AirBnB is one of the poster children for the “collaborative consumption” model of internet businesses where people can put their spare resources, in this case rooms, out into the marketplace.
Like most web based businesses though the customer service is poor and the proprietors try to push responsibility for the platform’s use back onto the site’s users.
A good example of this is an article this week in the New York Times where AirBnB hosts risk fines and eviction for breaching their leases or local accommodation laws.
When Nigel Warren rented out his New York apartment while he was out of town, he returned to find he was facing eviction and up to $40,000 in fines. Fortunately he avoided both but AirBnB did little to help him except to point him in the direction of the terms and conditions which required him to obey all local laws.
The New York Times asked AirBnB for comment and received corporate platitudes about how their service helps struggling home owners but no real response to the risks of falling foul to local government, landlords, building owners or insurance problems by sub-letting their residences.
Failing the customer service test is not just AirBnB’s problem, Vlad Gurovich was scammed by a buyer on eBay and now he finds PayPal is chasing him for outstanding money.
This is a pretty typical problem for PayPal and eBay customers – as Vlad has found, the various seller protections often prove to be useless when dispute resolution favours scammersand PayPal’s philosophy of shutting down accounts unilaterally and without appeal exposes sellers to substantial risks.
Interestingly, PayPal’s president David Marcus claimed earlier this year that he was trying to change this culture within the company. It seems that’s not going well.
PayPal, eBay and AirBnB are alone in this of Soviet customer support model – Amazon, Google and most web2.0 businesses have this culture.
In many ways it’s understandable as dealing with customers is hard. In the view of the modern business world, cutting deals is glamorous while looking after customers is a grubby, low level task that should be outsourced whenever possible.
Pushing the risks onto users also makes sense from a business perspective, that makes the billion dollar valuations of these services look even better.
For the founders of these services, none of this is a problem. By the time the true costs and risks are understood, the founders have made their exit and the greater fools who bought the businesses have to deal with the mess.
While the greater fools can afford to carry the costs, the real concern is for users who may found themselves out of money and out of a place to live.
That’s why the founders of these businesses need to be called to account for their ethical lapses.