Monday Airbnb Host Update: May 4, 2020

Hey, it's Enrico Schaefer. Today's Monday update. As promised, I'm going to try and keep you all informed of what's going on and to do so in a way that allows me to, to handle the volume of hosts who have contacted us and who we are representing in, in So obviously there's a lot that's happened over the last week, and I can't possibly capture all the stories that I've heard from hosts about how this has affected them and their families and their businesses, but also how they, they feel that what Airbnb did was, was both a breach of the terms of the agreement as well as wrong. Unfair. So, let's just kind of go through some things that, that have really highlighted the last week. I want to recap that our principles of involvement, our mission in this, in this matter is the same. We're doing so based on some principles. We've added some since last week. The first is transparency. We have committed to you to be transparent about who we are, what we're doing, what our motivations are. And as you're about to see today, we're going to start sharing our arguments. Uh, with the community and with other attorneys. Rising tide lifts all boats. If there are other attorneys out there that want to bring these claims, then my interest is to share our expertise, the substantial amount of work that we've already got into this, so that they can help their Airbnb host clients. So transparency and rising tide lifts all boats go together, and we're committed to those principles. All right, before we go on, I thought, hey, look at transparency, right? So let me show you where I live in the summers. It's called Glen Arbor, Michigan, and was voted one of the most beautiful places in America in like, I don't know, 2014 by Good Morning America. Hey, that means something. But here's the deal, like I have this great Airbnb property that is in the middle of paradise. And it's spring, so our summer season hasn't come yet, but you can see, you know, we live in this incredible place right by the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, right? So this, uh, this is, this is one of the sunsets and out into the islands, North and South Manitou, um, where I actually have one of my best friends is, is buried at the lighthouse out there. Um, we have Lake Michigan, which is like Caribbean blue, beautiful pure water. It's like an ocean except it's fresh water, and you know, it's, it's just incredible. Um, we are so lucky to be by a national park, uh, that drives a lot of the tourism in our area. It really just spectacular views, uh, and, and incredible. And of course, there's me and my dog Hickory. So this is where I live. This is the place that I try and bring my guests. And I've always believed that if you want to change the world, bring people into nature. It makes everyone better. It's universal. It eclipses nationality, race, religion, political affiliation. Nature is ubiquitous. So that's a little bit about me. Now back to the video. 10,000 by 10,000. If we can get 10,000 hosts to file Arbitrations, the average transactional cost to Airbnb is about $10,000 per arbitration, including the $3,000 they got to pay to the American Arbitration Association right out of the gate. So that's $100 million in costs just at 10,000 hosts, which is 0.0002% of all the hosts that are out there. So Not a big ask in terms of getting hosts to get involved, to mobilize, to, to be proactive about their rights. But more importantly, recall this is about, yes, individual actions on your claims, on your legal claims for breach of contract, but collective action is really what this is all about. Collective action in order to get the attention of Airbnb, in order to get a seat at the table for hosts. in order to help make things better moving forward. All right, here's one that I thought I would add as a principle of involvement is that we're in this for the long haul. We're taking risks with hosts, right? I've seen some comments about how only lawyers get rich if there's lawsuits. Certainly in class actions, there's a whole lot of issues that just simply don't apply here in this situation because we're filing individual arbitrations. For hosts on a contingency fee basis. That means we're risking hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in our own time, and we have to win your case in order to get paid. So, we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think that we will win your cases, and if we weren't confident about the legal issues involved. All right, so principles of involvement, we'll keep going through that each time just to remind everyone. So, what's going on? So, we've got individual claims, we've got collective action. Now, you might recall that we started out this exploring all the different aspects of collective action. How can we collectively assert rights? Terms of service say no class action. Terms of service say no collective arbitrations. That only the listings that are controlled by a host can be added to a single arbitration claim, right? So, how do we have collective action if the terms of service say we can't have collective action? Well, here's the difference. While you cannot collectively act in court or in arbitration, there's something better out there for hosts, and that's collective action outside of court. By bringing the community together, by bringing the like-minded hosts together who want to see good happen, who want change, By