Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB
I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question. But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days:<p>1) Company: Doesn&#x27;t like dealing with problem users&#x2F;clients.<p>2) Company institutes policy saying that they can do whatever they want with no explanation. This makes it more efficient to handle the problem users.<p>3) Sanctioned users are now more frustrated than before because they aren&#x27;t even given any explanation of what happened.<p>4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention).<p>5) Company: Is happy because there is still an informal workaround for dealing with sufficiently motivated users or weird cases.<p>6) Users: Are left more powerless and potentially frustrated than when they had more sane tech support channels, but the company doesn&#x27;t have to care about this.<p>This seems really suboptimal and the OP&#x27;s comments on power imbalances seem on target. [edit: formatting, wording.]