenant's lease shall be attached if available, acknowledged by the tenant and proposed subtenant as being a true copy of such sublease. ...
(c) Within ten days after the mailing of such request, the landlord ...
...
5. Any sublet or assignment which does not comply with the provisions of this section shall constitute a substantial breach of lease or tenancy.
6. Any provision of a lease or rental agreement purporting to waive a provision of this section is null and void.
This guys story is an example of a reasonable reason to restrict. Tons of horror stories like this. I would not be surprised "Airbnb clauses" become standard in rental contracts AND maybe even condo and co-op bylaws, depending on how the owners vote, of course, which will vary by building, some allowing, some not, but it should be a conscious decision, not a silent issue kind of thing. The clauses will probably forbid Arbnb rentals. If Airbnb rentals are allowed, the landlord and/or condo/co-op association should get a cut of the money. Administrative costs, extra hassle, risk, insurance, and, yes, a share of the profits for enabling it.
Unless the poster was registered as a licensed BnB in the city of New York with a lease that allowed said usage, they were violating their lease and the law. Under NY law, it is illegal to sublet your apartment without you being physically present. It's to prevent, among other things, situations like this, which are an annoyance and a danger to the other occupants of the building.
Even if subletting were legal, I would imagine he would be responsible for anything that goes on in the unit. Disturbing the neighbors with an XXX party would be enough to evict on its own.
(b) Since Airbnb is illegal in NYC, it's not Airbnb's fault someone is trusting them and their vetting system in NYC.*
Both seems false to me.
* Obviously it's not their "fault", but they should take responsibility, just like an insurance company / hotel chain would.
ADDITION: What's the purpose of Airbnb's vetting/trust system? Is it not the same as the purpose of hotel regulation? Should they not both serve a similar function?
The purpose of hotel regulations isn't to keep these things from happening. It's to keep these things confined to places equipped to deal with them, and zoned to keep it all away from residential places.
No, it totally could happen in a hotel room. And I bet it does, constantly. But hotels are equipped for it, so there's fewer issues (no personal property damaged, better fire codes, credit card on file, not happening in a residential area, etc).
And I didn't say (b). Rather, I said AirBnb didn't force them to let strangers into their home; it was their decision. AirBnb approved the people, sure -- but so did the apartment owner.
EDIT: In response to your addition -- AirBnb doesn't verify they won't do something bad (they can't see the future). Rather, it means that AirBnb has verified they are who they said they are. So, AirBnb can now go to the police with that information.
AirBnB requires credit card on file, doesn't it? And property gets damaged in hotels the same way, the only difference whose property it is - hotel owner's or appartment owner's. As for fire code, I don't see how it is even relevant.
So? It doesn't prevent people from ignoring those rules, and there's no fire inspector going through all rooms to check if there's no code violation. Again, the prevention here is impossible. Fining people that did it after the fact - easily, but that's not the problem here. If having "max occupancy set" were a problem, AirBnB would just said on the site "no more than 3 people and no wild sex parties" and problem solved, right?
It is legally relevant, whether you like it or not. There's a lot of bluster in the rest of your response. I sure as hell don't support the hotel lobby and I'm not a fan of "hotel taxes" either. But that's special interest politics and its quite removed from the broad structuring of risk that legitimate regulation facilitates. Fire-codes, health-codes, and fundamental liability for willful corporate malfeasance/negligence are not so easily dismissed.
Nobody is dismissing anything. OP has posted a story about his bad experience with AirBnB-approved people he let into his place, and the knee-jerk response was "that's why we have hotel regulations". No, that's not why - hotel regulations would not do anything to prevent the specific thing OP was complaining about.
That is a very common knee-jerk response which appears any time new and disruptive industry challenges one with entrenched regulation that had already captured the law and the regulatory agencies. Every time something wrong happens - and eventually something wrong always happens, nothing is perfect - we get a knee-jerk "that's why we need all that regulation". Never it is examined if the said regulation would actually prevent the said bad from happening (usually not) and whether the costs of this regulation is worse overall than the bad thing happening. This is so basic logic fallacy that it just boggles the mind how so many people insist so much on not seeing it.
What the OP reported was that a business fronted its way into a residential building (using AirBnB) to hold a commercial event in an un-sanctioned venue.
This is exactly why places like NYC have regulations of various types, of which a multitude are applicable.
It is incredibly inefficient economically to have consumers "due dilligence" every potentially manipulative market exchange with a limited liability c-corp. So, we can either ban limited liability c-corps outright (forcing liability onto biz owners) or we can allow them within a regulatory framework that forces "structured" liability onto them.
The idea that this is some kind of logical fallacy is hillarious. It is quite sound, and is in general acceptable trade-off. It allows capital concentration/formation which is required for MES projects, whist not allowing abuse of power driven by such scale variance.
I think Airbnb has the potential - and wants to - be as equipped as hotels are in most of those dimensions. That's why they reimbursed the person whose house was vandalized, and why they do keep banking info on file (IIRC).
It is true it was their decision, but they did it under a false impression. Who facilitated this impression? Who ultimately allows Airbnb to stay in NYC? Airbnb.
I agree Airbnb can go to the police, but in the meantime it doesn't seem unreasonable that they help the person out, just like it doesn't seem unreasonable that a hotel chain is helping out a local hotel when a prostitution ring is uncovered.
Hotels are staffed and better prepared to deal with such situations.
Also if a hotel room gets trashed, that's just a business expense. Most people don't have their bed bolted to the wall, and tend to have nicer furnishings and appliances, etc, than you'll find in a hotel. Ignore the value even: we're talking someone's property, someone's life. If a room, a floor, or even the entire hotel gets shut down due to destruction, it's inconvenient and an expense. If I get evicted, that's a crisis, at least for a time.
The "OMG! DISRUPTING!" crowd seem to hand-wave these situations away, as if destroying "evil" business models is far more important than the impact it has on individuals. If someone's life is ruined 1 out 1000 AirBnB rentals, that's too often.
If AirBnB would like to formally institute a policy of "haha, WTF were you thinking letting us send people from the internet to stay in your house?", then they should be wholly unsurprised when numerous government bodies shut down their business completely. Soon.
Overwhelming majority of rental cases on AirBnB are ending very well. I just recently used AirBnB to stay a week in a 1br apartment owned by a nice family in a great location for 1/3 of the price I'd pay for more inferior hotel. I would never think of doing anything to harm my hosts. 99% people think the same. Of course, there's also 1% of the rest, but if you live your life worrying about the percentage of psychos in the population, you only will be hurting yourself.
Firstly, fairly sure it's way less likely than 1 in 1000 - ptmoee like 1 in 100,000, but even if it wasn't: really? If we take the decision to let our apartment when we 're away in the summer and something happens then, well,that's my shout. Everyone here is adult, and the platform's reasonably symmetrical in terms of contracting ability. No one forced the guy, although yeah, there's a clear case of fraud/ deception here. "One is too many" type stuff is just histrionic.
