We are Airbnb Plus superhosts with 148 5-star reviews. We have had so many wonderful experiences and many guests have said ours is the best Airbnb they've stayed in. Recently, we had a guest (with 0 reviews) who showed up when I was out and then immediately left and cancelled. She said our place was terrible and should not even be on Airbnb, and was the worse she had ever "been with". She was horrified to find there were chickens walking around (our listing clearly states that our chickens roam the property) and she claimed they could carry Covid-19. She accused us of misrepresentation and demanded her money back from Airbnb but thankfully they upheld our cancellation policy terms. However, she left a 1-star review claiming the rental smelled like a chicken coop which is absurd and untrue. Not only had my cleaner and I just been in to verify everything was perfect, we adhere strictly to Airbnb's Covid-19 cleaning terms. She also claimed the yard was cramped (it's 7,000 SF) and there was absolutely no privacy (it's totally private - but like any suburban neighborhood we do have neighbors over the 6' fence). In my initial correspondence with her, I tried to understand why she thought we had misrepresented our place but she wouldn't say. She just wanted to accuse me. It was the strangest, most shocking and hurtful experience we've had. I suspect she was trying to make our place sound horrid in order to get a full refund, and when that didn't happen she took out her frustration in a bad review which included falsities. I am racking my brain to understand how this could happen. I think it's wrong that a guest could essentially lie about their experience and reduce the host's rating and because their review doesn't technically violate Airbnb's review policy, the host has no recourse and has to suffer the consequences. Also, if this guest truly did feel our place was misrepresented in the photos, there's nothing I can do about that because we're Airbnb Plus. Plus sends their own photographer and I'm not even allowed to be present. (In the past we did have photos of our chickens on the listing, but the Plus photographer chose not to shoot them.) Plus uploads the photos and I cannot update or change them. We recently renovated the bathroom to the tune of $15,000 and we can't even show it in the listing! It's absurd. I guess we could go back to regular Airbnb (not Plus) but we are one of 3 Plus listings in our city and we take pride in it. It's just super sad to me that this can happen... I think Airbnb should work harder to mediate disputes between hosts and guests, especially when one is a Superhost.
