How many hosts have received bad review after filing a claim for lost? How Airbnb deal with deposit

[Alex-and-Luna0]

Hello fellow hosts,

I am wondering how many people have the same experience as us. 

We've been Airbnb hosts for 1 year, and all of our previous guests gave us 5-stars for overall. However, we got a last-minute booking on Jan 14, and the situation changes.

How we got a 1-star review after the other 135 5-star reviews

When this guest checked out on Jan 15, we asked whether everything was ok, they said the stay was great. However, when we cleaned the suite, we found damage on the shower trim plate, looks like it was hit by something. Every time we do the cleaning, we make sure to remove all the fingerprints and watermarks on it that's why we are very sure the damage was caused after they checked in. Besides, we did hear a loud noise from the guest suite bathroom during their stay. And when they checked out, they left a lot of water outside the shower room. We requested this guest to pay $80 for the shower trim kit - which is the current price on Amazon(we purchased it from Amazon at $99 with tax). He refused to pay, and even more, he sent us a very offensive message and left us a completely misleading bad review.

 We replied to the review to explain what happened. We pointed out how the review is away from the truth. We believe in the Airbnb community, the reviews should reflect the truth and objective, but Airbnb said this doesn't meet their policy and refused to remove it. So the other 135 5-star reviews can't help us stay against this 1-star review.

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Will bad review after filing a claim change the community?

We do not really care about this bad review, but our concern is about fairness between hosts and guests. We list the current steps and logic between claims and bad reviews as blew. Please correct us if we are wrong.

1. First, hosts should make the claim before the next guest check-in. For a fully booked listing, this means we have to claim very shortly after checkout.
2. Bad guests protect themselves by denying, leaving a bad review and continue to book other places on Airbnb. They spread the STRATEGY and more guests learn.
3. On the other hand, hosts learn that they should try to avoid making claims so that they won't be punished by a bad review.
4. And all these make the community getting worse for hosts. 

We reached out to several Airbnb case managers, and they said that it's very common guests leave bad reviews once they were claimed. They suggest us to submit feedback so that the policy may change in the future. However, since Airbnb doesn't announce how much feedback regarding this situation have been submitted and no timeline. We don't expect our feedback can make any change to the policy.

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How Airbnb collects the deposit?

Since we require $200 deposit on the listing for potential damage, but it didn't show up anywhere among the claim process. We tested the booking process with another account as a guest, and Airbnb's platform NEVER displays the deposit will be charged, and DID NOT actually charge it from our account. So, what's the definition of deposit on Airbnb, and how it works? Is it just to comfort hosts so that we feel safe hosting on Airbnb?

Airbnb invites us to open our house to guests, but it turns out to us that neither our hard-earnt reviews or our property is protected by Airbnb. 

Again, please correct us if they do charge the deposit.

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At the end of this topic, we appreciate your attention, suggestion, correction. If this is not the right place to bring up this topic, we can definitely move to Quora.

Guest Review

It’s a cold basement with makeshift DIY upgrades and warning signs of what not to do located all throughout the space. You walk through the living room and meet the family before your pointed down to the basement door.

Our Reply

We have an electric fireplace which is just at the end of the bed, a heated mattress pad on the bed, and heater in the bathroom. None of our other 135 guests complained it's cold even in the coldest weather. On the opposite, the other guest (just 3 spots before this review) mentioned they like the heated bed.

And none of the signs in the suite is a warning. They are just instructions about how to use the electronics, the light, the fireplace, the heated mattress, etc. Most of our guests found them very helpful and gave them thumbs up (refer to the review just before this one).

We've also stated very clearly on the listing page this suite is on the ground floor, and the only common space is the staircase. 

[Anonymous]

@Alex-and-Luna0 You are correct that the "deposit" is phony. It is not charged to the guest, and it has nothing to do with how compensation claims are settled.

And yes, hosts frequently complain that requesting money for damage, enforcing their House Rules, or adding charges for unexpected extra guests results in retaliatory reviews/ratings. I'd say it's one of the top 5 most common topics in these pages,  just search the word "retaliatory" and you'll find hundreds of views on the matter. 

[Robin4]

@Alex-and-Luna0 

I am so sorry that you have found yourself in this position with a guest who won't accept responsibility for their actions.

Just a few observations.