I agree that "one is too many" is unreasonable, if by "one" we mean "one person's house was violated". If we mean "one person's house was violated and AirBnB did nothing about it", then, no, I think that's fairly reasonable.
Either it happens often enough that AirBnB needs to be regulated or it's rare enough to chalk up to unpredictable freak events, in which case they ought to bend over backwards to spend the little bit of money to make people whole again.
Presumably AirBnB needs to do some verification, so they're not handing out cash to anyone who makes up a story. Any such verification system will have some rate of false positives.
> What's the purpose of Airbnb's vetting/trust system? Is it not the same as the purpose of hotel regulation?
No they're not. Hotel regulations are actual regulations, enforced by the state. Airbnb's "vetting" system is just a marketing device, enforced by no one, and that you trust at your own expense, as these stories show.
You can sue AirBnB. You'd say it is expensive, but "legally appeal" is always a pretty expensive thing to do.
And, as far as I know, the regulatory agencies do not have actual legal obligation to consistently enforce their regulations - they have a very wide discretion, so if they want to ignore you, you don't have a lot of recourse. In fact, lately we have a lot of instances of executive powers modifying and plainly abandoning enforcing the laws they don't like. You don't have a lot of options in such case.
No, hotel regulations are there because hotel owners lobby the lawmakers to protect their business and exclude competition. Nothing in the hotel regulations could prevent somebody from inviting people in and having a wild sex party. Of course, eventually they'd be thrown out, and possibly billed for damages, but there's no way to prevent it upfront.
It's not just for the benefit of hotel owners. Cities typically charge huge taxes on hotel stays, so illicit hotels are dodging taxes. And there are actually some vestiges of regulations directed at protecting consumers from hotels that are firetraps, lack adequate ventilation, etc.
Maybe you should look up the rash of hotel fires before some of those regulations were put on the books. Or consider the fact that many of our homes are in apartment buildings and we didn't sign on to have an illegal hotel in the apartment next door.
Go and tell that to OP's neighbors, who were not expecting an XXX fuck fest in their building, complete with random ejection of furniture into the street.
Yeah, around here (Copenhagen) the negative attitudes towards AirBnB are much more strongly driven by neighbors than by hotels. Coop associations are particularly active in tracking down people who're subletting "off the books", often driven by complaints being raised at the monthly association meetings. These come up for reasons ranging from specific ones like noisy parties in the floor above, to vague ones like "too many weird people I don't recognize coming and going".
This happens all the time in hotels. Where do you think a good chunk of xxx movies are shot? I will answer this for you - HOTELS or any homes producers have access to before deadline. This wont be the first, second or last time either.
It seems it only means that AirBnB only checked that the person is who they are and they have some credit card on file.
The problem is the way it appears conveys more trust than it should because verified appears in way that says "secure". I agree it's not what it says, but still, that's how it "appears". It sounds as if there's some sort of insurance.
Speaking of insurance, does AirBnB offer insurance (for a price or not) to its customers? Does the lack of regulations and the gray area prevent this?
Let's not forget in the end the victim is the OP. He's probably been careless, but he remains a victim.
Airbnb provides various means of "verification". You can verify a telephone number, an ID, Facebook profile (and even see how many friends the person has). Airbnb also provides references by friends and reviews by Airbnb members. Example:http://imgur.com/yQaSBdO Some of these verifications are optional, and as far as I know only a number, email and sometimes an ID are compulsory. The fundamental issue at hand is whether the OP is at fault for being too naive, not checking for proper verifications and simply choosing to trust the renter based on the info he/she provided. Personally, I don't think Airbnb is at fault. (did the OP even bother to talk to the renter over the phone?). I personally love using Airbnb and will continue to use it. What is continually a worry for me is is the lack of common sense people have when renting out their homes to complete strangers. What would have been the difference if this person was simply running an illegal bed & breakfast in his apartment and this happened? I feel sorry for the OP, but if you just choose to trust "strangers" and not take proper precautions and then expect Airbnb to have all the blame, then you're just kinda of a moron.
I would like the blogger to post a follow up on how AirBnB will respond. I've heard of multiple incidents of damage to the property, but have never read about the follow up. I suspect that a hush hush settlement was made.
Is there a kind of insurance that AirBnB sets up or is it completely on the renter's dime?
Actually, "sort of." There is insurance in the US (where the article was written), but not everywhere. If I visit the page about their "guarantee," I am redirected to the airbnb domain for my country, where that page does not exist. Strangely they even explain at https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/279 that the guarantee page will not be accessible if your computer is in a country where they do not offer the guarantee. This is bizarre, because what if I rented out my place, travelled to another country, and then want to read about my protections?
To be a little more helpful, they've partnered with Lloyd's of London to provide a nice insurance policy for all renters: https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee
But since this person is in violation of AirBnB's terms of service, he might have problems collecting on their insurance policy. Their TOS states[1]:
... you will not:
...offer, as a Host, any Accommodations that
you do not yourself own or have permission to
rent as a residential or other property...
Clearly he does not own the property or have his landlord's permission to rent it.
AirBnB has an insurance policy to compensate for cases like this.
Color me cynical, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for the blogger. If you have a landlord (i.e. you don't personally own the building), and you aren't there to personally meet and be around the guests, then you are knowingly taking on the risk that the guests will be sketchy and that you will be evicted, even if you are allowed subleses (not to mention that you almost always aren't).
Even if you are allowed subleasing on your own lease, there are probably also minimum stay requirements by law to get out of being considered a hotel/b&b/whatever with taxes and insurance requirements.
I think it's pretty hard to use AirBnB without breaking some kind of law, unfortunately.
Of course never mind that some of the people doing this in bigger cities like SF are already illegally subletted themselves to someone who's probably paying a rent controlled price.
> AirBnB has an insurance policy to compensate for cases like this.
Not quite. AirBnb specifically excludes things you don't own. So, while they would be responsible for the original poster's stuff, any damage done to the apartment itself, paint, floors, appliances, walls, hallways, doors, bathroom, fixtures, any furnishings that were already in the apt, etc would not appear to be covered.
> PLEASE CAREFULLY REVIEW THE DEFINITIONS OF “COVERED ACCOMMODATION,” “COVERED LOSSES,” “EXCLUDED ACCOMMODATION,” AND “EXCLUDED PROPERTY” BELOW. THESE DEFINITIONS ARE ESPECIALLY SIGNIFICANT IF YOUR ACCOMMODATION IS A CONDOMINIUM, TOWNHOUSE, CO-OPERATIVE, APARTMENT, OR ANY OTHER UNIT IN A MULTIPLE-DWELLING STRUCTURE, COMPLEX, AND/OR DEVELOPMENT. TO THE EXTENT THIS HOST GUARANTEE COVERS REAL PROPERTY, IT COVERS ONLY REAL PROPERTY THAT YOU OWN.
