The Sharing Economy Can Discipline Itself

The Sharing Economy Can Discipline Itself

I recently had a good experience with customer service in the sharing economy. The incident that the company remedied shows the difficulty of addressing what might be bias. I have no complaint about how they handled it. Yet I am compelled to point out the power of the trivial.

Here is the story, described as neutrally as possible. I rented a unit through Air BnB. I have done that before, many times. My profile covers everything (wife, job, hobbies). My ratings are uniformly high.

A few days before the planned stay, however, the host contacted me to cancel. She initially reconfirmed the dates and the times. That isn’t unusual. As a guest, I have done that too, even though you could read through the thread of messages to look at what was agreed upon. It all seemed fine. But then she suddenly said the unit would not be available.

I wanted to be easygoing, so I texted back no worries. I was confident I could locate another place. As kids say, no big deal.

Her reply was not what I expected. She requested that I cancel on my end so she could avoid any penalty on her record. That is neither right nor normal.

I reported her nervy suggestion through the app. I was surprised that I received a response before an hour had passed. I surmised that the representative could see all our conversation. He must have been able to. I had screenshots. He didn’t ask for them. He presumably had all the information he needed. (As an aside, I was grateful for his ability to look at the record, because it saved me the hassle of proof, though I could easily enough submit evidence that my representations were accurate. It does mean nothing is invisible.)

He apologized. He issued a $250 credit. I was more than satisfied. I wrote back with praise.

That was not the end of the matter though. I am not sure what the host was thinking. Since I needed a place in her exact neighborhood for those dates, and she had broken off our arrangement, I ran a search with those parameters (intending to spend the compensation that had been given), and, within a moment of getting rid of me, the very first option that popped up was her apartment, shown as available again! I have a sense of humor. It's comic that this person who told me she couldn't accommodate me anymore was oblivious to the risk I would catch her fib.

I have to admit that ticked me off. I wrote back to the same agent who had helped me. This time he reacted in a minute. He assured me the host had violated policy and would be dealt with, but he could not divulge the details, in order to protect her privacy.

I was curious, so I checked. Her listing had disappeared, immediately.

Now the problem is I have no idea if this episode involved discrimination. It could have been a case of an acceptable decision unrelated to race — maybe the host looked with greater care at my biography, and concluded she was not eager to deal with a lawyer. Perhaps she reneged, because she didn’t like the cut of my jib (a sailing term that alludes to national identification). Possibly it was random flakiness, with no coherent explanation. I am confident it has nothing to do with any potential interactions between us. I had selected the “whole home,” which meant we likely would not have laid eyes on one another. I had said I could check in whenever was convenient. We had negotiated the particulars.

The sequence of events did not reflect favorably on her. Anybody uncomfortable with folks in their house or apartment should not be trying to make money by this means. My wife does not want to sign up for it. In my situation, the host could have rejected me at the outset, without arousing any suspicion. Or she could have cancelled on her end, citing no rationale. Both rejections and cancellations have happened to me, in this context and others, and I’ve nonchalantly proceeded with my life. Finally, if her excuse, that the timing didn’t work anymore, were true, she wouldn’t have offered to put up anyone else — strangers like me, but not me.

I want to be clear: I am not accusing the host of wrongful prejudice. I am noting that it is not worth it for me to investigate to determine the facts. I can move on. I did move on. The trouble is that if I, as well as others like me, consistently fail to invest such effort, then these individual instances will accumulate with systemic effects. It takes collective or corporate measures, which, thank goodness were applied, and that has to be a priority, organized, managed, and budgeted for. What can be dismissed in isolation is significant in aggregation. That is how disparities arise.

Furthermore, I had choices. There is competition in the marketplace. Others are not as lucky. They may have limited recourse. That’s how residential segregation, for your actual domicile, develops. Many autonomous decisions, not about race, produce a pattern that cannot but be related to race. The business model of the sharing economy confirms that what appears minimal adds up. These services are based on big data and high volume. The company takes a modest percentage of each transaction, but those bits accumulate to a decent profit.

The final dilemma I faced was whether to relate this account at all. I wondered if taking the credit obligated me to make no further fuss. My friends encouraged me. They reasoned the $250 was to maintain my loyalty rather than buy my silence.

The moral is that the sharing economy demonstrates not only how markets function but also how they fail.

This blog originally appeared at HuffPo.?

Marian Douglas-Ungaro

ROME and Washington. Welcoming project-based and multilingual virtual assignments. Writing, editing, audio, and team assignments. Let’s discuss your organisational needs.

7 年

A helluva nerve. Your point about individual instances and their basic relationship to aggregation is vital. We need to tell and share our stories! Thank you, Frank Wu!

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Anastasiia Mozgova

Project Manager & Product Owner | Marketing & Content | Project Management | Team Lead

7 年

Guys, has anyone faced the problem with removing this from your feed?

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Dave C. Kitkowski, CHEP

Environmental Safety & Emergency Preparedness Specialist / Safety Officer at SSM Health/St. Clare Hospital, Baraboo WI

7 年

In dealing's like this, I try to remember Hanlon's Razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Good on you for reporting it, and good on AirBnB for reacting swiftly and appropriately to it.

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Mehdi Daniel ZNIBER

Insights | Strategy | Operations, Airbnb Superhost, DJ, Event Promoter

7 年

A small caveat: it can happen sometimes that the listing’s availability changes for various reasons (broken bed or anything that makes it unusable) and after cancellation, the host might forget to close the nights right away. If you are taking part in the “sharing /renting economy”, you need to give people the benefit of the doubt and give them a break sometimes, don’t assume the worst right away :)

Shankar Kanthimathinatha Pillai

CTO @ SeedFlex | FinTech | Lending | Payments

7 年

What can be dismissed in isolation is significant in aggregation. That is how disparities arise. Well said! In this shared economy ecosystem, it is important to nip it in the bud. It's in a way being civic-minded too.

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