Discriminative Airbnb policy towards hosts in case of unfair/flawed reviews

[Ivan451]

So I recently found myself in a peculiar bureaucratic trap. Long stoty short: if a guest leaves a positive text review but rates you 1 (one) star for literaty no reason (i.e. by mistake), the only thing you get from the company is a few condolescences. So if there was no text and low rating, I could challenge this. If it was offensive or contained false information, I could challenge this. But if a guests says something like "very pleasant stay, beautiful house, with a magnificent environment" and gives you the lowest possible rating, the only thing you can do is to write a public responce and go beg the guest to discard the review completely. Because it doesn't violate any Airbnb rules!
A guest can leave you any rating and it won't be reviewed no matter how unfair it is, even if you're a serial superhost with examplary reputation and no negative reviews in all time, even if the review itself totally contradicts the rating. But you surely will receive a politely unnerving email from Airbnb telling you to "focus on delivering the best experience possible for future guests to keep your listing active in search". This is so awesome I actually made my first post on the community about this. Brilliant job, Airbnb team, that's truly an expiring hosting experience (not really).

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Ivan451 if the guest truly made a mistake you could ask them to get Airbnb to delete it. 

[Ivan451]

That's what I did. Thing is, the guest doesn't really have to reply anything at all. Many guests stop communicating as soon as they leave your property. For this to work, they have to read your message, check their review, contact the support and ask to put down the review. In my case it's an elderly guest that doesn't speak English (and I barely speak their language) so chances are, they won't bother to react at all, it can prove to be too complicated for them. Airbnb must have proper rules for such cases apart from "just contact the guest and explain them everything maybe they will do something". I may need months, if not years, to go back to 5 stars with this listing now.

[Huma0]

@Ivan451 

Yes, this is the problem. A few months ago, a guest left me a nice review, nice private feedback and low scores. I had a feeling that she didn't understand that a 3* was bad (turns out I was right) so I messaged her but she never responded. She did get back to me in the end, but only because I then messaged her aunt, who is a Superhost and who understood why I was upset about the rating. Obviously, this is a really random thing (the aunt had contacted me about the listing before her niece had booked) and one wouldn't normally have had this recourse. Without the aunt, I'm pretty sure the guest probably would not have checked her messages.

In addition, when she contacted CS to ask for the review to be removed, she was told it wasn't possible as more than two weeks had passed. Meanwhile, I was speaking to a rep who told me it was possible to remove the review. The rep she was talking about was clearly confused. The two week deadline is for writing the review, not removing it. We eventually got it sorted, but it wasn't easy. The guest could easily have given up in frustration, saying she tried, but was told by Airbnb it was impossible.

PS I read ages ago on the CC that Airbnb were introducing a system to tackle 'outlier reviews'. This basically said that when a guest left high scores in the individual categories but a low score overall, e.g. 1 or 2*, a message would pop up asking them if they were sure and reminding them that they'd just scored highly in the categories. 

I have no idea if this was ever implemented or, if it was, if it works. I asked CS reps about it a few times but they had no idea what I was talking about.

[Ivan451]

I also remember reading something about the "outlier reviews" you mentioned, that's interesting. And I'm also quite sure they threw that out the window in the end.

Quite fortunate of you to have the aunt's contact. The reasoning you mentioned is also a wider problem than one might think. Airbnb doesn't clearly deliver the stars value when guests rate their stay, not everyone knows that less than 4 on Airbnb means something was outright bad. Even 4* is kinda meh, and I often get a bit frustrated by people complementing on a "quiet place with magnificent view" and put 4 stars for location because the house is on the hill...

[Helen744]

@Huma 0 there is no reason within the world of math or common sense for five ,five stars to ever add up to four . One or the other , not both . It is crazy world , always has been . H

[Ricardo85]

@Ivan451 

Once your score is no longer 5 stars, you will NEVER return to it again.

This is simple math...

(1 star + 5 stars) / 2 = 3 stars

(1+5+5) / 3 = 3.6 stars

(1+5+5+5) / 4 = 4 stars
...
(1+ (99*5) / 100 = 4.96 stars
...
(1+(999*5) / 1000 = 4.99 stars
...
(1+(9999*5) / 10000 = 4.99 stars

...
(1+(99999*5) / 100000 = 4.99 stars

The only chance for you to get back to 5 stars would be to receive a score more than 5 stars, and that will never happen.

Ricardo

[Ivan451]

That's true. When I mentioned 5 stars, I meant something nearly 5, of course, like 4.98 - it doesn't make a big difference. Anyway, it's obvious that 1 star is enough to screw up years of efforts.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Ricardo85 You need to go back to school I am afraid as your maths is wrong. Once the sum gets to 4.996 then it will show a 5.00

I can't remember the exact number but it is around 400 5 star reviews to make up for one 4 star review.

[Ricardo85]

@Mike-And-Jane0 

The math is not wrong, since 4,996 does not equal 5,000 for sure.

So the question here is not about math, but how many decimal places the Airbnb system takes into account to round to the nearest integer.

Ricardo

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Ricardo85 The Host review system works to 2 decimal places so 4.995 (I was wrong when I said 4.996) will, by the rules of mathematics, be shown as 5.00.

Interestingly the guest system only works to 1 decimal place so 4.95 will give a guest 5.00.

[Huma0]

@Ricardo85 

That is not correct. My rating went back up to 5.0 despite having a few 4* reviews and one 3* one. It just took a long time. The rating on the listings itself might never go back up to 5* (I'm not sure about that as I've not looked into it) but your overall rating certainly can.

I maintained a 5.0 rating for 2.5 years despite having previously had some guests who left 3* or 4*. It sat at 4.9 for a long time, but eventually went up to 5.0 after enough great reviews.

[Ricardo85]

@Huma0 

Thanks for the info!.

Ricardo

[Emilia42]

@Huma0 That is because on your progress page the overall score is rounded to the tenth decimal place. (And Superhost staus only takes into account the last year of reviews.) When rounded to the one-hundredth decimal place a 4.99 will not become a 5.0 again until the sample size is 250+ reviews. 

@Ricardo85 

[Ricardo85]

@Emilia42 

❤️

Ricardo