Airbnb to Verify All 7 Million Listings

Suzanne302
Level 10
Wilmington, NC

Airbnb to Verify All 7 Million Listings

In case you missed it:

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/airbnb-verify-million-properties-improve-trust-66800644

 

This is great and something that should have been a no-brainer. Plenty of bad listings out there. But it still seems to be vilifying the hosts when the biggest need is to address bad GUEST behavior.

 

Thoughts?

102 Replies 102

I'd imagine the order in which the new measures were heralded, tells us all we need to know about that, @Sarah977. Besides, investors would be far more discombobulated by rumours of rampant fraudulent activity on the site, than they would about a few dead kids at out-of-control parties, that can be blamed on the hosts anyway. 

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

So let's take a little look at the rather chequered history of the third-party outfit, to whom Airbnb has already entrusted the verification of millions of IDs (at a reported $2 a pop, on top of gigantic set-up fee) over the past 6 years...

 

Since early 2013, Airbnb has outsourced offline ID verification to a controversial start-up called Jumio, which later filed for bankruptcy in 2016, following the ousting of founder and CEO Daniel Mattes, amid allegations of financial irregularities. (Prior to starting Jumio, Mattes had also been sued by a former business partner for alleged fraud)


Mattes's replacement, David Stuut, was then recruited by Jumio backer Andreesen Horowitz, one of whose partners sits on the Jumio Board of Directors. (Similarly, Andreesen Horowitz  are lead investors in Airbnb, and an AH partner also sits on the Airbnb board)

 

In response to vehement opposition from other shareholders, a $22.7 million stalking-horse bid by early investor and major shareholder Eduardo Saverin (Facebook co-founder) to buy out the company was blocked by the courts (citing "every red flag possible"), and was sold instead to private equity firm Centana Growth Partners, for just $850,000. (Saverin had resigned from the board just days before Jumio filed for bankruptcy, but remains heavily involved in the rebuilding of Jumio Corp., as its now known)

 

Saverin and other company executives were later sued by another shareholder, Bloso Investments, who accused them of having "grossly mismanaged" the firm and driving it into bankruptcy, and said they'd been running Jumio without proper financial and accounting controls for years.


And apart from the company that Airbnb continues to trust in processing and storing our most sensitive personal information, having a rather tarnished reputation itself, Jumio's competence in performing satisfactory and reliable ID verification has also been called into serious doubt on many occasions.

 

The following is a review by an Australian company that signed up for Jumio's identity verification services, but found them sorely lacking

https://www.reddit.com/r/ReviewTechUSA/comments/4go0ph/jumio_review_flawed_product_and_unethical_com...

 

In April of this year, Daniel Mattes was ordered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, to pay $17 million to settle fraud charges relating to his time as CEO of the company. Jumio's CFO also agreed to pay $421000 to settle charges. 

 

Despite all that, Jumio Corp still managed to attract new investment ($55.4 million to date, and continues to rapidly scale in a $20 billion industry, most recently joining forces with FaceTec, to launch Jumio Go, a fully-automated biometric identity verification technology (hence the inclusion of selfies now as proof of identity)

 

User complaints about Jumio Corp's product, such as false positive results, two different results from the same ID, fraudulent submissions not being picked up, and temperamental technology still abound in 2019 however, as evidenced by a multitude of threads on this forum and others, decrying the deficiencies and difficulties in user experience. 

 

But hey.. it's all about "trust", isn't it? 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Susan17  Oh, I do trust them. I trust them to be non-transparent, misleading, heartless, calculated, and to screw up almost everything they touch.

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

As for the new and exciting 24-hour Neighbour Snitchline - since early 2016, Airbnb has already had a tool to deal with neighbour complaints. . 

 

"Holiday home company Airbnb has launched a new feature allowing neighbours to report noisy renters, criminal acts or loud parties at its properties.

The new complaint section of the website allows people to flag up disturbances at any of its listed homes, with persistent troublemakers potentially being removed from the site"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/airbnb-launches-feature-to-allow-neighbours-to-report-noisy-r...

 

Clearly that hasn't worked very well. Why should we imagine that the new 24/7 Snitchline will be any more effective, (apart from in having good, responsible hosts delisted because of neighbours with an anti-Airbnb grievance, of course), than the current long-standing Neighbour Complaint Tool? 

Screenshot_20191111-003915.png

 

Screenshot_20191111-003923.png

 

@Susan17 Well, at least Airbnb engages in recycling! Because that is all that came out of the (now infamous) '10 Day Sprint' following the Airbnb Orinda Murders due to 'bad actor' guests: Recycled garbage.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Susan17  Well, that feature that already existed would have been entirely useless (as calculatedly planned, no doubt). As if neighbors are going to try to navigate Airbnb's impossibly user-unfriendly site, where even experienced hosts have trouble finding where they've hidden things, and what would be the point of reporting a rager party that is actively happening on the friggin' website? And I assume that neighbors would have to spend time setting up an account to even be able to access that complaint section.

 

"Thank you for your feedback. Airbnb takes all reports seriously and we assure you we will be following up on this. Have a great day!"

 

While the party goers are vomiting and driving their cars over the neighbor's lawn.

 

Which is certainly not to say I approve of the snitch line, if it means hosts are going to be summarily delisted.

@Sarah977 

The neighbour below actually did call Airbnb, rather than avail of the online grievance procedure. Didn't get her very far though.. 

 

And given the huge difficulties that many hosts have in a) even locating Airbnb's regular CX line, and b) the already abysmal quality of Airbnb's existing phone support services, I wouldn't hold out to much hope that the Rapid Response Snitchline will be any more efficient (or quicker!) than the current complaint system.. 

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

And even though Airbnb already has the means for neighbours to report problem listings in place, the following exchange between a fed-up neighbour whose life is being made a misery by partying and anti-social Airbnb guests, and Airbnb CX, took place a mere 7 days before the Orinda tragedies... makes it crystal clear what Airbnb's approach is even where there is a valid, action-worthy complaint...

Screenshot_20191111-004906.png

 

Screenshot_20191111-004916.png

 

Susan17
Level 10
Dublin, Ireland

Forbes - Is Airbnb's Overhaul A Turning Point For Platform Responsibility?

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2019/11/09/is-airbnbs-overhaul-a-turning-point-for-platform...

 

***(When asked for comment, Airbnb would not provide direct answers to questions about how their verification procedures work and why they waited so long to make changes.)

Mike1034
Level 10
Mountain View, CA

What Airbnb needs to do is NOT to verify listings. What they need to do is to verify hosts profile instead. 

 

Scamming listings are posted by the scammers. Scammers can post not only one listing. They normally post several listings. If Airbnb does not verify host profiles, they will not be able to get rid of scamming listings. When they eliminate one scammer, all listings from the scammer will be eliminated.

@Mike1034 Good point. It is scary easy to sign up as a host. There are practically zero barriers other than having access to the internet and an email address. A few clicks, and boom, you are open for business!

 

I would support making it more difficult to become a host. One, it might dissuade those hosts who don't really take it seriously. And, hopefully, it would help reduce the number of scam listings.

 

But also, as @Sarah977 has said, I too, wonder what the number of scam listings actually is versus the number of deceptive guests. I do think at this point, bad guests are the bigger problem.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

It's astounding that they can come up with all sorts of algorithms to punish hosts and bury our listings, but seemingly don't have any algorithms which detect 29 duplicate listings.

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Help/Duplication-of-listing/td-p/1179392

Marc-and-MJ0
Level 2
Richmond, Australia

great in theory, it will be interesting to see how they implement it.

 

Marc & MJ
Short Stay Property Management - Melbourne, Australia

www sspm com au