How The Hell Is This My Fault?
Everybody calm down please.<p>EJ is real, she's a real person, it really did happen, just in case anybody was still wondering about that.<p>I've passed her contact info to PG and him being the smart man that he is I'm pretty sure that he can come up with a solution that will satisfy everybody and will allow the victim to move on and get AirBNB past this crisis. Any words to the effect that AirBNB is 'setting precedent' are null and void, of course they aren't and even if they were it would not matter one bit, sometimes you just need to do the right thing, even if that hurts you financially. Sometimes lawyers are good, sometimes they muddle the water. In this case I'd advise to leave the lawyers out of it, this is an emotional train-wreck and lawyers are only going to make it worse.<p>The future can wait until <i>after</i> this has been resolved to EJs satisfaction. Customer = King. Be happy that so far the mainstream press seems to be ignoring this story, the last thing you want at this point is to leave that clock ticking to the point where they do pick it up and who knows how many more EJ stories start hitting the news.<p>Yes, this could be an isolated case, but given the numbers involved it probably isn't.<p>Whoever lied will have to come clean about it at some point, maybe PG will owe Arrington an apology, maybe not.<p>Note that 'offering help' and 'giving help' are two very different things, and PG has not said anywhere that AirBNB has given her help, just that they've been offering it from the beginning, it may have been an unconditional offer, or it may have been a conditional one with conditions unacceptable for EJ. If they did nothing tangible for the last 30 days that really is a problem, but that means that PG can still stand by his words. Whatever hang-ups that stop 'offering' turning in to 'given' need to be resolved immediately.<p>Time will tell, all that depends on <i>what really happened</i> and other than EJ and one or two people at AirBNB nobody knows, the rest is hearsay. It is very well possible that PG is acting on incomplete or wrong info. The fact that AirBNB is willing to move to keep this out of the media during a funding round may tell us a bit about their attitude towards being truthful with investors, assuming that that is true, which we can not take as read at this point.<p>As far as damage to the apartment, pictures with some proof would help (and would indicate the extent of the damage), and if the truth is to come out about the interaction with AirBNB then someone would have to dump their email cache.<p>Personally I don't think that is the best way forward (other than for EJ if she's telling the truth and wants to make that more than plain, and AirBNB turns out to have not done anything tangible other than saying they will 'support her' and have 'offered help'), what this mostly needs is to be taken care of, whether that happens in the public eye or not is not relevant.<p>I exchanged some email with the lady, EJ is right now literally scared out of her wits, concern for her safety and well being should come first, after that, when the situation has been normalized as far as possible there will be a time of reflection for everybody involved, including PG.<p>YC companies are hitting bigger home-runs each year and with that comes a need for a more professional approach to PR. When you're dealing at this level and you have this many interactions with your customers (2 million nights booked = 4 million chances for someone to be dissatisfied) there will <i>always</i> be trouble. It is unavoidable, so you have to plan for it and you plan for the worst case scenarios.<p>Luckily, there was no bodily harm in this case, the perps were gone when she returned. But that is just about the only icing on this cake, other than that there needs to be some real hard work done to set this right and to do what can be done to avoid a repetition in the future. And if there is a repetition (imo inevitable) that person should have been warned up front about the risks in an un-ambiguous way.<p>Best of luck to all involved, especially to EJ and the AirBNB team.