Sunday 16 November 2014

You need 'at least 100' Facebook friends to verify yourself on Airbnb

"At the other end of the Airbnb helpline in Colorado, “Casey” sounded incredulous. “You have how many Facebook friends?” she drawled. “Er … about 50,” I replied. Long pause. “Well, you don’t have enough for us to verify you. You’d need at least 100.”
“But”, I squeaked, “I post every now and again … I’m on Facebook most days to check on my friends and relations.” This, however, was not enough to convince Airbnb I existed. And, as I didn’t exist, I could not book a room.
Helpful Casey had another suggestion: why not upload a video of myself saying why and where I wanted to book. The problem with that, I explained, was that the Airbnb link supplied was incompatible with my iPad 2. Use your smartphone, suggested Casey. I didn’t have one, said I. There was an audible intake of breath.
Have you ever been told you don’t have enough friends – and are a Luddite to boot? It’s crushing. And more to the point, I had a flight booked to Bremen in Germany, for two; I had tickets for the Glocke concert hall; but I still had nowhere to stay on the first weekend of November – that of the Freimarkt, the oldest fair in Germany – one of the busiest on the Bremen calendar.
Earlier that week I had logged on to Airbnb for the first time in search of a room for two. I found one (with “Sabine”) that ticked the boxes, filled in my credit card details, and booked … or so I thought. Back bounced an email saying that I was not acceptable to Sabine, and my money had been returned. So I tried to book with “Harald”. The same thing happened. “Viktoria” (“Nice room, near park”) rejected me, too.
I’m a middle-aged mum of two, I’m a school governor, I have an impeccable credit record. But I couldn’t book a B&B. Not when I didn’t have enough “friends”."

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