Did I miss something? As far as I can tell, the renter was a sex worker, who happened to forget to shut off the faucet.
This whole "nightmare" just seems to me like the homeowner is judging this girls' lifestyle, doesn't agree with it, and thinks that means that somehow "Vera" is some kind of criminal. It's actually kinda gross how slut shamey this whole thing comes across.
"that I have no idea who they are, and what they are capable of." - does getting paid to use dildo's on a camera suddenly thrust you into a realm of criminality and questionable character? HOLY SHIT, she wears high heels in a city with big hills!!! dont you know that you girls wearing high heels in SF will Stab you when your back is turned?
Is it Airbnb's responsibility to verify the identity of the person standing in front of you? Im willing to bet that none of those hotels asked for that id in advance when you made your booking, and it was the person at the physical desk asked for it when you checked in, correct?
Also, how many of those hotels asked you what you did for work?
While she omitted the fact that she did sex work, she might not actually be lying about the real estate work. It's probable that's she has at least done that a couple of times, maybe infrequently, but often enough that she can say thats what she does for work to people who she doesnt know if she can trust with the truth.
No, but it is their responsibility to help the "landlords" to the best of their ability, which includes making it very clear when a renter is not verified.
> none of those hotels asked for that id in advance
4 of them required my credit card in advance.
> how many of those hotels asked you what you did for work?
None, because it would be silly to use that as proxy id verification when they're already asking for my id card.
Besides, as i already said, it doesn't matter what she works, it's that she lied about it and the landlord is suddenly there with a person who not only wrecked her place, but who's also a big question mark.
It's always funny to me when people airbnb out their places and then are shocked SHOCKED to find that people rent it out to party and fuck. Like... wtf do you think people do, exactly, on vacations? That is the whole point of going on vacation.
If you don't want people fucking in your bed, on your couch, on your floor, don't rent out your place on airbnb.
What's crazy to me reading this is not that someone left the bath running. It happens, all the time. It's why you carry insurance. And yes, if you rent out your house to 3 different people at once, the odds of this happening is dramatically increased.
Typical leases provide for the owner to enter the premises in an emergency. Clauses for valid trespass I'm sure are quite different when you are sharing just a room of a house. But typically the rule is 24 hours notice, exigent circumstances prevail.
Here's where things get fuzzy. The owner terribly violated the renters privacy. Taking pictures of her bed, of her personal items, of used Kleenex and condoms holy shit, that is terribly wrong. Oh yeah, then they were posted on the Internet. That is a huge lawsuit right there. A flood, however, is certainly exigent circumstances. Owner probably has a right to enter the room to assess safety and make emergency repairs. Owner does not have any right to rifle through personal items and post pictures of it all online.
Now, most leases have clauses disallowing illegal behavior or running a business out of the space, legal or otherwise. In that case the owner can move to evict the tenant. But they cannot break into their room and post pictures of it online. And since it appears she kicked her tenant out, I assume the rental fee will be refunded.
The real point of all this is that accidents happen, and bathtubs flood. Owner did the right thing by calling a professional cleanup crew, although I would call the insurance company first. If there is no insurance policy for the owner, good god that is going to be very expensive, and I'm really sorry it happened.
But shit happens, and flooding a bathtub by accident is not illegal. Hell, it may not be even cause for eviction in some jurisdictions. What I don't get is, where is the woman while the owner is breaking into her room? Did she flee, or was she kicked out? If that happened to me I would be on the scene doing everything possible to help minimize the damage and get things away from the water. Maybe the picture was taken days later, but how could she have left all her stuff like that? I'm confused about this point.
Ultimately, Airbnb is just a trap. Hotels already have economy of scale working for them. They bother to pay for insurance to protect themselves from things like this, and have the ability to bill you directly if you cause damage.
Anyone renting out space on AirBNB and beating a hotel's price is probably either - skipping out on things like insurance (which will eventually bite them, cf this article), skipping out on quality of accommodations, or otherwise shorting /themselves/ out of what the market would pay for that space. The few exceptions are things like niche locations that are very near to a particular destination (e.g. a university) that has a predictable if low-volume draw that doesn't justify a full-scale hotel.
But the advantage of AirBnB is that it can achieve fuller utilization of properties that are seasonally used, or temporary available, etc. Also, you can rent different properties, e.g. a lakeside cabin, that you can't get from a hotel.
Running a full-time competitor for years against a hotel is not the right idea.
Yes and no. A regular renter is better UNLESS the owner wants to use the property when desired, or as in the present story, or the property will be vacant for a short amount if time.
I get that the sexual nature of the experience elevates the dissatisfaction, but that wasn't really the big deal.
Remove that and what do you have - an accident. Arguably quite careless with the phone but anyone that was verified could have made that mistake.
AirBnB could do a better job with helping to protect hosts, but bottom line - you should NOT rent your home to ANYONE without insurance. Your home should be owned by an LLC too ideally.