The page continually uses the term "hosts", and emphasizes that you are covered up to $1,000,000 so should relax. It does also say that the guarantee is not insurance or a replacement for "homeowners or renters insurance". But to me that phrasing strongly implies that the AirBnB Host Guarantee covers both the kinds of hosts who might also have homeowners insurance, and the kinds of hosts who might also have renters insurance— just that it is not to be properly considered insurance in either case. Wording the page this way, and then excluding paying for damages to rented property in the legalese leads to results not in keeping with the expectation I got from this summary.
> I enjoy a “Festival” as much as the next fellow, but this is a family building and some people don’t enjoy having their neighbor’s worldly possessions tossed in a pile into the common area, while a group of strangers form a pile to have their private areas tossed. As such, I’m going to be evicted.
>
> You’re going to pay my moving expenses, because my landlord is certainly going to make me move after an “XXX Freak Fest” (and I can’t look these guys in the eye after this either).
In New York, it is illegal for you to rent out your apartment while you are gone. Besides that detail, how can the OP's landlord evict him, unless there was something in the lease saying such renting was not allowed? Can the OP post the relevant portion of his leasing agreement?
I love airbnb, have used it in the past, but I have a really hard time sympathizing with this or seeing it as AirBnB's fault. This is always a risk if you let people you don't know (or hell, even people you do know) into your home.
It kind of sounds like this person never even bothered to meet the people who were renting his apartment (I was always shocked when someone rented me their apartment without meeting me, personally).
Nothing airbnb can ever do will guarantee something like this won't happen to you. That's why you have to also do whatever you can to protect yourself. If you wouldn't be comfortable with the precautions you took had you found the renter on craigslist, you shouldn't be doing it.
Of course, airbnb will probably pull out from their own insurance on this for this person because the likely result of not doing so enough times for them is that more places make it clearer that it's largely illegal to do it and start enforcing more zealously.
While you're sort of correct, in my opinion AirBnB should be liable for something like this. It might make them take better steps to prevent it. You're not going to stop it 100% of the time, but there are plenty of horror stories here, and that's turned me off from ever trying it personally.
What does meeting the renter personally accomplish? You won't be able to tell that he is planning a XXX Freak Fest tomorrow. Even if you do, cancelling the reservation after meeting him might get you kicked out of AirBNB as a host.
It's certainly not a catch-all, but it can help. It strikes me as the very least you can do. And there are other measures you can take, like having a neighbour (or hell, if you're actually doing it legally, your super) keep an eye on things.
The point is simply that if you abdicate all effort to ensure your house is kept well to a corporation that barely knows either of you are people, you're more likely to get this stuff happening. No one makes anyone be an airbnb host.
And if you met a potential guest and thought they might be planning to host an orgy in your house as soon as you left, I'm gonna say you might want to risk getting kicked off airbnb rather than risk having your house trashed. That's just me, though.
I don't see how this is AirBnB's fault, at least to the degree that's implied.
You rented out your apartment to a stranger on the internet based upon what other strangers on the internet said about them. You almost certainly broke the terms of the lease in the process and probably deserved to be kicked out even if you hadn't had an "XXX freak fest" thrown.
Sure, AirBnB should try and figure out the damages, charge the accounts credit card(guarantee that won't work) and the pursue damages(good luck).
This is why people have renter's insurance(doubt you thought of it as you were probably trying to do this illegally anyway).
This is also why this industry is regulated, because when it's not humans get pwnt by their own stupidity combined with the malice of other humans.
At the end of the day for a lot of people AirBnB is a way to make easy money under the table, that's why there's little to no regulation; yeah that regulation comes with taxes/overhead, but it also comes with protection from the hazards of the business. It's pretty fucked logic to take such a huge risk with your property, give it zero protection, and then be not only surprised, but furious(with the site connecting you to the offender not the offender themself), when shit goes down. How dense can you be.
TL;DR- AirBnB pays for these situations anyway[0], this drama post is made by someone who took a huge risk in renting an apt without insurance, without a face-to-face, and probably not in accordance with his/her lease. The post will probably result in a faster payout, but the entitlement is slightly annoying considering the circumstances.
There are absolutely tons of people more dense than the OP, tons. Vast parades of dense people. So it's a little bit unwarranted to really come down this hard on him.
On the other hand it is these vast parades of dense people who keep voting for less regulation as a whole. So I can appreciate the need to come down hard on them. But this guy doesn't seem like the guy honestly.
AirBNB is a business model used by millions, they take a huge or even really huge cut just for being the middle man. You expect a tiered amount of "XXX Freak Fests" rolling through your apartment.
Although, if this happened to someone and I heard about it by word of mouth,(or even through a less entitled post)I would immediately be sympathetic.
That said, the entire post is one long diatribe directed AT AirBnB as if it's their fault for not hand-combing literally every renter's reviews for validity.
He gambled and got burned, he's guaranteed up to a million USD so as far as I'm concerned, eat your loses and move on; don't blame the company that was both making you under the table money AND is about to pay you 90k in damages.
Is the money really under the table? Isn't that illegal, aren't there people putting a stop to that? Anyway, the part of the article that confused me was why he repeatedly said he can't look the doorman in the eye anymore. That can only be if you did something wrong.
Maybe everyone in this story is doing something wrong except the door guy.
Tell me how regulation solves this? Why is it that this couldn't happen in a hotel? (Guarantee it does all the time)
There isn't any regulation that can fix people being jackasses. This isn't AirBNB's fault, and it isn't the OP's fault. It's the jackass who held the party fault. Could the OP have done things differently? Sure. It's likely the sublet wasn't entirely legal, and it's likely he could have renter's insurance. That being said, his insurance still probably shouldn't have to pay it. That is what AirBNB's cut should be covering. And I'm sure they will in fact cover it, as this is really bad publicity for them. The only reason for this post is to make that money get there faster.
The point of regulations is not always to prevent a bad thing from happening; the point is that when the bad thing does happen, it can be contained/handled more effectively, or that there are established and well-understood procedures for recovering from it.
Regulations which say that hotels should be hotels and apartments should not be hotels are as much about containing the effects of bad actors as anything else.
1) hotels don't use keys. The dodgy hotel guest can be shut out with the stroke of a key at the reception desk computer.
2) when things go wrong, hotels have staff on hand to deal with the situation.
3) hotels have insurance for when things go badly wrong.
All of these things cost money, which is partly why hotels are more expensive than AirBnB. The author assumed a lot of risk when subletting through AirBnB and is now complaining when the risk went wrong. I have very little sympathy for him / her.
The people I do have sympathy for are fellow residents of the apartment block, who had a reasonable expectation that their building wouldn't be turned into the site of a free for all sex party. They didnt get any say in this, and didn't receive any compensation. That is unfair.
"3) hotels have insurance for when things go badly wrong"
Yes, and the reason they can buy insurance (or risk self-insuring) is that they have processes designed to limit the frequency and severity of these incidents.
