How decentralised apps would have saved me a lot of troubles in Colombia
I am currently visiting the beautiful country of Colombia with my wife and we are truly amazed: people are so friendly, landscape is stunning and you’ll easily find a wi-fi or you can get your own mobile data for one or two bucks.
Nevertheless we’re experiencing some minor troubles that however could have turned into a much bigger ones.
Your account has been deleted.
On the fifth day of our stay we woke up in Minca, a village not far from Santa Marta surrounded by mountain jungle, rivers and waterfalls, with an email from airbnb: I had to fill a form for some security check.
I then diligently uploaded a picture of my passport and a selfie as required hoping that I would not have any further issue since most of our accommodation were booked through their website, which was by then temporary locked for me.
Unfortunately I still received what looked like a template email informing me that my account had been permanently deactivated, that I could not present any claim and that they do not have to provide any specific reason according to the terms and conditions of their service.
I was out.
It was a generic “response@airbnb.com” email so I assumed I would not be able to reply and the “help” section of their website was not anymore accessible for me since you need to log in to your account first.
I took the only option left available for me, I wrote them on facebook / twitter explaining the situation.
At first they replied saying that they have the right to do it and linked me to their terms and conditions page.
It took two more messages, in which I declared how much I love the company ( I do! ) before they considered to check in it again and eventually unlock my account.
Aside from the fact that I personally consider airbnb a great company and I’m a happy customer since many years now, the whole experience was very unpleasant.
I might had to change all my plans. Most of the proprieties were not reachable outside the platform.
It was hard to reach any customer service despite the decision was arbitrary and unjust and they were acting like a little player without acknowledging the fact that they basically own the bed and breakfast market right now.
This would not have happened in a fully decentralised platform with a fully decentralised governance.
No-one could take arbitrary decision alone or delete your account or your wallet in the blockchain.
This is why at dexlab.io we want to be part of the decentralised future building more transparent, secure and independent services.
During this two days of airbnb-panic a friend reached out sending few alternatives where you can rent a place and pay in crypto. Here’s one I liked:
Sorry, we accept only cash.
We luckily managed to sort out our accommodation issue and we reached the beautiful beaches of Palomino, a kind of yoga-organic-food paradise in the caribbean area of Colombia.
Despite the fact that the place is packed with European and North American tourists, it’s extremely difficult to pay with credit card in most of the hostels, bars, restaurants and even less in little shops, moto-taxi, fruit tiendas.
My guess is that fees for accepting payment with credit cards are not worth the benefit and locals need to use cash anyway so it’s easier to keep things old fashioned.
Well whatever, I will withdraw and carry a bit more cash with myself, I anyway found the country mostly pretty safe so far.
Oops. There’s no atm in Palomino.
Yeah, in the raw-food paleo caribbean heaven for tourist you cannot pay with credit card and doesn’t have a single atm. Oh, my.
At the gas station I approached an underaged, unlicensed kid with a motorbike and negotiated a price to bring me to the next village, 20km away, where there will surely be a bank with an atm outside.
After like 30 min ride without helmet avoiding bad behaved drivers we finally reached the destination only to discover that the atm already finished the money on Monday morning. Bad.
The next atm is about 10 min ride away, right on the motorway and I could already see the line from a distance.
I took another 30 min under a cooking sun and several attempts after, me and locals alike decided to give up since the machine was not responding (probably because to the heat and the continuous usage). WTF
We luckily had enough cash to still get to Santa Marta (about 2h and 3$ with public bus), get out on a shopping mall righ outside the city and withdraw enough cash for the next week or so.
This was very unpleasant. Aside from the fact that it’s not safe going around with so much cash, I had to spend half a day just to sort a very basic issue that should not exist on the first place.
Colombia is in fact incredibly well served with internet connection even in remote areas. It might not be the fastest in the world but it makes what it is supposed to.
Everyone, old, kids, poor, white, black and indio alike posses a smartphone and spend a lot of time staring at it.
One more time, decentralised services could be a solution.
People could send and receive money in a more secure, faster and cheaper way than they do right now using traditional banking.
Moreover, people would not need to carry so much cash. All it would need is a smartphone with a wallet to send and receive payments. It would be free to open, it would have way cheaper fees and there would be already the infrastructure to run and use it.
Again that’s our mission: make the decentralised future accessible to everyone.
Build better experiences and services that people can truly enjoy.