1/.....Feedback is of very limited value if ...no let me re-phrase that...is of no value unless it promotes the aims of Airbnb. Many of us hosts have used Feedback to make what we feel are constructive comments to make relationships between hosts, guests, and the company easier. In almost all instances that feedback dies as soon as you hit 'Submit'. And any that are taken on-board and go into some sort of beta testing appear in so heavily altered form as to bare little or no resemblance to the feedback that inspired it! After some lame duck intro like...."After receiving a lot of feedback from hosts regarding the negative affect a revenge review can have, we want you to be sure we always take all our users feedback very seriously and continue to strive to make the experience better for both hosts and guests". So they are aware of it, they just don't act on it! The most ground they will give to this mass of host feedback is, they will prompt the guest during the review process with a...."Are you sure you wish to give this overall star rating"? Of course the guest is sure, he wouldn't have ticked one star if he didn't mean it. So how exactly is that prompt supposed to help the host?....a 1 star vindictive review needs to be removed, not queried if its really what the guest wants to say!

If on the other hand you offered some feedback on how Airbnb could benefit with a few extra dollars during the booking process, they would be onto it like a pig into pork sausages!

My feeling is 'Feedback' would be wasting your time! 

2/......The Security Deposit is not taken from the guest at the time of booking. What happens is Airbnb theoretically establishes that the guest will have sufficient funds to honour a host claim up to a certain dollar value. It's once again a fairly useless item, designed for no other reason than to make the host comfortable that their fairy godmother is lurking in the wings should that magic wand of hers be needed! The reality of the situation is, the host claims, the guest has 72 hours to decide if they want to be honest or not.....if the guest decides 'not', they have had  72 hours to close off their payment method and Airbnb meekly informs the host payment could not be claimed, 'go and suck eggs'! Airbnb could fix this very easily by putting a hold on the guests payment method for the deposit amount until the hosting was cleared. But do you seriously thing Airbnb would risk the wrath of guests by doing that? No way Jose!  It's another marketing tool, nothing more!

3/.....There is one guaranteed way to get a bad review, and that is to lodge a claim with Airbnb that a guest does not willingly agree to....and lets face it, those 'willing' ones don't exactly fall thick on the grass!

Once you lodge a claim, unless it is a substantial one in the thousands, the end result of that is you will lose out because, your overall stats will take a dive and prospective guests will look at you more critically. The poor review and rating that goes with it will have an impact on your future bookings. So you have to weigh up whether the cost of that claim will in the long term be worth it!

I decided early in my hosting that I would not involve Airbnb or the guest where minor damage is concerned. I regard it as one of the risks a host takes when dealing with the public. Four dollars of each hosting night goes into a damage fund I have set aside and there is currently around $1,800 sitting in that account. If the guest ruins the dinner crockery set by breaking a couple of plates, spills nail polish remover on the quilt cover, breaks a wine glass or two, breaks the freezer door off the fridge, puts a crack in the glass shower screen by dropping the flexible shower head....... I don't hassle them or Airbnb, I will mention in the review that a bit more care would have been appreciated but, I just replace what was broken out of the damage fund and get on with the business of hosting. I have found I am far better off doing this and keeping my business intact and saving myself a lot of hassle. All those things I have mentioned have happened to me and more, most of them cost me less than $20 to replace and my future business did not suffer. And after all, they were not done with malicious intent, it was an accident!

As hosts we need to take control of our destiny, some times Airbnb are good, sometimes they are poor, I choose not to take the risk. I have STR insurance for anything major, and anything minor I just use money I have put aside, I don't get precious over it, If they don't mention it and just try to hide it, I make a note not to accept a booking from them again in the future and I have a perfect excuse to substantiate that with Airbnb.....'Last time I hosted that guest they created damage they would not admit to, too much of a hosting risk'.....what are Airbnb going to say to that?, 'everyone needs a second chance' ...not likely, I have myself covered!

Alex and Luna, I am sorry that this has happened to you, and maybe what I do is not morally right by the hosting community, some will say I am enabling guests poor behaviour. The poor star rating I give them sooner or later catches up with them, but my first obligation is to myself and my wife, I am on a pretty good gravy train here and I don't want Airbnb derailing it! 

All the best guys.

Cheers......Rob

[Emilia42]

@Alex-and-Luna0 

As an Airbnb host you are held hostage by the review system. You need to decide on an individual basis what matters more . . . claiming X amount in damages OR the hope that you will receive a 5 star review. It's not right and it's not fair. And trust me, there are thousands and thousands of hosts out there who will jump ship once another competitor can operate on the same scale as Airbnb. 

[Andy2269]

Fun note about the Airbnb review system:

A guest can say whatever they as it "reflects their experience".

So they can totally lie about say the location (as being far away from a central point when in fact it's close) and Airbnb will keep that review up.

EXCEPT

If a guest violates host privacy ... so they can totally be truthful and in a bad situation say that the Host for example kept injecting drugs in front of the door and their kids and Airbnb would remove that because it violates host privacy, despite potentially being dangerous to future guests.