acting collectively, we can make things happen. Airbnb is huge. I hear this all the time. Airbnb is too big. How are we going to fight them? Airbnb is too big. We're just little hosts. Why are you biting the hand that feeds you, hosts? Why are you biting the hand that feeds you? You're just a little fish. They're huge. Airbnb hosts acting together are bigger than Airbnb. And if you don't believe me, join with what's happening here and let's prove it. Hosts are bigger than Airbnb acting collectively. So individual claims are our ticket to collective action. They're part of the leverage in order to be able to think and act collectively. So we're filing individual claims. We're filing a lot of individual claims for hosts. We're finishing our analysis. We're finishing our research on the legal claims. We're continuing to expand that research and those legal claims. We're representing property managers, platform providers, hosts, co-hosts, and others on these individual claims. We're lining up the legal and equitable arguments, and that's one thing we're going to talk about here today in our collective action, our transparency, our rising tide lifts all boats. Approach to this is we're going to share a document that is going to be a public document available to anyone in the world, including Airbnb, that lines up our legal and equitable arguments. There's nothing to hide here. There's nothing to hide. And we as the law firm won't hide it— our intellectual property, our work, our sweat equity. We won't hide it from the world. We want it to be out there for hosts so they can understand their legal rights. So hosts can work together collectively to accumulate their best arguments on what was legal and what was fair under the terms of service. Okay, what about all the people who are doing stories out there, right? The publishers and the writers and the journalists. By accumulating our information, we empower The messaging that we want to see occur. So let's dive into collective action. How do we share our stories and inspire change? Let's think about that. So right now we're figuring out how the best way to share our stories. One of the things we want to do in arbitration is have our best arguments coming from the hosts and from the experts that we're identifying within the community of home sharing. short-term rentals, Airbnb-type platforms, getting those experts lined up so that every host can use those videos to submit to the arbitrators. Remember, we're using the arbitration provisions against Airbnb, and some of the real amazing gifts in the terms of service are that the arbitrator can do whatever they want. There are no rules of evidence. Anything could be submitted and considered by the arbitrator. So we can submit videos of hosts telling their stories, of experts saying how things did work, how things should have worked, the history of the cancellation policy for Airbnb, these types of things. So we need to figure out how to gather that up and then put it into our systems to get it identified, edited, and culled down to the best of the best. We're gathering evidence, same thing. We've got all these hosts with screenshots and spreadsheets, and because we represent so many hosts, all that information is going to be coming into us on an individual arbitration basis, but we want to gather collective evidence as well, and so we're building that out. There'll be more about that in the future. All right, here's what I was telling you about. Google Doc, which can be used for press stories, collaborate ideas, identify legal and fairness arguments. And here's something no other law firm in the world would ever do, which when you get to know me, you'll start to realize that we are a law firm that has broken the mold for over 15 years, that our track record of doing things different is unprecedented, and we will continue to do that in this case. So here is a Google Doc that we are going to be sharing and continuing to edit. Obviously. And so the link to this document is here. We're asking you to go to this document and to share it with other hosts. So it's going to be a document that's publicly available on the internet to anyone who's got the link. Your comments, your additions will be anonymous, but hey, there's IP addresses back there. So yes, we're keeping all this anonymous. No, your name's not going to show up on this document unless you want it to. It'll show as anonymous. That is going to be very important. You'll be able to delete, modify your comments, whatever it is you want to do, but you should assume that someone might be able to get the IP address and track that back to you someday. So only post here what you're willing to stand behind, okay? Public document. Our goal is to identify the best legal and equitable fairness document. Arguments that are out there in this document. And the reason why we're doing this is because I keep hearing all these stories and all these nuances from hosts as I talk to them, as I continue my listening tour, and it's gold. Like, I, I'm a host with one property. I'm one little dot. Understanding what other hosts understand, their experience and expertise expertise with the platform and Airbnb has been critical. We need to find a way to share that. So here's the deal. You can go to this document and I'm going to add it to the video, but you can go to this document and you can click on this link and then you could start to add your information