I'm not sure who you think is willingly giving up their rights.
Well John, I hate to tell you that, but anybody who willingly renounces to ask his/her Guest for a deposit is actually giving up his legal right to a deposit, notwithstanding the fact that it is made forbidden by an abusive contract dictated by AirBnb.
Nobody on earth is obliged to abide by an abusive contract, John ! Time to be creative ! Haven't you heard about "business disobedience" ( don't worry.... I made up the expression myself ) as opposed to "civil disobedience" . I already played that game in France so I can explain you how you can play it. It worked fine for me so it might work for you....
It goes as follows : as long as you follow the ToS diligently you follow the AirBnb rules of the game and you cannot find an opening. To create an opening, that is to reset the rules so that they may turn to your advantage, you have to bring AirBnb to take a decision which is bad for its reputation. For this to happen, you have to make a move that forces AirBnb to retaliate and possibly expel a locally significant group of hosts from its platform. Then you have a scoop to disclose and catch local media attention and start campaigning. This eviction might cost you and other hosts some rental revenues which you will be able to claim back in Court at a later stage ( well, since AirBnb doesnt control its listings, there are other ways to get round this problem )
This is the global strategy but how do you implement it ? Well you have to find a decent , ethical way to oblige your guest to either pay a deposit at your doormat or go find a bed elsewhere. To be respectful of your guest , you have to give him a chance to know about this deposit in advance : in your house rules let him know that you are going to charge a deposit at the time of check-in. Guest don't read house rules ? It's not your problem. It 's your guest problem and it's also AirBnb's problem...
But you can't do that on your own, otherwise your move would not get traction in the media. That's the main difficulty. Finding enough people locally to obtain maximum leverage in the local press and TV. Better have all the hosts in a small city than 50 hosts disseminated in 50 states. For AirBnb can easily expel 50 hosts from its platform throughout the States but can hardly wipe itself out from any single city. Finding the right place to start this campaign requires some experience and hindsight . In the beginning there can be just be a handful of hosts asking for deposits. When hundreds of hosts will start asking for deposits it will have become a major issue for AirBnb.....
By that time, you will have read a couple of books in consumer law and you will be able to explain to the media that, since the very beginning, AirBnb has been offering hosts a false choice with regards to security deposit, that this false choice has vitiated your consent and , given the mounting disregard for house rules by ABB guests, it is high time to review the original ABB Terms of Service , even more so since ABB is no more the home sharing app it used to be.
Anyone who downloads any app is giving up their rights to privacy and allowing their personal information to be data mined, for instance. In using apps you willingly allow yourself to be abused, and you do renounce your rights, to a very large extent.
True.
But the concept of an "informed citizen" stands proudly alongside the concept of "military intelligence" as one of the truly great historical oxymorons in the history of language: especially as the Information Age turns into the Age of Disinformation.
LOL
From what's been written lately on this thread, my earlier understanding, as stated, seems to be correct: in the US the Airbnb terms of service have withstood legal challenges to their arbitration clause and to class actions.
To wit, neither a guest nor a host can sue Airbnb individually nor engage in a class action lawsuit against them: they must go to arbitration, which as I stated and with which Susan concurred and provided supporting stats, is not often in the plaintiff's favor.
That is the situation at this point in time: their US terms of service have legal standing, and all legal challenges to them have been unsuccessful.
I haven't read the cases put forward by Susan yet . But I'm not impressed. Sometimes in order to reach Goal A , you have to ask judges to settle on Goal B. And when you get a favorable decision on Goal B, you can play round Goal A. Legal action is like playing chess. In the begining you can play a variety of different games , but as the game proceeds you have to revise your whole scheme in order to take advantage of the mistakes of your opponent.
All I can tell you is : INDIVIDUAL LEGAL ACTIONS have an interest per se but they rarely move the lines, unless the decision is applicable to everybody else. If you haven't worked out a strategy encompassing legal action on the one side , business disobedience and public campaigning on the other side, you are missing the main purpose of the exercice which is to demonstrate that the situation is not only bad for you, but is also bad for hundreds of thousands of hosts.
And it is my opinion that the mentioned pending legislation, challenging their TOS, and on its way to the Senate, has no chance of passing in this political climate.
However, I'm aware of rumors that some claims, taken to local small-claims courts, against Airbnb have been successful, and I would like to hear more about that approach.
The largest consumers advocacy groups probably have permanent subscriptions to Lexis Nexis ( a world wide database which records all court decisions; Lexis probably records also decisions by small claims court but I would guess that would be only in recent years with the advent of Big Data ) so all you have to do is to enter "AIrBnb " in the search engine and you will have the whole story at the tip of your fingers.
You don't need to go any further.
