<story><title>Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/31/another-airbnb-victim-tells-his-story-there-were-meth-pipes-everywhere/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mgkimsal</author><text>What&apos;s going to be a game changer is when stories start breaking about owners who rent out their space as a way to lure in people for killing or torturing them.&lt;p&gt;Right now it&apos;s about &quot;you were stupid, why did you rent your space out to strangers?&quot;.  Later on it&apos;ll be &quot;why did you try to save $20 and go sleep some place where you&apos;re 110% vulnerable?&quot;.  You don&apos;t control the locks, you don&apos;t know the neighborhood or even the layout of the house all that well (are there cameras in the room spying on you?).&lt;p&gt;If Holiday Inn or Marriott had tried to go &apos;downmarket&apos; by trying to get in the &quot;rent out your space with us - we&apos;ll handle the booking logistics&quot;, they&apos;d have been eaten alive by the insurance costs of dealing with QA on thousands of rooms/spaces they don&apos;t control.  They&apos;d have too much name brand recognition and goodwill in their names to lose by leaving customer safety and security to chance.  ABNB seems to be coming at this from the other way.  What do they have to lose?  Investor money?  It&apos;s a big experiment for them, which they&apos;re hoping will pay off, but I think there&apos;s a reasons beyond &quot;laziness&quot; or &quot;not getting it&quot; to explain why larger companies well-versed in hospitality/property management have not gone down this road.&lt;p&gt;Will things still work out for ABNB?  They might, but they&apos;re taking such a hit on this by not just making some of these situations right, then changing their procedures and policies.  Apparently these incidents - as infrequent as they may be - have been occurring for a while.  There&apos;s probably quite a few more that haven&apos;t come forward because they&apos;ve felt it was their own fault, much like domestic abuse spouses blame themselves.  Not really wanting to see ABNB fail, but can&apos;t help watching this play out, and I somewhat suspect it&apos;ll get worse before it gets better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coffeemug</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There&apos;s probably quite a few more that haven&apos;t come forward because they&apos;ve felt it was their own fault, much like domestic abuse spouses blame themselves.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A different way to put this is that most rational people recognize that letting strangers into their home is completely within the realm of their personal responsibility. AirBnB will have to put some processes in place in order for the business to succeed in the mainstream, but that doesn&apos;t absolve the hosts of responsibility for their apartments. Comparing this to domestic abuse victims is ludicrous.</text></comment>
<story><title>Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/31/another-airbnb-victim-tells-his-story-there-were-meth-pipes-everywhere/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mgkimsal</author><text>What&apos;s going to be a game changer is when stories start breaking about owners who rent out their space as a way to lure in people for killing or torturing them.&lt;p&gt;Right now it&apos;s about &quot;you were stupid, why did you rent your space out to strangers?&quot;.  Later on it&apos;ll be &quot;why did you try to save $20 and go sleep some place where you&apos;re 110% vulnerable?&quot;.  You don&apos;t control the locks, you don&apos;t know the neighborhood or even the layout of the house all that well (are there cameras in the room spying on you?).&lt;p&gt;If Holiday Inn or Marriott had tried to go &apos;downmarket&apos; by trying to get in the &quot;rent out your space with us - we&apos;ll handle the booking logistics&quot;, they&apos;d have been eaten alive by the insurance costs of dealing with QA on thousands of rooms/spaces they don&apos;t control.  They&apos;d have too much name brand recognition and goodwill in their names to lose by leaving customer safety and security to chance.  ABNB seems to be coming at this from the other way.  What do they have to lose?  Investor money?  It&apos;s a big experiment for them, which they&apos;re hoping will pay off, but I think there&apos;s a reasons beyond &quot;laziness&quot; or &quot;not getting it&quot; to explain why larger companies well-versed in hospitality/property management have not gone down this road.&lt;p&gt;Will things still work out for ABNB?  They might, but they&apos;re taking such a hit on this by not just making some of these situations right, then changing their procedures and policies.  Apparently these incidents - as infrequent as they may be - have been occurring for a while.  There&apos;s probably quite a few more that haven&apos;t come forward because they&apos;ve felt it was their own fault, much like domestic abuse spouses blame themselves.  Not really wanting to see ABNB fail, but can&apos;t help watching this play out, and I somewhat suspect it&apos;ll get worse before it gets better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ig1</author><text>This already happens on classified ad sites, people regularly go into strangers homes to purchase a wide range of goods with close to zero pre-checks. And yes people do get killed when they turn up at someone&apos;s house with 5k in cash to buy a car.&lt;p&gt;Doesn&apos;t seem to have stopped the classified business from working...</text></comment>