I'm curious how much AirBnb pays for insurance. How much would you charge for an insurance policy if someone said they were going to let random strangers stay in their apartment, based on a few semi-anonymous comments on the internet?
Of course it could happen in a hotel! I agree completely. One reason we regulate hotels differently from single family housing is that this sort of thing is more likely to happen in a hotel.
This is why there isn't a hotel right in the middle of my single family block in a relatively dense neighborhood in SF. If someone wants to open up a hotel, they have to go through the process of obtaining the proper licenses and permits. Then don't get to just create an account on a website and hit the "create hotel" button.
AirBnB's business model _depends_ on all those 'dense' people not recognizing the risks of what they're doing, not recognizing the added risks of violating the terms of their lease or local laws to do so.
Hmm, I meant that in the context of a legitimate sublease, although the second half of that sentence does strongly imply I was referring to this stay as a valid use case. You'd get liability coverage from some plans at least.
Honestly, I think in the revision process I moved a sentence fragment astray.
You can buy insurance for absolutely anything you can think up (Mir space station hitting a target in the middle of the ocean). Of course it wouldn't be economical to build a custom insurance product for a one-night stay in an AirBnB, but the use case is general enough to probably justify an insurance product.
You are naive if you think an insurer is going to pay out for damages resulting from the formation of an illegal contract (between renter and subletter in this case), which is automatically void.
Doesn't matter. Even if such a general product existed it would be easy for an insurer to decline payout in an instance such as this. I'm guessing AirBNB will be reluctant to pay out here for similar reasons, unless it emerges that the party organized have a history of this sort of thing and AirBNB knew about prior complaints at the time they brokered the booking.
This might be old-fashioned, but I think that the very act of commenting in a thread carries an implication that you intend your comment to be relevant to that thread.
You certainly _can_ buy insurance that covers damages from per-night rentals of an apartment. But it's likely going to be more expensive than your standard renters insurance, which is unlikely to cover such.
On the one hand, this is not AirBnB's "fault", the guy should have known that if you rent your apartment out to strangers there's risk involved, and additional risks if you are violating your lease and/or state law by doing so.
On the other hand, AirBnB's business model depends on people not really recognizing these risks.
The tweet by the "BBW party promoter" is on twitter; you can view it there. The account has 5 years of history tweeting about sex parties.
The address of a residence is in the tweet. You can do a Google search and see the previous real estate listings for the residential condos/apartments at that address. You can look at it on Google Maps to see that it's a real address and not some kind of sex club.
The "porn star" profile of the party organizer that tweeted, screenshotted, is there on Xvideos; you can look it up and view it yourself.
The screenshots of the booking conversations through Airbnb are included as well, which Airbnb can confirm actually took place.
These are all evidence supporting the story, and all of these pieces of evidence can be verified by third parties. That's verifiable evidence, which is what I said.
"Restating the premise" means to restate the base of your argument. I argued the opposite, that the post does have credibility. Sorry that you felt I was being snide by disagreeing.
The tweet is verifiable.
That a porn party took place at that residence seems likely.
There is no verification this occurred over airbnb. There is no verification that the tweets were by anyone other than the resident or owner and no verification that the tumblr post was written by the resident.
All of this, including the tweet, could be a pretty simple hoax.
And worse, it's from tumblr.
The premise you restated was the basic post itself: Hey! This shit happened to me.
I asked, why should we believe this.
You said, "Because shit happened to that guy!"
Until airbnb responds we have no reason to give this anecdote any credence.
And you were totally snide. Your apology is disingenuous. "Sorry you felt I was being snide" is not an apology. It is a faux apology.
And worse, it's from tumblr.
That's an unqualified contention. What makes content hosted on tumblr less credible than what's on any other free blog site?
Most articles should receive a healthy dose of criticism, but on the whole, I really didn't see any suspect. The only basis for questioning is that AirBnB is the darling of the "OMG! DISRUPTING!" crowd, and thus any criticism against them must be a conspiracy from the evil industries.
I would imagine most of that is rent you are liable for if you are evicted. At least $2k+ a month for x amount of months.
If they had decent furniture that could add up quickly as well, but $80k does seem like a lot unless they are including 'emotional' damages which at that point is hard to quantify.
Zillow estimates rent at that address as $6700/month, with the 2 bedroom condos in that building selling for over $2 million. Another listing at the same address was renting for $7950/month.
Typically, you're responsible, if it's a lease, for the rent until the property is re-leased, with the assumption that the landlord makes all reasonable efforts to do so expediently.
If they disassembled furniture, I'd guess there was also physical damage to the property. Also, the blogger is probably uncomfortable keeping stuff used in the sex fest.
There are furniture boutiques in Manhattan where you could easily spend $87,000 outfitting your apartment, but then if you were spending that kind of money, why on earth would you put your place on Airbnb?
The address in question is an extraordinarily expensive building. Also, if someone does something like clog a bathtub and leave it running, water damage or something similar can easily cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to any building.
Who has ideas on how to handle customer service and public perception in an industry where the downside of a single bad event is the mix of horrific, intimate, and very newsworthy?
Even if the rate of AirBNB disasters was only 1 disaster for every 1 million successful rentals, you'd still get very sticky disaster stories coming out regularly. Similar to how the evening news covers all the murders and trauma in the world, potentially inflating our perception of how often it happens..
Any general thoughts on what's required to thrive if you're in an industry where things will go wrong even if you do best practices conservatively everywhere, and the "going wrong" scenario is both quite bad and quite public?
This is obviously a bad situation. No one wants this to happen. (Except perhaps the FF participants) There have been plenty of bad situations at hotels as well, though.
I'm most interested in the final paragraph.
All because I trusted AirBNB that this individual was a “Verified” member with multiple positive reviews...
AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating social proof. P2P requires trusted reputation.
If the story is as described, it appears AirBnB failed to provide a trustful counter-party. And it went very wrong as a result.
> There have been plenty of bad situations at hotels as well, though.
Sure, but hotels are regulated and licensed and zoned so they keep those bad situations away from residential areas.
> AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating and social proof.
It's really an open question of whether "reputation economies" are workable at all. I continue to be disappointed by user ratings on services like Yelp. I wouldn't trust anything more substantive than a new restaurant pick to such ratings.
But with Yelp they don't verify you've actually eaten at a restaurant or visited a business so it is very much up in the air and their stance is we don't spend our time verifying or taking up false claims so you're stuck. I've experienced this first hand helping businesses with their social media. It sucks a lot.
The only way to have sure reviews is to have some kind of receipt verification or pass the payment through the service so that you know for sure this person is paying for this service which AirBnB does. So there is a big difference from AirBnB reviews and reviews on Yelp and other sites that let you post without real proof.
Yes. The reality is that if this happens in a hotel, the hotel immediately kicks the "XXX party" out, and will usually move the aggrieved neighbors to a different floor or (as has happened with me at hotels with loud parties) do that and refund the night's cost.
