It depends what’s in the NDA. If AirBnB are acting honorably and correctly, there is no nead to silence me about what happened to me and how they responded.
About the furthest I would >personally< go is agreeing not to disclose the exact amount of compensation. That’s a fairly normal term, and the usual reason is to prevent scammers from being enticed into fraudulent claims of damages, or for others to use my settlement as a baseline for negotiations.
Other than that, asking me not to talk about something that actually happened is wrong. If they do A and B and C in the negotiating room, well, they ought to stand behind my talking about A and B and C, at least in general terms.
Trying to “buy my silence” would raise my hackles, and I would immediately presume that they were an untrustworthy organization that prefers guile and miscommunication to honest dealing.
>JM2C, it’s a matter of personal conscience to decide what to accept or refuse. But it’s also a matter of public perception. If I read that they settled with her and she agreed as a term of the settlement not to talk about it... I would make certain inferences about AirBnB. Of course, this has not happened so we are speaking only of a hypothetical situation.<
Same here; if I were in such a predicament I don't think there's any amount that would justify signing a NDA.
I'm wondering if this is what happened? As the story stands, one side is clearly not telling the truth, or withholding a part of it.
What could have happened could have been, Airbnb offered compensation + NDA, victim said she wouldn't sign it. Back and forth a few times, and in the end she went ahead with her blog post. Seeing this, Airbnb stopped all communications.
If this is actually what happened, they should have offered compensation anyway, no strings attached.
It'll be very interesting to know the real details; I don't understand how they could let this blow out of proportion like this.
Would work OK if she took it, but only until it happens the next time. AirBNB cannot afford to make 'pay them to shut up' a policy.
And if she took the moral highground, it would look very bad indeed. And the money could not replace the stolen personal items, which makes her accepting "take this cash and shut up about it" less likely.
Are you sure about that? I imagine it depends on how often it occurs, and what kind of liability insurance they can arrange. Since they claim to have over 2 million uses of their system, and this is the first case we're hearing about, I'd suggest that it may in fact be the case that they cannot afford not to have a 'pay them to shut up' policy.
If what you do doesn't make them happy, you've got bigger problems.
They should have brought her in, given her a heartfelt apology from the executive team, and paid her a large lump sum. In return she would sign a NDA.