Airbnb refusing to take down review that violates their review policy

[Emily1491]

I'm posting on here in an attempt to contact someone at Airbnb--I've tried twice without success. I had an extremely problem guest stay here--broke nearly all the house rules, attempted to verbally confront my mom, who was staying with me at the time, trespassing on my neighbor's property and then complaining that it was dangerous. She reacted very poorly each time I politely asked her to obey the rules. I contacted Airbnb after she left and told them of her violations and indicated that I might receive a retaliatory review. 

She wrote me a review which was not as bad as I feared it would be. It contains several things that are true that I try to be very upfront about on the listing: the house is very old and there are no straight lines, the bathtub has wrap-around shower curtains (I have a photo), and I live right upstairs so as quiet as I try to be, there is some amount of noise transmission. Some things were not true--the wiring is brand new (whole space was rewired by an electrician in 2021), the windows are not painted shut (they have a spring system which can be challenging to figure out, I have a diagram in the house manual). 

She mentions a very distinctive building (the only one of its kind in town) which is under construction directly next door and is going to be turned into a very distinctive business in a few months. Once it opens, it will be possible based on her review to google two or three key words and find my exact location.

I contacted Airbnb and requested, based on this, to take down the review. They said, and I quote, that though they identified a violation, they needed at least five violations to take down a review. I copied and pasted their content policy. They didn't try to explain or justify when I said this, just said they could not take it down. I called again, and was told that because it does not divulge my exact address it's not a violation. Again, I said that that is not what their content policy says--it says content sufficient to identify a location. 

At this point it actually seems like everyone I've spoken to is making up something different, and trying to stretch the content policy to mean a different thing. I feel like a broken record--I've been saying over and over again, "That's not what your content policy says," and not receiving any sort of explanation. Where does this five violation policy come from? I can't find it anywhere.

[Anonymous]

@Emily1491  The review, for reference:

Good location if your events are on the west side of the river. This is not a fancy rental. There’s charm to the age but it comes with funky wiring, noise from the upstairs tenant, doors askew and windows painted shut. The AC worked well in the blistering heat. The old tub has a plastic sheet surround so sort of like showering in a plastic bag. The abandoned church building next door may be a restaurant in the next few years. This will be nice for the area

I've never heard of a "five violations" policy - that's the kind of thing a CS contractor might just pull out of their butt on the fly. But I'm not seeing even one clear violation in there at all.  Some elements of the content policy are open to interpretation, but that review looks completely fair and legit to me. Even if the last bit makes your location indirectly identifiable, it's actually really easy to find the overwhelming majority of listings' locations with a few basic pieces of information in the listing, so that might be kind of grasping at straws. You could post a response correcting inaccuracies, but that only makes the content stand out more. I'd really just let this one go.

[Mark116]

@Emily1491  I don't think the review very clearly violates Airbnb's policies or that it is even that bad, though I don't know what the stars were that accompanied it.  It is a bit strange that an American has apparently never showered in a tub with a plastic shower curtain, but otherwise, it seems perfectly fine to me.  If you want to give a correction in the response that you are unsure what wiring the guest is referring to as the entire house was newly rewired only 2 years ago and that all windows are fully functional with directions on how to open/close in the house manual or something along those lines that would be fine.

[Emily1491]

@Mark116 It’s a much better review than I expected given my interactions with the guest in question. I’m more unhappy with my interactions with Airbnb support, who told me they found a violation but repeatedly told me that they had an internal policy of five violations before they would take down a review. I’m not confident now that they would do anything if a review contained a serious violation.

[Emily1491]

@Mark116 @Anonymous This guest is also a little on me, as I never should have let her stay. I’ve finally turned off Instant book, because based on her messages I would’ve easily weeded her out.

[Mark116]

@Emily1491  I would say chance that CS is making up random rules in any given interaction with guest or host is about 120%.  They may have a secret 5 violations rule, or not.  I post and read here very frequently and I've seen reviews that to me absolutely should have been removed, stay up and reviews that seemed marginally inappropriate get taken down.  Russian roulette.  Also though, the rules are purposefully opaque, as a lot of the stuff they say that should be avoided in reviews is not strictly prohibited.

We have to have IB on or else we drop to the end of the search results, but we do have everything turned on that you can turn on, ID, reviews, etc. and that helps.  You can also, or at least  you could in the past, have 3 IB cancellations per year.

[Emily1491]

@Mark116 I’ve just dropped my prices because I’ve noticed that seems to have more of an effect on booking order, in addition to turning off IB. The few bad guests, and the ones who cause damage, intentional or unintentional, don’t seem worth the extra money in the long term.

[Jenny]

Hi @Emily1491 

I've had a look at the content guidelines and I can't see anything relating to five violations, so I've sent your info and a note of what you were told over to Support, to try and get you some help with this.

Jenny