False 5 star Guest star ratings average

[Jeanene3]

Has anyone else noticed that bad guests are maintaining 5 star rating averages after 1 star reviews? Even with as little as two reviews. Customer service can not fix it, so I am a little worried about weeding out destructive guests. Let me know if this is common here please, I am a new host.

[Colleen253]

@Jeanene3 What you describe is not normal. I could only see it happening If a guest is successful in getting a bad review removed, which would be possible if the reviewing host violated the review policy. 

https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/2673/airbnbs-review-policy

[Jeanene3]

I am glad it isn't normal, and I looked today and it was fixed! That restored my trust in the review process. 

Thanks for your input.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Jeanene3 @Colleen253 I think the guest rating is

a) Only to one decimal place and

b) Averages the 3 or 4 categories

This seems to be designed to get guests up to 5 stars much quicker than hosts even if they get a 1 star review in one category.

[Jeanene3]

The decimal point was not the issue on this one since there were only two reviewers, but that is good info to note!

Also I checked today and the guest now has a 3 star average, so Airbnb did fix it. Customer service was a little slow to see it as a system issue (insisted I made a mistake initially), but they said they would forward my complaint and it only took two days to fix, so that is good news for all hosts (these guests did so much damage to include stains running down the walls!).

Thanks for the info and taking the time to reply to these forums.

[Lisa723]

@Jeanene3 @Mike-And-Jane0 @Colleen253 

In my experience the text review appears immediately but it takes a few hours or a day for the average rating value to update.

[Jeanene3]

It was almost 4 days after I wrote the review that the numbers changed. Strange, but now I know to give quite a bit of time.