@Catherine-Powell i can try to elaborate here no problem.
It is a fact that policy and rule breaking guests will try to use whatever in their power to stay for free, be refunded while breaking all the rules etc. My comment was specifically focusing on the discrimination card played so very often by rule breaking guests because they know it is a powerful tool. Whenever this card is played with a CS, the host loses. Even if the guest lies and broke all possible rules, the CS will award the guest with a refund or free stays and the host is left to fend for her/himself., sometimes facing significant damages. Sadly, despite the recent changes and efforts, hosts are still often overrun in their right to host and set their own rules. CS agents have old scripts and should probably be better trained but this is another topic by itself and not the focus of my reply.
My suggestion is that Airbnb implements a completely different channel to address discrimination for real. This channel has to be directed both by phone or text or message to a higher level of CS with a more specific training to specifically deal with these issues (real discrimination is no joke and must be addressed properly). Once this specific channel is in place, the reviewing system (both via app or website) should be set as not to allow words like “discrimination” and similar to be used in the reviews and if it is, said review is flagged and directed to the dedicated channel for further investigation and not published for the time being. If the review is biased and false it will not stand. This additional step would also allow the host to be heard before the review gets published. If a guest leaves a false review because the host enforced rules and the host fights it with an agent and the discrimination card is used, the review should be placed on hold while someone specifically trained investigates. This step would, in my opinion, let the hosts off the hook when discrimination is used against them in retaliation for enforcing the house rules that the guests ignored and similar other occasions, and, at the same time, safeguard those guests that are discriminated upon for real.
The way the review system is setup right now is very simplistic. Software programming allows for so many more keywords and multiple possibilities as to allow the software to actually sort and direct reviews in a more effective way and “freeze them” when certain criteria are met.
I don’t know if this makes any sense to you. Thank you