Mr. Lerer (Photo: Lerer Ventures)

JackThreads, the members-only shopping site for sartorially savvy fellows, launched a new feature last week that may appeal to those whose shopping habits are calibrated to 1960s-era PanAm flight. The new customer service tool is called "Jill Says," and it allows members to live chat with an all-female team of customer service representatives and stylists called "The Jills."

Skeptical that the company would really hire a staff of women to coddle its shoppers in the safe space of a chat box, we ran a quick Turing Test.

"Hello, my name is Jill. I'm your personal stylist today! What can I help you with?"

"Hi! Are you a real person? Or an automated service," we asked.

"lol I'm real," she responded. We were already feeling the love.

The Jills are trained like any other JackThreads customer service team, Ben Lerer, Thrillist's CEO, told us by email, and work out of the company's Columbus, Ohio office.

"'The Jills' is a combo of the Jack parallelism and the simplicity of the name," said Mr. Lerer. "Our customers have always asked us if we’d ever launch JillThreads for women’s clothing -- so this name seemed to already resonate strongly with them." Despite the fact that many JackThreads customers frequently ask for customer reps by name, The Jills won't be using their real ones--at least not for now, said Mr. Lerer.

Luckily for those growing bored with the Second Life dating scene, The Jills will be available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. to assist users with style questions--oh, and also to flirt.

Mike Novotny, the general manager of JackThreads, told the Wall Street Journal: “Our guys are younger, and if they want to flirt it’s easier to do over chat. They don’t have to pick up the phone, and this gives the freedom to have a little more fun.”

Surely there are a few gay men browsing the online racks of JackThreads. Why no flirty stylists for them?

"It’s our belief that gay men would love shopping advice from knowledgeable women who are into fashion and style just as much as our straight customers," Mr. Lerer told us. We suppose gay men can get the tips without the flirting.

The Journal also pointed out that one JackThreads member has already been banned due to his inappropriate contact with The Jills. "He pushed the limits beyond flirtation to a place that made our employee uncomfortable and that’s where we draw the line," Mr. Lerer clarified. Hey guys, no asking the Jills what they're wearing.

Ask Jill should appeal to the same subset of dudes who are looking for love on Airtime. Hey, it's more discreet than a trip to Hooters, and cheaper than a call to 1-800-US-GIRLS.

Ah, modern love.

Caveat renter.

Airbnb has come a long way since last August's PR disaster, when a blogger returned home to find her apartment trashed and unleashed a flood of horror stories. But there's very little they can do to head off the occasional nightmare, as evidenced by a Quora thread that hit Hacker News this morning.

In town for Internet Week, The Next Web reporter Anna Heim booked what she thought was an apartment with high-speed Internet. She arrived to discover the location wasn't as-advertised, and the Internet wasn't even remotely high-speed. Nor could that be fixed, since the service provider was, in fact, the next door neighbor's unsecured wireless network.

Faced with an unhelpful host, she decided to cut her losses, cancel the reservation, and find a hotel the next day. Oh, but wait: "seconds after clicking the button, I received a message from the host saying that she was on her way to 'retrieve the keys.'" After a heated argument, the story culminates in a 2a.m. search for a cab in East Harlem. What's more, the host did have a reason for the abrupt ouster: "Airbnb had told her that 'cancellations were effective immediately' - even if it was past midnight and I had actually paid for two nights as part of the cancellation's process." A support supervisor later confirmed this with Ms. Heims.

It does sound like, in contrast to last summer's snafu, Airbnb is scrambling the jets a lot faster. Ms. Heims updated her post to add that Airbnb issued her a full refund, reimbursed her hotel costs, and banned the host from the site. (A rep also jumped into the Quora thread to make sure everyone knew it.) But the post is a pretty good illustration of the fact that there'll always be those less-than-stellar experiences, whether due to shady neighborhoods, litterbox reek, or loony hosts.

Nor are renters the only ones taking a chance, if one comment on the post is any indication: "Recently I had prostitutes renting on Airbnb my parisian apartment in Paris and working there ... that's when I stopped using Airbnb and started renting my apartment through more regular means with people I can trust more ..."

We can't imagine the neighbors would take kindly to your apartment doing double duty as makeshift brothel.