Home

[Annie]

Airbnb Horror Story Points to Need for Precautions




Early in the evening of July 4, Micaela Giles?s mobile phone started sounding alerts, and a series of messages straight out of a horror movie began scrolling down her screen. Her 19-year-old son told her that his Airbnb host in Madrid had locked him in the fourth-floor apartment where he was supposed to be staying and removed the key. The host was still there, he said, rattling knives around in the kitchen drawer and pressing him to submit to a sexual act. He begged his mother for help.

When she called Airbnb, its employees would not give her the address and would not call the police. Instead, they gave her a number for the Madrid police and told her to ask the police to call the company for the address. But the number led to a recording in Spanish that kept disconnecting her, she said, and when she repeatedly called back her Airbnb contact, the calls went straight to voice mail.
His host, who was born male but is living as a woman, denied Mr. Lopez?s accusations. She denied threatening him and said that the sex act was consensual and that he is transphobic. If she is right, filing a false police report and telling the story publicly would be an unlikely way to bury a regrettable experience.

But the central question here is for Airbnb: Just how much responsibility is it willing to assume for the safety of its customers? It refers to them as guests and promotes its security measures and hospitality. But its employees made a choice here that a hotel might not make in similar circumstances. Rather than sending someone to check on Mr. Lopez, Airbnb put the onus on his mother to make that happen.


........


When they arrived at her apartment and she locked them in, he said, she repeatedly tried to kiss him. He rebuffed her, and then she ordered him to take off his pants unless he wanted to sleep in the streets without his belongings, he said. As these events unfolded, he began messaging his mother, though by the time his mother realized that Airbnb would not give her his address and that she had to get it from him, he said, his host had cut off Internet access.
His host, meanwhile, began rattling around in the kitchen drawers, and Mr. Lopez said he feared that she had a weapon and concluded that the choice to leave was not a real one. After the sexual assault, it was not clear whether she would let him go, he said, and he began looking around for something that he could use to hurt her so that he could escape.
?I was telling myself that I was going to have to kill her or she was going to kill me,? he said. ?Thoughts that should never have to go through anyone?s mind started to come into mine. How are you going to live with yourself the rest of your life knowing that you killed someone? But if you don?t, then you won?t have a life.?
He chose not to try to fight his way out and eventually concocted a story about plans he?d made to meet friends nearby. Those friends knew where he was staying, he told his host, and they would come for him or call the police if he did not meet them. This scared her enough that she let him leave with his belongings.
Mr. Lopez?s description of the episode, which he gave to me in a three-hour interview at his family?s home, matches the one he gave in his police report. The Madrid police would not comment on the investigation, though his host said that they had already visited her and that she expected to be exonerated.
Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/your-money/airbnb-horror-story-points-to-need-for-precautions.html?WT.mc_id=2015-JULY-OTB-INTL_AUD_DEV-0629-0802&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&_r=0

I feel bad for the boy 

[.betterwiseup]

People are going to stop using Airbnb & Uber.

[Purple Moon]

If they didn't run all the customer service through a damn call center, this probably wouldnt happen. And now I'm scared to book Airbnb again, let alone Couchsurfing.

[Gilgamesh.]

I used Airbnb earlier this year and had no issues whatsoever. But whenever you're going abroad your at risk.

[RekeRig]

i barely like staying over with friends, let alone some unknown stranger mess.