To an extent, yes, and more importantly it's civilly enforceable, because neighboring guests can chargeback the room if they're not moved (or even they are), and will almost certainly win the dispute.
One, I would definitely evict and sue this blogger as well if I was the landlord.
Two, how the AirBNB user the blogger rented to is "Verified" with multiple positive reviews needs to be investigated. Whatever weakness they are exploiting in the AirBNB review system needs to be eliminated.
Lastly, I am sorry this happened... but the reality is...
this is the reason you shouldn't be using AirBNB. This could have turned out much worse to be perfectly frank.
If Zillow's estimates are at all accurate, the building at that address is full of $2M+ condos that rent for $6-8K/month. He mentions the doorman; he's probably pretty well off to afford living there.
This is exact reason why AirBnB like services cannot succeed in India. You could be in jail, as the police here will never understand why you allowed someone into your house if you are not a hotel. The attitude of police here is that if anything goes wrong, the owner of the house or business is responsible.
To illustrate, in 2004, early days of e-commerce in India, someone put up a certain CD to be sold on e-Bay. The police just arrested the CEO of eBay India. When something goes wrong police here arrests biggest possible names either to show its working or extract maximum corruption money. Any wonder why Indian startups cannot go beyond providing services to foreign businesses for cheap? To be fair, many startups are innovating in India, but the point is the kind of challenges they have to deal with are just unknown to the more developed world.
"...worldly possessions tossed in a pile into the common area, while a group of strangers form a pile to have their private areas tossed."
I would've gone with "...while a group of strangers have their piles tossed". It's cleaner(?).
All joking aside, this is why I refuse to participate in AirBnB. It's just not worth the non-negligible risk of very bad things happening. It's a great idea, yeah, and they've done super well, and a lot of people are exceedingly happy with it all. However, I'm not one of them, and I don't think these risks can be removed--having a stranger (or heck, even a friend!) stay in your house while you are not there is inherently risky no matter what regulations are in place.
That's a sad story. Clearly not a common occurrence (at least not common enough to be "oh another airbnb trashed my place" type response).
So what happens next will be interesting.
Presumably AirBnB's insurance will make the renter whole again.
Also presumably their ability to identify the person responsible will allow them to press charges against them, I suspect there are codes against charging cover charges for a sex party (I vaguely remember the controversy over the sex club in LA about this, something about indirect solicitation but that was like in the 70's so I'd really have to go back and dig it up.)
It seems like the 'TWINN' character was reasonably well connected in this community and perhaps if a great big hassle comes his way it will discourage others from that community in using AirBnB that way.
AirBnB has a $1,000,000 insurance on every booking. Yes, what happened sucks, but the guy should raise noise if AirBnB refuses to cover his damages. For what it's worth, claiming your host insurance with AirBnB is part of doing business with them.
There's been a few other comments that point out that a condition of the insurance is that you must own the property, or have permission to rent it out, which author didn't. To the policy as it's written, this would be an uncovered claim.
whoa whoa ..it isn't AirBnB's fault, it is google's ! ..not wait, it is the fault of the interwebs ..ehe, so Gore ? Yep, that's it, Gore set the XXX Freak Fest to your place. Jeez !
I'm amazed it has taken so long for something like this to happen. It's almost worse than MethBNB. Does it happen more frequently but AirBnB just quietly pays out? Or is my perception of how horrible 1% of the world is inaccurately calibrated?
Hack AirBnB accounts, until you find a nice renter who has a place with (presumably) nice stuff who will hand off keys to you without physically meeting, then clear it out, or destroy it like this, or something else. I'd be assuming that would happen 1:1000 rentals, but maybe that's paranoia.
Still, while I feel sorry for the renter here, I feel even worse for his landlord and neighbors, who should sue him, and get part of that $1mm.
That doesn't make any sense. Just choose a random house with valuable stuff in it, break in and clear it out? Getting past the door is the least of your problems, why go all that trouble with AirBNB? It doesn't make it less of a crime.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] threadIt just seems like blaming AirBnB here is akin to blaming Google Search because you found the renter there, or Craigslist, or...
That seems similar to blaming Google Search, not the site itself, for returning a site that has ranked well for a long time, but has just now started serving malware.
'Verified' should eventually mean verified, with no qualifiers. If it can't be guaranteed then it's better to say so.
edit: I see from jamesroseman's comment below that 'verified' only means that their ID is verified, not the reason they require the accommodation. (https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/450) If that's clear from the UI (and not just buried in a FAQ), it invalidates my point.
It doesn't verify against people lying about their intentions.
The author here will probably pursue legal recourse against that individual as well. It's a two-part problem: 1.) The leaser may have violated the lease as laid out by the author by effectively ruining the home. 2.) AirBNB reported a leaser as 'verified', which is important because of the implication that the leaser won't do certain things like ruin your home during their stay.
Unfortunately per 2, this isn't actually what AirBNB claims to mean by "verified" [0]. It's unfortunate because of what happened, but you are indeed correct -- technically speaking AirBNB is not responsible here. It sucks, and it certainly means I won't be using AirBNB, but they've done their job of protecting themselves.
[0] https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/450
That being said, I guarantee you were violating your lease when you used AirBnb. And, you approved the person to stay in your house. If anyone should be mad, it's your neighbors and apartment owner -- they followed the rules. This is really unfortunate, but it's not all AirBnb's fault.
Perhaps with rules? Of the type one might describe as "regulations"?
At what point does it morph into a corrupt regulation?
Seriously, you're excluding the possibility of any legitimate government taking action in the public interest.
https://www.airbnb.com/terms/host_guarantee
will mitigate the issue that this particular host encountered.
any condominium, townhouse, co-operative, apartment, or other unit within a multiple-dwelling structure, complex, or similar type development to the extent owned in whole or in part by anyone other than you
Since he mentioned a landlord, I'm doubtful that he owned his apartment.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/airbnb-will-insure-up-to-1-milli...
http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.ca/2011/06/violated-traveler...
How can you guarantee that? Plenty of places let you sublet. Hell, in reasonable jurisdictions you can't legally prevent someone from subletting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/nyregion/the-airbnb-econom...
Even if there's nothing about subletting (which I doubt), you can't do illegal stuff without violating a lease.
This is speculation and not true. Not to mention that the criminal code and the civil code are distinct bodies of law. In general, it would be more likely to be evicted for a "quality of life" violation (such as that citation) than for any ramdom infraction of the criminal code. Furthermore, to the extent relevant, a landlord usually reserves "the right, but not the oblication" to take action or not. And crap like this is more likely to warrant eviction than a mere legal infraction (which need not even be disclosed).
Not only does this demonstrate lack of integrity in the direct relationship, it creates problems with thrid-party contracts and service providers. Ie, insurance claims etc. So, yeah I would be making you sign an open ended imdeniication for any breech such as this. And you're lawyers wouldn't like that.
Also, there is repuataional damage to my brand. Again, if you did this in breech of my contract, I would put you on the hook for this via the terms of the contract.