here. If you are a Google user and you want to remain anonymous, I think it will continue, it will do that, but you should check that out and make sure that as it lists you and lists the change that it's not identifying you if you don't want your name attached to it. All right, if you want to contact our firm, our form is here. So as this gets shared, other people can make contact with us if they need to understand their legal rights or provide information. All right, 2 sections: legal arguments and fairness documents— arguments. These are called equitable arguments, which would be really important to the arbitrator. What was unfair about what Airbnb did? So I'll invite you to to review this document. We continue to add the legal arguments. These are really good because you see people out there on Facebook or whatever saying, hey, read the terms of service. You know, you have no rights. Airbnb can do whatever they want. Not true. Not true. Whether or not terms of service, a particular clause is enforceable, is a question for the arbitrator. And to the extent a clause is unreasonable or illusory, that clause can be stricken. Clickwrap agreements are notorious for having their terms rewritten by arbitrators and by judges because they're unfair. To the extent the terms of service are inconsistent with the marketing language on the website or other more public information, then typically the terms of service are struck, the more public information controls. And we've done class actions on this very issue. on terms of service. So extenuating circumstances policy says this, terms of service say something a little bit broader, but everyone's relying on the extenuating circumstances policy. It's a great argument that that's what really controls. And in fact, Airbnb has never relied on its terms of service. It's only relied on its extenuating circumstances policy. So review these legal arguments, add to them. Even though you're not a lawyer, we'll edit, we'll continue to reorganize the document and add them here by simply adding. Fairness arguments. If there are things that you're not sure are really legal, but they're unfair about what happened, then add them here. All right, so this is going to be an interesting collaboration. We'll see if this can expand over time. Just like crowdfunding, we're not worried about how many people contribute right away. We're in this for the long haul. These are things that will build momentum over time if they're of value, which we think they are. All right, so let's go ahead and jumpstart our collective action with this Google Doc, and we'll go from there. All right, we could use your help. As always, we're out there working every day for hosts, trying to, trying to get everything lined up. Any contribution to the GoFundMe page, even if it's If it's $10 or $5 or $10 or $15 or $20 or $100, whatever it is, contribute. That'll really help us to expand the things that we need to do. So the GoFundMe effort really hasn't been launched yet. We haven't done any press release on it because we've been trying to figure out what's the best use of those funds. Right now, those funds are being dedicated to pay for some of the general research that needs to get done. And to identify experts to do some of the collaborative efforts that we've identified here in terms of video editing and some of these other things that are going to have to be staffed in order to do the things that we need to do as a group to win. All right? So go ahead and add to that if you can. If you like what we're doing, let us know. We love feedback. I mean, it makes me feel great when I get these messages from hosts that say, Really appreciate what you're doing, fighting back the commenters online who just see us as greedy attorneys, which, you know, sticks and stones, whatever. That's not who we are. That's not who I am. It's in fact the opposite of my entire life story. So, right. Let's inspire other hosts, co-host owners, property managers, channel managers, platforms to act. All right? And if you need that link to the GoFundMe page, it is here, and that will also be part of this video. So that's the update for Monday. If you want to get your arbitration in early, let us know. The volume is starting to really pick up on arbitrations. We're working on this platform that will enable arbitrators with smaller claims to self-help their way through the arbitration system. If you have claims that are higher, obviously we're looking at doing those on a contingency fee basis. Contact us either way. I don't care how big your claim is. Get in our system so that we can keep you up to date. Share with the people that you know who are in the community so that they can start to follow along. There's no commitment in putting your name into our system. We will simply Send you the emails and help you understand what's going on, and you can decide later. So if anyone's wondering what happens when you fill out one of our forms, you just simply end up being part of our list of people that we're going to involve and going to contact. If you are going to retain us, we'll send you a retainer agreement. You'll know it, right? But you won't ever pay us anything unless there's a written agreement to do so. All right, that's it for today. Have a great week. I know everyone's trying to put out a lot of fires and keep their businesses afloat. Keep doing what you're doing. We appreciate you, and we'll see you next time.