Airbnb could prominently feature an "unverified" notice on the site if they wanted to. They don't because, for every case like this, there are probably hundreds of unverified renters who work out just fine.
While featuring an unverified notice (and doing other background check stuff) would make the interaction between owner and renter safer, it would probably eliminate a non-trivial percentage of those "unverified but it worked" cases. And that means less profit/growth for Airbnb.
That story was a classic train wreck in slow motion. As I started reading about the tub overflow, I thought "What? Is this an over reaction to someone forgetting to turn off the faucet? Serious water damage, sure, but could happen to anyone...".
But as I kept reading, I kept reeling back further and further from the screen... That's just crazy!
Yeah, it looks like a pretty modern bathroom and tub. It certainly has an overflow drain.
Edit: Two other notes. 1) The age is irrelevant, even some Victorian-era claw foot tub would have an overflow. 2) I can imagine a scenario where the drain itself is hairclogged at the tailpiece such that it is draining slower than the tub is filling, thus potential overflow.
If you're renting out a room on Airbnb people are going to have sex in it. Or do sex-related things. If that's a problem for you then Airbnb (or any similar service) is probably not for you.
The whole suspected/fabricated sexual tangent in this post was irrelevant.
The landowner with how she describes her rigorous selection of tenants. She does not reek of naiveté or gullibility. She failed to read the extensive guides presented by the website which is working hard against human nature. She could have googled the safety/assurance tell-tale signs and how to set a set of rules as the accommodation being your house. Politeness and seriousness with a smile could have at least made her a bit less wild.
You have been the monster in this case. You literally did nit follow the delicate verification and protection rules of the website. Instead you thought judging her looks, because hey, she wears the mascara right and the shoes are gorgeous. Would you have accepted an overweight lady, clean and professional? I doubt it. You chose glamour girl, so taken, you seriously had no 30 seconds for the questions of the game.
Again, your roommates (who you did not care for their safety in case there was another bloody nut. They found her interesting? I would say that for a nice lady. She can throw my PC, let my food. Anyway, you leave and the roommates seem invested in her more than the foundation of the second floor. I am nearly sure that your roommates were cool or happy with the coffee nakedness enchantress.
Summary: You judged a book by its cover. If you hate exciting books it's on you. I am sure you had no sites since you you selected the nice lady physically and funnily you still think that hygiene is beauty. You should have expected an accident in the paid hosting world. Your pics were disgusting and demeaning. You have no right to post her pictures and anything related to her. You are a lady and I know you knew that she is a special lady the moment you met.
I hosted a couchsurfer guy. I swear to God he left because he was weirded out how I was taking a mysterious drug from the closet. I swear it was Advil. I felt disgusted to my boned. You are asking for help during winter. I do not feel comfortable but happy to help others. Reward: paranoia. I ended it because it turned to matching nights. Years ago, we roamed Europe.
My 2nd experience as a guest was with a horrid cockroach infested and moldy rental that was supposed to be a "Deluxe Executive Retreat". From that experience I learned that AirBnB really doesn't have a mechanism for dealing with issues. It's a huge PITA to get their attention let alone getting them to take any action.
Like many online services they lean towards covering up issues.
I found it fairly easy to get a live person on the phone, but nearly impossible to convince them of their error.
I booked a room. Within seconds of each other, I got a confirmation, and a message from the host saying it was not available. The host claimed it was a glitch in the system, so I cancelled. However, Airbnb kept their service fee. The customer service agent told me that the reservation system knows when a rental is unavailable, and it is impossible to double book. I responded that I had proof that that wasn't true, and invited them to read the message the host sent me. They had no interest in doing that, and said they would open a support ticket. Never heard back. It's not worth my time to chase $15.
Assuming you paid with a credit card, a simple charge-back (dispute) would've gotten you the $15 back. Credit cards - especially Amex/Discover/Visa Signature - are really good about refunding in cases like these.
OT: If/As Facebook Notes adoption because more of a place where people post (or hell, even just wall posts), would it be possible to make facebook.com one of the domains in which subdomains e.g. someguy.github.io for github.io, research.facebook.com for facebook.com...though looking at the Algolia search results, it looks like the majority of facebook.com posts are user content: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook.com&sort=byPopularity...
So renter forgot to check if the renter had been verified and had a valid credit card on file, blames airbnb for not making it even more obvious than it already is how to check verification of a potential renter.
This whole "nightmare" just seems to me like the homeowner is judging this girls' lifestyle, doesn't agree with it, and thinks that means that somehow "Vera" is some kind of criminal. It's actually kinda gross how slut shamey this whole thing comes across.
"that I have no idea who they are, and what they are capable of." - does getting paid to use dildo's on a camera suddenly thrust you into a realm of criminality and questionable character? HOLY SHIT, she wears high heels in a city with big hills!!! dont you know that you girls wearing high heels in SF will Stab you when your back is turned?
Ew. I got no sympathy for this lady.