Of course, we might never sign a deal If I was this well protected and your intentions were not above board.
Update: I am not entirely correct. It is only illegal if you are not present in the apartment at the time, so people renting out rooms in a multi-room apartment can do so legally, although they are likely still in violation of their lease.
AirBNB is not legally compatible with New York City's housing/hotel laws. It very easily could be fine elsewhere, just not NYC.
Even then, I kind of suspect "a person I've never even met in person, have no personal access to his id, have not vetted his references, and I don't even know what he looks like for sure" probably gives a landlord plenty of reasonable grounds to object.
Basically, you can't just sublet. You still have to inform the landlord. And in the case of informing him that you are operating through Airbnb, illegal in NYC, an objection would be reasonable.
So all and all the grandparent's guarantee is pretty solid. This guy isn't a victim, he's one of the co-conspirators, as are AirBnb. His landlord and neighbors are the victims.
N.Y. RPP. LAW § 226-b : NY Code - Section 226-B: Right to sublease or assign - See more at: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/RPP/7/226-b#sthash.y9ORKJ...
2. (a) A tenant renting a residence pursuant to an existing lease in a dwelling having four or more residential units shall have the right to sublease his premises subject to the written consent of the landlord in advance of the subletting. Such consent shall not be unreasonably withheld.
(b) The tenant shall inform the landlord of his intent to sublease by mailing a notice of such intent by certified mail, return receipt requested. Such request shall be accompanied by the following information: (i) the term of the sublease, (ii) the name of the proposed sublessee, (iii) the business and permanent home address of the proposed sublessee, (iv) the tenant's reason for subletting, (v) the tenant's address for the term of the sublease, (vi) the written consent of any cotenant or guarantor of the lease, and (vii) a copy of the proposed sublease, to which a copy of the tenant's lease shall be attached if available, acknowledged by the tenant and proposed subtenant as being a true copy of such sublease. ...
(c) Within ten days after the mailing of such request, the landlord ...
...
5. Any sublet or assignment which does not comply with the provisions of this section shall constitute a substantial breach of lease or tenancy.
6. Any provision of a lease or rental agreement purporting to waive a provision of this section is null and void.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement
(a) This could never happen a hotel room.
(b) Since Airbnb is illegal in NYC, it's not Airbnb's fault someone is trusting them and their vetting system in NYC.*
Both seems false to me.
* Obviously it's not their "fault", but they should take responsibility, just like an insurance company / hotel chain would.
ADDITION: What's the purpose of Airbnb's vetting/trust system? Is it not the same as the purpose of hotel regulation? Should they not both serve a similar function?
And I didn't say (b). Rather, I said AirBnb didn't force them to let strangers into their home; it was their decision. AirBnb approved the people, sure -- but so did the apartment owner.
EDIT: In response to your addition -- AirBnb doesn't verify they won't do something bad (they can't see the future). Rather, it means that AirBnb has verified they are who they said they are. So, AirBnb can now go to the police with that information.
That is a very common knee-jerk response which appears any time new and disruptive industry challenges one with entrenched regulation that had already captured the law and the regulatory agencies. Every time something wrong happens - and eventually something wrong always happens, nothing is perfect - we get a knee-jerk "that's why we need all that regulation". Never it is examined if the said regulation would actually prevent the said bad from happening (usually not) and whether the costs of this regulation is worse overall than the bad thing happening. This is so basic logic fallacy that it just boggles the mind how so many people insist so much on not seeing it.
What the OP reported was that a business fronted its way into a residential building (using AirBnB) to hold a commercial event in an un-sanctioned venue.
This is exactly why places like NYC have regulations of various types, of which a multitude are applicable.
It is incredibly inefficient economically to have consumers "due dilligence" every potentially manipulative market exchange with a limited liability c-corp. So, we can either ban limited liability c-corps outright (forcing liability onto biz owners) or we can allow them within a regulatory framework that forces "structured" liability onto them.
The idea that this is some kind of logical fallacy is hillarious. It is quite sound, and is in general acceptable trade-off. It allows capital concentration/formation which is required for MES projects, whist not allowing abuse of power driven by such scale variance.
It is true it was their decision, but they did it under a false impression. Who facilitated this impression? Who ultimately allows Airbnb to stay in NYC? Airbnb.
I agree Airbnb can go to the police, but in the meantime it doesn't seem unreasonable that they help the person out, just like it doesn't seem unreasonable that a hotel chain is helping out a local hotel when a prostitution ring is uncovered.
Hotels are staffed and better prepared to deal with such situations.
Also if a hotel room gets trashed, that's just a business expense. Most people don't have their bed bolted to the wall, and tend to have nicer furnishings and appliances, etc, than you'll find in a hotel. Ignore the value even: we're talking someone's property, someone's life. If a room, a floor, or even the entire hotel gets shut down due to destruction, it's inconvenient and an expense. If I get evicted, that's a crisis, at least for a time.
The "OMG! DISRUPTING!" crowd seem to hand-wave these situations away, as if destroying "evil" business models is far more important than the impact it has on individuals. If someone's life is ruined 1 out 1000 AirBnB rentals, that's too often.
shouldn't you as an apartment owner think about that before signing up to airBnB?
Either it happens often enough that AirBnB needs to be regulated or it's rare enough to chalk up to unpredictable freak events, in which case they ought to bend over backwards to spend the little bit of money to make people whole again.
No they're not. Hotel regulations are actual regulations, enforced by the state. Airbnb's "vetting" system is just a marketing device, enforced by no one, and that you trust at your own expense, as these stories show.
And, as far as I know, the regulatory agencies do not have actual legal obligation to consistently enforce their regulations - they have a very wide discretion, so if they want to ignore you, you don't have a lot of recourse. In fact, lately we have a lot of instances of executive powers modifying and plainly abandoning enforcing the laws they don't like. You don't have a lot of options in such case.
The problem is what "verified" means.
It seems it only means that AirBnB only checked that the person is who they are and they have some credit card on file.
The problem is the way it appears conveys more trust than it should because verified appears in way that says "secure". I agree it's not what it says, but still, that's how it "appears". It sounds as if there's some sort of insurance.
Speaking of insurance, does AirBnB offer insurance (for a price or not) to its customers? Does the lack of regulations and the gray area prevent this?
Let's not forget in the end the victim is the OP. He's probably been careless, but he remains a victim.
Is there a kind of insurance that AirBnB sets up or is it completely on the renter's dime?
tldr; Yes, there is insurance.
If you want to read the legalese, this page seems to work from anywhere: https://www.airbnb.com/terms/host_guarantee
[1] https://www.airbnb.com/terms
Color me cynical, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for the blogger. If you have a landlord (i.e. you don't personally own the building), and you aren't there to personally meet and be around the guests, then you are knowingly taking on the risk that the guests will be sketchy and that you will be evicted, even if you are allowed subleses (not to mention that you almost always aren't).
