"Airbnb has a $50,000 guarantee that will cover loss or damages caused by guests"

Are they talking about the $1MM host guarantee? https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee

If so, they could use some fact checking.

I am very curious to know how often and how smoothly claims for damages happen with AirBnB. I admit I was very lazy on this front and I did not verify if AirBnB discloses the number of claims filed versus paid or the amounts or at least the average amount of claims.

As far as the "leveraging of under monetized assets/sharing economy" goes I think this type of transparency would be very important to the asset owners - so really in a sense I would be surprised if this information was not disclosed but I would equally be surprised if it was disclosed...is that a paradox or what.

Useful only as a "worst-case" fearmongering. Any service/system with a substantial number of users is going to have horror stories. You can find horror stories, for example, of bedbugs and foul rooms for every major hotel chain with a quick search.

Of course, being cautious about who you let in your home should be common sense. You can't trust an automated website to do anything more than make the connection.

5 horror stories in what, thousands and thousands of transactions? I personally don't see that as a bad thing, because it's obvious these types of things are the exceptions and not the rule. I'm also sure AirBnB did a great job with "fixing these things" for those people who had ruined experiences, because they are known for having fantastic customer service.

"5 horror stories in what, thousands and thousands of transactions?"

No 5 horrors stories that rose to the level of being interesting enough to make a good newspaper story. There is most certainly a higher number of fail transactions, the exact number of course is the question which we don't know the answer to.

Did the hosts of these properties do any vetting of these burglars, meth addicts or prostitutes they allowed into their home?

It's not surprising that some unfortunate incidents have happened with Airbnb now that it has become mainstream. Hosts should definitely take precautions, but these 5 cases should be viewed in the context of the 5+ million stays that have been positive (https://www.airbnb.com/global-growth).

Four of these stories are from 2011, and one is from 2012 ... but also seems somewhat innocuous: As long as there isn't other damage, I'm not sure how having sex in an AirBnB apartment is that big a deal, unless there are potential liability issues.

Given this, I'd think that AirBnB has fixed the issues it had in 2011, and is killing it.

Seems like the site is being DDos'd, or has just coincidentally gone down at the same time this hits the front page.

The horror stories are not half as interesting as I thought they'd be.