Behind AirBnB’s stupidity is malevolence (i.e. delete your account ASAP)
A little while back, I published this article, calling out various tech companies for allowing their (mediocre) UX designers and product managers to hide behind their customer support. They have created a Kafka-esque bureaucracy to protect themselves from the abhorrent notion that they have a duty to the customer to not suck. It works something like this.
- Crappy design of product inconveniences or harms a user, pissing them off.
- Pissed-off user contacts said company asking for an explanation of why the product did what it did.
- Company deploys underpaid customer service agents to pacify the pissed-off user with a combination of vapid banter and assurances they will pass the feedback on to “our team”. This only enrages the user even more, because it confirms there is a team that somehow allowed this to happen, but because it pointedly ignores the actual request for an explanation.
- The “team” that caused the problem in the first place is sheltered from both the frank criticism from the user and the arduous task of defending their subpar work.
- User is left with no explanation, let alone a timeframe for when the problem will be resolved, likely because it will never be resolved; the “team” is too busy adding unwanted features or eating artisanal handcrafted lollipops because they are overgrown children.
And that’s if you’re lucky
When the product staff are merely incompetent, they are likely to employ the above strategy. But when the decision-makers are actually insidious, they will forgo the bubbly façade bullshit, and go straight Brazil. I stumbled on this article recently, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
The author was banned from the site under mysterious circumstances with the following message:
Dear Jackson,
We regret to inform you that we’ll be unable to support your account moving forward, and have exercised our discretion under our Terms of Service to disable your account(s). This decision is irreversible and will affect any duplicated or future accounts.
Please understand that we are not obligated to provide an explanation for the action taken against your account. Furthermore, we are not liable to you in any way with respect to disabling or canceling your account. Airbnb reserves the right to make the final determination with respect to such matters, and this decision will not be reversed.
When he wrote to them asking what this was about, this was their response:
Hi Jackson,
Please understand that we are not obligated to provide an explanation for the action taken against your account. Additionally, we consider this matter closed and will no longer reply to any inquiries regarding your account.
Holy ironic cocktails, Batman! This isn’t the veiled middle finger of “we’ll forward it to our team”. This is AirBnB whipping their dick out and waving it in this guy’s face.
What is funny is how triggered some people got when I called out AirBnB and their ilk for giving me the runaround. I knew such behavior was a sign of growing recklessness and power madness from these monopolies, and only a taste of things to come. And here I am vindicated just months later when AirBnB shows their true colors.
You should not be surprised when a company that exhibits fecklessness also exhibits malevolence. It stems from a rotten company culture with rotten decision makers. The kind of person who would allow the kind of shitty UX design that AirBnB has in spades is the same kind of person who feels no sense of accountability to their customers and treats them like playthings.

Grown adults do not act like this. Overgrown children do. The tech industry is overrun with children playing grown-up, making grown-up salaries, even at the highest corporate levels. They might fool you when things are going smoothly, but the second conflict occurs, they reveal their true selves. The aforementioned messages are just fancy worded versions of “I can do whatever I want to. It’s my ball and I’m going home.”
What do we do?
Unfortunately, we cannot spank these adult children, or send them to their rooms without supper. But we can definitely make that supper a little harder to obtain. Do not give your hard-earned money to companies that pull this crap. Delete your AirBnB account, and notify their C-levels why you are doing so. Given that they are looking to go public in their near future, mass defection might put the scare into them to start putting those corrupt decision makers in the welfare line… if they aren’t corrupt themselves, that is.
We cannot count on corporations to behave ethically of their own volition, especially if they are populated by hipster children. The effectiveness of the market is dependent upon the standards of the consumer. Don’t let this get to the point where the government has to step in, because that never ends well.
If they won’t listen to your complaints, deafen them with the silence of your absence.

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You’d fight, and you were right, but they were just too strong.