I think it's pretty hard to use AirBnB without breaking some kind of law, unfortunately.
Of course never mind that some of the people doing this in bigger cities like SF are already illegally subletted themselves to someone who's probably paying a rent controlled price.
Not quite. AirBnb specifically excludes things you don't own. So, while they would be responsible for the original poster's stuff, any damage done to the apartment itself, paint, floors, appliances, walls, hallways, doors, bathroom, fixtures, any furnishings that were already in the apt, etc would not appear to be covered.
> PLEASE CAREFULLY REVIEW THE DEFINITIONS OF “COVERED ACCOMMODATION,” “COVERED LOSSES,” “EXCLUDED ACCOMMODATION,” AND “EXCLUDED PROPERTY” BELOW. THESE DEFINITIONS ARE ESPECIALLY SIGNIFICANT IF YOUR ACCOMMODATION IS A CONDOMINIUM, TOWNHOUSE, CO-OPERATIVE, APARTMENT, OR ANY OTHER UNIT IN A MULTIPLE-DWELLING STRUCTURE, COMPLEX, AND/OR DEVELOPMENT. TO THE EXTENT THIS HOST GUARANTEE COVERS REAL PROPERTY, IT COVERS ONLY REAL PROPERTY THAT YOU OWN.
I wonder how many would still continue listing if they knew that AirBnbs insurance doesn't actually cover them.
The page continually uses the term "hosts", and emphasizes that you are covered up to $1,000,000 so should relax. It does also say that the guarantee is not insurance or a replacement for "homeowners or renters insurance". But to me that phrasing strongly implies that the AirBnB Host Guarantee covers both the kinds of hosts who might also have homeowners insurance, and the kinds of hosts who might also have renters insurance— just that it is not to be properly considered insurance in either case. Wording the page this way, and then excluding paying for damages to rented property in the legalese leads to results not in keeping with the expectation I got from this summary.
I assume that your lease prohibits subleases without the consent of your landlord.
> You’re going to pay my moving expenses, because my landlord is certainly going to make me move after an “XXX Freak Fest” (and I can’t look these guys in the eye after this either).
In New York, it is illegal for you to rent out your apartment while you are gone. Besides that detail, how can the OP's landlord evict him, unless there was something in the lease saying such renting was not allowed? Can the OP post the relevant portion of his leasing agreement?
Pretty sure that's the reason. Also NY state has laws requiring a minimum stay in a property that isn't zoned as a hotel.
In any case, if you break the law relating to your rental it's fairly easy for a landlord to terminate the lease.
It kind of sounds like this person never even bothered to meet the people who were renting his apartment (I was always shocked when someone rented me their apartment without meeting me, personally).
Nothing airbnb can ever do will guarantee something like this won't happen to you. That's why you have to also do whatever you can to protect yourself. If you wouldn't be comfortable with the precautions you took had you found the renter on craigslist, you shouldn't be doing it.
Of course, airbnb will probably pull out from their own insurance on this for this person because the likely result of not doing so enough times for them is that more places make it clearer that it's largely illegal to do it and start enforcing more zealously.
The point is simply that if you abdicate all effort to ensure your house is kept well to a corporation that barely knows either of you are people, you're more likely to get this stuff happening. No one makes anyone be an airbnb host.
And if you met a potential guest and thought they might be planning to host an orgy in your house as soon as you left, I'm gonna say you might want to risk getting kicked off airbnb rather than risk having your house trashed. That's just me, though.
You rented out your apartment to a stranger on the internet based upon what other strangers on the internet said about them. You almost certainly broke the terms of the lease in the process and probably deserved to be kicked out even if you hadn't had an "XXX freak fest" thrown.
Sure, AirBnB should try and figure out the damages, charge the accounts credit card(guarantee that won't work) and the pursue damages(good luck).
This is why people have renter's insurance(doubt you thought of it as you were probably trying to do this illegally anyway).
This is also why this industry is regulated, because when it's not humans get pwnt by their own stupidity combined with the malice of other humans.
At the end of the day for a lot of people AirBnB is a way to make easy money under the table, that's why there's little to no regulation; yeah that regulation comes with taxes/overhead, but it also comes with protection from the hazards of the business. It's pretty fucked logic to take such a huge risk with your property, give it zero protection, and then be not only surprised, but furious(with the site connecting you to the offender not the offender themself), when shit goes down. How dense can you be.
TL;DR- AirBnB pays for these situations anyway[0], this drama post is made by someone who took a huge risk in renting an apt without insurance, without a face-to-face, and probably not in accordance with his/her lease. The post will probably result in a faster payout, but the entitlement is slightly annoying considering the circumstances.
[0]-https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee
On the other hand it is these vast parades of dense people who keep voting for less regulation as a whole. So I can appreciate the need to come down hard on them. But this guy doesn't seem like the guy honestly.
AirBNB is a business model used by millions, they take a huge or even really huge cut just for being the middle man. You expect a tiered amount of "XXX Freak Fests" rolling through your apartment.
Although, if this happened to someone and I heard about it by word of mouth,(or even through a less entitled post)I would immediately be sympathetic.
That said, the entire post is one long diatribe directed AT AirBnB as if it's their fault for not hand-combing literally every renter's reviews for validity.
He gambled and got burned, he's guaranteed up to a million USD so as far as I'm concerned, eat your loses and move on; don't blame the company that was both making you under the table money AND is about to pay you 90k in damages.
Maybe everyone in this story is doing something wrong except the door guy.
What I meant by under the table wasn't "without taxes", but rather "without your landlords consent/against the terms of your lease".
Sorry about that, the understood meaning of under the table is definitely "without paying taxes", so 100% my fault.
AirBnB does pay federal and local taxes, when the state gets on them to do so :).
There isn't any regulation that can fix people being jackasses. This isn't AirBNB's fault, and it isn't the OP's fault. It's the jackass who held the party fault. Could the OP have done things differently? Sure. It's likely the sublet wasn't entirely legal, and it's likely he could have renter's insurance. That being said, his insurance still probably shouldn't have to pay it. That is what AirBNB's cut should be covering. And I'm sure they will in fact cover it, as this is really bad publicity for them. The only reason for this post is to make that money get there faster.
Regulations which say that hotels should be hotels and apartments should not be hotels are as much about containing the effects of bad actors as anything else.
2) when things go wrong, hotels have staff on hand to deal with the situation.
3) hotels have insurance for when things go badly wrong.
All of these things cost money, which is partly why hotels are more expensive than AirBnB. The author assumed a lot of risk when subletting through AirBnB and is now complaining when the risk went wrong. I have very little sympathy for him / her.
The people I do have sympathy for are fellow residents of the apartment block, who had a reasonable expectation that their building wouldn't be turned into the site of a free for all sex party. They didnt get any say in this, and didn't receive any compensation. That is unfair.
The reason this vertical hasn't been disrupted in this manner is the inherent liability of dealing with humans.
