5 ms·

As far as damage to the apartment, pictures with some proof would help (and would indicate the extent of the damage), and if the truth is to come out about the

As far as damage to the apartment, pictures with some proof would help (and would indicate the extent of the damage), and if the truth is to come out about the interaction with AirBNB then someone would have to dump their email cache. Visual proof has already been obtained by the police. Why does the victim have to provide photos to the general public? For that matter, why does she have to "dump her email cache"? Are we putting her on trial on HN?

jacquesm 15y ago
> Are we putting her on trial on HN? Obviously not, maybe you should re-read that sentence in context. Pictures of the extent of the damage would go a long way towards explaining why she feels the way she does in a way that words will never be able to.
- jcunningham 15y ago
  Actually I think her words have done an excellent job of explaining why she feels the way she does and I don't want anyone else invading her privacy any more than it already has been violated. For that matter, I think you've got some nerve tracking her down, handing her contact details over to an Airbnb investor and claiming to be helping her to find an objective independent mediator.
  - jacquesm 15y ago
    Paul is not just 'some AirBNB investor', if you want to picture it that way, sure go ahead. AirBNB has - in my opinion - been doing the very wrong thing here for much too long and this will blow up at some point if something isn't done pronto. Tracking her down sounds like it was real work, believe me it wasn't, and as I explained below I gave her some hints on how to make that a lot harder than it was last night. I figure that if by Monday this hasn't been resolved to everybody's satisfaction that it could get really ugly with losers all around, and EJ who has already lost more than anybody should go through still stands to lose the most. Once lawyers get involved all bets are off. If you don't trust Paul to be objective when given the opportunity then that's your call.
    - sunchild 15y ago
      The nagging issue for me is the extremely unusual eloquence of the victim. I wanted to believe this was just another online echo-chamber shit-show until I read her blog posts and found EJ to be a level-headed, articulate and eminently reasonable person. EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. It's one thing for AirBnB to say "hey, buyer beware – you know the risks". (In fact, that's a perfectly valid response, albeit not a great business move.) But it's an entirely different thing to dispute the victim's story. Now we're in a situation where someone is not telling the truth. On one side, you have a group of people with a lot of money and time invested into a business. On the other side, you have an extremely sympathetic victim of a crime. And somewhere in the middle is the fact that these kinds of unfortunate eventualities should have been obvious to both AirBnB and to their users.
      - jacquesm 15y ago
        I think the big issue is whether or not AirBNB offered assistance or not and if they did if it was unconditional. If it turns out they attached a bunch of conditions to their offer (for instance: you have to remove your blog posts or you have to write something positive) then they might as well not have made these 'offers'. An offer of help should be unconditional. And from EJs point of view being muzzled would obviously be unacceptable. That's pure speculation on my part, but it is one interpretation that would be consistent with what everybody has said so far with nobody having told a falsehood.
      - kenjackson 15y ago
        EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. I don't think that's factually correct. I believe she says communication stopped after the 30th of June. pg says this, "I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff, and do whatever else she wanted." I suspect they may have said that on June 30th. And then they went dark. It seems no one at AirBnB has actually said they made contact with EJ during the month of July at all, until the night before her second blog post on this incident. To me it sounds like it may not have been malicious on AirBnBs part, but rather a dropped ball. Someone probably had tons of other work on their plate and didn't follow-up with her. After a week forget about it. Until her first blog entry went up...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mirkules 15y ago
  I agree with you, and I also think the reason it's been out of the mainstream media is because of lack of pictures. It's much more powerful to say (on the 10 o'clock news): "look what they did", instead of "let me describe to you what they did"

jacquesm 15y ago

> Are we putting her on trial on HN? Obviously not, maybe you should re-read that sentence in context. Pictures of the extent of the damage would go a long way towards explaining why she feels the way she does in a way that words will never be able to.

jcunningham 15y ago
Actually I think her words have done an excellent job of explaining why she feels the way she does and I don't want anyone else invading her privacy any more than it already has been violated. For that matter, I think you've got some nerve tracking her down, handing her contact details over to an Airbnb investor and claiming to be helping her to find an objective independent mediator.
- jacquesm 15y ago
  Paul is not just 'some AirBNB investor', if you want to picture it that way, sure go ahead. AirBNB has - in my opinion - been doing the very wrong thing here for much too long and this will blow up at some point if something isn't done pronto. Tracking her down sounds like it was real work, believe me it wasn't, and as I explained below I gave her some hints on how to make that a lot harder than it was last night. I figure that if by Monday this hasn't been resolved to everybody's satisfaction that it could get really ugly with losers all around, and EJ who has already lost more than anybody should go through still stands to lose the most. Once lawyers get involved all bets are off. If you don't trust Paul to be objective when given the opportunity then that's your call.
  - sunchild 15y ago
    The nagging issue for me is the extremely unusual eloquence of the victim. I wanted to believe this was just another online echo-chamber shit-show until I read her blog posts and found EJ to be a level-headed, articulate and eminently reasonable person. EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. It's one thing for AirBnB to say "hey, buyer beware – you know the risks". (In fact, that's a perfectly valid response, albeit not a great business move.) But it's an entirely different thing to dispute the victim's story. Now we're in a situation where someone is not telling the truth. On one side, you have a group of people with a lot of money and time invested into a business. On the other side, you have an extremely sympathetic victim of a crime. And somewhere in the middle is the fact that these kinds of unfortunate eventualities should have been obvious to both AirBnB and to their users.
    - jacquesm 15y ago
      I think the big issue is whether or not AirBNB offered assistance or not and if they did if it was unconditional. If it turns out they attached a bunch of conditions to their offer (for instance: you have to remove your blog posts or you have to write something positive) then they might as well not have made these 'offers'. An offer of help should be unconditional. And from EJs point of view being muzzled would obviously be unacceptable. That's pure speculation on my part, but it is one interpretation that would be consistent with what everybody has said so far with nobody having told a falsehood.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch. I don't think that's factually correct. I believe she says communication stopped after the 30th of June. pg says this, "I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff, and do whatever else she wanted." I suspect they may have said that on June 30th. And then they went dark. It seems no one at AirBnB has actually said they made contact with EJ during the month of July at all, until the night before her second blog post on this incident. To me it sounds like it may not have been malicious on AirBnBs part, but rather a dropped ball. Someone probably had tons of other work on their plate and didn't follow-up with her. After a week forget about it. Until her first blog entry went up...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mirkules 15y ago
I agree with you, and I also think the reason it's been out of the mainstream media is because of lack of pictures. It's much more powerful to say (on the 10 o'clock news): "look what they did", instead of "let me describe to you what they did"