I'm sure we all know that highly annoying feeling of being prompted to write a review for a guest who never checked in and cancelled their reservation. AirBnB's system will automatically prompt all involved parties to write a review for cancelled reservations, as long as the cancellation occurred after 12AM on the day of the check-in.
Well, according to an agent who most recently dealt with one of my complaints, AirBnB has updated their Content Policy internally and has failed to update it on the website: https://www.airbnb.ca/help/article/546/airbnbs-content-policy. Nowadays, if anyone writes a review for a reservation that was cancelled before the check-in time shown on the listing, AirBnB will delete it if either party submits a complaint (never mind that the website still prompts everyone to write a review). Seems like a step in the right direction, however, it opens up a huge loophole, which is that the Policy applies even if check-in occurred BEFORE the check-in time shown on the listing.
I had a distressing experience a couple of weeks ago and was unable to leave a review to warn other hosts about this guest. Some background about my listing for context: I live alone in a 2-bedroom apartment in a small building. My hosting style is that I offer a private room for people to crash in, for a price that competes with a hostel offering a bunk in an 8-person room. The listing is set up to minimize my interaction with guests: self check-in via keypad, pretty much all amenities are excluded, and the target audience for my listing is people who just need a place to crash, not a place to live. My listing can be seen here: www.airbnb.com/h/mckenziepiping.
I had a guest who was looking for a place to stay Tuesday night. I had that night blocked off on my calendar and was not home. At around 11:00PM on Tuesday, while I was asleep at my partner's place, someone instant booked for Wednesday (published check-in time is 3PM) but then showed up 2.5 hours later, at 1:30AM, which is considered "Tuesday night".
To access my apartment, you need to first enter the building via keypad and then enter my apartment via another keypad. Each keypad has its own passcode, since the building door is shared with the neighbour so it cannot be regularly changed, while the keypad for my apartment is customized for each reservation. The House Manual divulges the building passcode but masks the apartment passcode. When I see that I have an upcoming reservation, I send a copy of the House Manual directly in the messages, where both passcodes are shown.
In the case of this guest, he had access to the House Manual on the listing, but I had never sent him any messages since he booked late at night and I hadn't even seen the reservation yet. At 5AM on Wednesday, I woke up to pee and checked my phone. There were 5 missed calls from the neighbour, 5 missed calls from the guest, texts from the neighbour and AirBnB messages from the guest that painted the following scenario:
At 1:30AM the night before the beginning of his reservation, he showed up at my building and started breaking the House Rules. The listing states that it is strictly forbidden to bother the neighbours. He rang their doorbell and woke them up at 1:30AM, then let himself into the building using the passcode. Then he knocked on their door repeatedly and terrified them. Another rule shown on the listing is that you must not loiter/linger in the common areas of the building, as it bother the other tenants and poses an elevated COVID risk. He then sat and leaned up against the neighbour's door all night, until 5:30AM. When I woke up and checked my phone, I began a dialogue with him explaining that he cannot show up a day before the beginning of his reservation. He was demanding that he be let in and I was explaining that there is no passcode currently programmed in my door, since I only program passcodes for confirmed reservations for the days they actually booked. I spent an hour messaging back and forth with him, dealing with his demands that I come home immediately to let him in, telling me to make him breakfast (not included on the listing), telling me to have the neighbour let him in (she's not involved in my AirBnB) and many other dialogues that demonstrated severe mental instability. Then he started with the insults, calling me incompetent and saying that I've scammed him. At that point, I realized that it would be very uncomfortable to host him, so I called AirBnB and explained that I have a guest in my building who's breaking House Rules and for that reason, I would like to cancel without host penalties. The agent reviewed my messages with the guest and agreed, then 15 minutes later his reservation was cancelled. I messaged him saying that he must leave the premises immediately or I will call the police. Then I came home at 6AM ready for a physical altercation but fortunately he had already left. When I walked up the stairs in my building, I found drug paraphernalia scattered everywhere... pipe screens, white poweder, syringes, and many other pipettes and odd glass capillaries I could not identify. My neighbour came out when she heard me come in and told me that she had been watching him through the peep hole and he was smoking either crack or meth right outside her door all night.
The next day, I wrote a review containing all the above content and was very careful about my wording to ensure I wasn't directly besmirching his character. I didn't even mention the neighbour's observations about the drugs, since it's hearsay, and I only mentioned the stuff I found upon my return to the building. Everything was written in accordance with the Content Policy, which I was continuously cross-referencing while writing. It took me an hour to write the review as a warning to other hosts.
The review got published on his profile and then several days later, I checked back to see if there were any other horror stories shown on his profile and noticed my review was deleted. I immediately contacted AirBnB because I felt violated by their censorship, since I knew that I was in line with their Content Policy.
The BS answer they gave me was that they removed my review because his reservation was cancelled before check-in. His reservation was cancelled at 6AM, while the check-in time is 3PM. It doesn't matter that he checked into the building and wreaked havoc. The agent explained that my situation is unfortunate but they cannot make any exceptions, since check-in was only partially completed but not fully completed.
This is seriously a load of crap and enables dangerous guests to abuse the reservation system without any sort of repercussions.
Do you guys think I should keep re-submitting complaints to various AirBnB agents until I find someone who will reinstate my review? I don't see how they can refer to some "internal Content Policy that differs from the one shown on the website" and I'm not sure if I was just dealing with a moronic cross-section of AirBnB staff or if the handling of this situation is actually legitimate in some manner that I'm failing to see?