An institution like a hotel chain can both:
-React to a situation like this immediately instead of letting it play out.
-Take the losses in the event that damage occurs and the guests credentials were fake.
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To an individual renting out less than 5 properties a loss like this is crippling.
Also agree that the real victims here are the fellow tenants +landlord, they won't be seeing any of that 90k+ or their shitty past tenant.
Yes, and the reason they can buy insurance (or risk self-insuring) is that they have processes designed to limit the frequency and severity of these incidents.
I'm curious how much AirBnb pays for insurance. How much would you charge for an insurance policy if someone said they were going to let random strangers stay in their apartment, based on a few semi-anonymous comments on the internet?
This is why there isn't a hotel right in the middle of my single family block in a relatively dense neighborhood in SF. If someone wants to open up a hotel, they have to go through the process of obtaining the proper licenses and permits. Then don't get to just create an account on a website and hit the "create hotel" button.
No?
Honestly, I think in the revision process I moved a sentence fragment astray.
On the one hand, this is not AirBnB's "fault", the guy should have known that if you rent your apartment out to strangers there's risk involved, and additional risks if you are violating your lease and/or state law by doing so.
On the other hand, AirBnB's business model depends on people not really recognizing these risks.
What is the ample verifiable evidence in the post?
The address of a residence is in the tweet. You can do a Google search and see the previous real estate listings for the residential condos/apartments at that address. You can look at it on Google Maps to see that it's a real address and not some kind of sex club.
The "porn star" profile of the party organizer that tweeted, screenshotted, is there on Xvideos; you can look it up and view it yourself.
The screenshots of the booking conversations through Airbnb are included as well, which Airbnb can confirm actually took place.
These are all evidence supporting the story, and all of these pieces of evidence can be verified by third parties. That's verifiable evidence, which is what I said.
"Restating the premise" means to restate the base of your argument. I argued the opposite, that the post does have credibility. Sorry that you felt I was being snide by disagreeing.
There is no verification this occurred over airbnb. There is no verification that the tweets were by anyone other than the resident or owner and no verification that the tumblr post was written by the resident.
All of this, including the tweet, could be a pretty simple hoax.
And worse, it's from tumblr.
The premise you restated was the basic post itself: Hey! This shit happened to me.
I asked, why should we believe this.
You said, "Because shit happened to that guy!"
Until airbnb responds we have no reason to give this anecdote any credence.
And you were totally snide. Your apology is disingenuous. "Sorry you felt I was being snide" is not an apology. It is a faux apology.
astroturfer.
Most articles should receive a healthy dose of criticism, but on the whole, I really didn't see any suspect. The only basis for questioning is that AirBnB is the darling of the "OMG! DISRUPTING!" crowd, and thus any criticism against them must be a conspiracy from the evil industries.
87k of damages ... doesn't that seem a lot?
If they had decent furniture that could add up quickly as well, but $80k does seem like a lot unless they are including 'emotional' damages which at that point is hard to quantify.
There are furniture boutiques in Manhattan where you could easily spend $87,000 outfitting your apartment, but then if you were spending that kind of money, why on earth would you put your place on Airbnb?
Who has ideas on how to handle customer service and public perception in an industry where the downside of a single bad event is the mix of horrific, intimate, and very newsworthy?
Even if the rate of AirBNB disasters was only 1 disaster for every 1 million successful rentals, you'd still get very sticky disaster stories coming out regularly. Similar to how the evening news covers all the murders and trauma in the world, potentially inflating our perception of how often it happens..
Any general thoughts on what's required to thrive if you're in an industry where things will go wrong even if you do best practices conservatively everywhere, and the "going wrong" scenario is both quite bad and quite public?
I'm most interested in the final paragraph.
All because I trusted AirBNB that this individual was a “Verified” member with multiple positive reviews...
AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating social proof. P2P requires trusted reputation.
If the story is as described, it appears AirBnB failed to provide a trustful counter-party. And it went very wrong as a result.
Sure, but hotels are regulated and licensed and zoned so they keep those bad situations away from residential areas.
> AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating and social proof.
It's really an open question of whether "reputation economies" are workable at all. I continue to be disappointed by user ratings on services like Yelp. I wouldn't trust anything more substantive than a new restaurant pick to such ratings.
The only way to have sure reviews is to have some kind of receipt verification or pass the payment through the service so that you know for sure this person is paying for this service which AirBnB does. So there is a big difference from AirBnB reviews and reviews on Yelp and other sites that let you post without real proof.
Is it any better that hotel guests might have to stay near this sort of behavior?
Two, how the AirBNB user the blogger rented to is "Verified" with multiple positive reviews needs to be investigated. Whatever weakness they are exploiting in the AirBNB review system needs to be eliminated.
Lastly, I am sorry this happened... but the reality is...
this is the reason you shouldn't be using AirBNB. This could have turned out much worse to be perfectly frank.
He might not have as much luck getting them to pay his relocation costs, since I'm sure that renting out his apartment was against his lease anyway.
The real problem for this guy is going to be finding another landlord in Manhattan who will rent to him, unless he is extremely wealthy, of course.
To illustrate, in 2004, early days of e-commerce in India, someone put up a certain CD to be sold on e-Bay. The police just arrested the CEO of eBay India. When something goes wrong police here arrests biggest possible names either to show its working or extract maximum corruption money. Any wonder why Indian startups cannot go beyond providing services to foreign businesses for cheap? To be fair, many startups are innovating in India, but the point is the kind of challenges they have to deal with are just unknown to the more developed world.
eBay news link from 2004: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2902203/India-throws-Ebay...
I would've gone with "...while a group of strangers have their piles tossed". It's cleaner(?).
All joking aside, this is why I refuse to participate in AirBnB. It's just not worth the non-negligible risk of very bad things happening. It's a great idea, yeah, and they've done super well, and a lot of people are exceedingly happy with it all. However, I'm not one of them, and I don't think these risks can be removed--having a stranger (or heck, even a friend!) stay in your house while you are not there is inherently risky no matter what regulations are in place.
So what happens next will be interesting.
Presumably AirBnB's insurance will make the renter whole again.
Also presumably their ability to identify the person responsible will allow them to press charges against them, I suspect there are codes against charging cover charges for a sex party (I vaguely remember the controversy over the sex club in LA about this, something about indirect solicitation but that was like in the 70's so I'd really have to go back and dig it up.)
It seems like the 'TWINN' character was reasonably well connected in this community and perhaps if a great big hassle comes his way it will discourage others from that community in using AirBnB that way.
Definitely a wild story though.
Hack AirBnB accounts, until you find a nice renter who has a place with (presumably) nice stuff who will hand off keys to you without physically meeting, then clear it out, or destroy it like this, or something else. I'd be assuming that would happen 1:1000 rentals, but maybe that's paranoia.
Still, while I feel sorry for the renter here, I feel even worse for his landlord and neighbors, who should sue him, and get part of that $1mm.
Do they not have locksmiths in NYC?