Catherine’s Host Update: reviews, party ban policy, and more

[Catherine-Powell]

Hi everyone,

I’m happy to be sharing a new Host update with you, which has important news about a topic I know is top of mind for many of you—reviews—along with news from our Host Advisory Board, about sustainability and introducing a new board member. (Welcome to the board, Pam!)

We’ve been listening closely to your feedback on our review system—specifically to how they relate to our party ban policy. For reviews written from today on, reviews from guests who violate our party ban will be eligible for removal. You shouldn’t have to trade off between reporting a party and getting dinged with a negative review. We want to close that gap. 

This is just the first step. We’ll continue to listen to you and work to shape our policies to better support you and our whole community. 

I’ll be in touch again soon with more updates. In the meantime, stay well, and happy hosting!

All my best,

Catherine

[Mary996]

Brilliant.

I'm going to start asking for more details and how to 'test' the information given. 

[Jeanette37]

Yay, sounds good to me.

[Brian883]

Thank You for considering this topic for your hosts!

[Peggy112]

The same policy should be applied to guests with open and pending claims. A host should not get penalized with a bad review during the claim process. It is very obvious a guest would retaliate with a bad review and or scoring. 

[Anita325]

AIRBNB has failed to honor that policy now on three occassions. verified party, false retaliatory review, no amount of calls or escalating has helped. I did have a support person finally confide that they consider reviews like this....

"First...is there any fraud on the review? If we don't see that then we close the case. We're told not to consider anything that doesn't have obvious fraud."

So their policy is, at a minimum, not being enforced. 

I even copy and pasted the policy from their website to the support staff, none of them recognized it.

As of today, November 13, 2021 this is the case and occurred again today.

[Rosalie93]

Hi there, 

I am currently in a situation where I reported a party. (Side Note: I have video but unfortunately can't upload video on the customer support page. I will take still shots of the video but that doesn't give my cs agent the loud volume you could hear from the video.)

When I reported the party and asked how retaliatory reviews are handled my cs agent said that is another bridge to cross when we are done reporting. After I reported the party and asked again, she gives me the Content and Review Policy and told me after her review she'd be happy to direct me to the proper division. She is wonderful and very professional and I am thankful for her, however, in those policies there is nowhere that states this awesome party ban review feature you are indicating here exists for hosts.

Am I to direct them to this page? I see several hosts on this forum who are speaking with cs agents and those agents are denying deletion of retaliatory reviews because they are looking at the two policies stated above and no part in those policies qualifies.

I am a new host with 2 true 5 star reviews. This party goer who I reported has the ability to tank my listing with a retaliatory review: Behavior she's already exposed after I confronted her about the party. 

I'd like to see this policy written into the Review Policy so that hosts who report parties will not be discriminately punished for reporting a party.

Please let me know how and when you are going to add this party ban policy.