Airbnb took my cash in advance, before they had verified me. They asked for everything under the sun. The video part of the verification took me longer to get, and by then my first “request” had been cancelled “for lack of verification.” The nerve! Once I was finally verified I re-posted my second request for the same place, with another cash outlay, and this time the hostess, who took a whole day to respond, said no, her place was not available on those dates !!! I was out $1,200 by then, and refunds would take my bank a few days. My trip prospect was then ruined. I found Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and wrote him letter saying their pirate shake-down hypocritical policy of posing as such a “trust”-based company, hides their actual nature, which is a brutal and totally unethical cash-grabbing machine from unverified customers, and cash grabbing yet again before a host has agreed to the rental. In addition, I wrote, Airbnb is committing actual fraud by taking cash repeatedly for apartments that are not even available on the dates as advertized. This is fraud, misrepresentation, cheating, stealing. You name it. This is just wrong and ruthless. Typical mega-corporate behavior. The three money-grabbing San Francisco juvenile founders of Airbnb, one of whom is worth 6 billion dollars himself, are people who are not emotionally intelligent and mature enough to have even a notion of empathy, let alone ethics. I ask you this: if you are already worth billions, why would you institute such ruthless, thieving, and hurtful policies in your company? Shouldn’t you instead be thinking about maybe helping other people with your billions? Rather than shaking down the customers who come to you in good faith? Shouldn’t your life at this point of abundance be about more than just making even more money on top of the billions you already have? I have a name for that moral bankruptcy, for that depraved greed: I call it the cash disease. These people are all brutes, they are all sick to the bone with cash disease. Their insatiable corporate rapaciousness is celebrated in Wall Street, and it is also ruining the planet and whatever may remain of the social contract. Shame on them. Really.