Hello everyone!
Welcome to the Community Center! I'm @Bhu...
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Hello everyone!
Welcome to the Community Center! I'm @Bhumika , one of the Community Managers for our English Community Ce...
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Hello everyone. Firstly, sorry for being away from the community for so long (due to a number of reasons). I wanted to share my recent experience and ask for your opinions. Apologies if it's a bit long...
I have been a Superhost for the majority of the time I have hosted in my current home. I have three guest rooms which were pretty much fully booked pre-pandemic and, since then, I've managed to keep things going with bookings on and off. Things were finally starting to pick up again in the latter months of this year. I've maintained my Superhost status every quarter for the past five years and have been at a 5.0 rating for about two (prior to that, mostly fluctuating between 4.9 and 5.0 as you know how long it can take to recover from the occasional 4 stars).
My dilemma is this. I recently had a guest who unexpectedly left me a 3 star overall rating (and 3 or 4 stars in every category bar location). She never complained while she was here and seemed to enjoy her stay. Although her English was limited so something may have been lost in translation, she left me a positive review and a nice private note and there is absolutely no negative feedback explaining the low ratings. I also feel that I went above and beyond for this guest in many ways, so it's pretty confusing.
Anyway, as a result of this, my rating has gone from 5.0 to 4.3 and I will definitely lose my Superhost status at the next assessment. Even if all remaining guests leave 5 stars, that only brings me up to 4.66, not the 4.8 required. I have even already received a warning email from Airbnb that my listing may be suspended. It will be a long time before I can significantly bring it back up.
I already called Airbnb about this but, as expected, the CS rep said there was nothing he could do about it, especially as the guest had not mentioned anything negative in the review that I could contest. His only advice was to keep up the good work.
I know that a lot of hosts feels that being a Superhost makes no difference. However, I would say in my experience that it does. When I first started hosting, most of my guests had no idea what a Superhost even was. In recent years (since Airbnb started promoting the scheme a bit more), I have found that many guests mention they booked with me because of it. Once guests are aware of it, they often specifically search for Superhosts. Even if you forget about that, my rating for that listing has dropped to 4.0. and I know I wouldn't book an Airbnb with that rating!
My questions are these:
1. I would like to message the guest asking for feedback. Perhaps she did not understand that her ratings were actually very low, rather than 'good' or 'very good'/'as expected' or 'better than expected' as it is sometimes represented by Airbnb. Or, perhaps she was too shy to tell me that there was a problem and it would be helpful to know what that was, regardless of whether Superhost status matters or not. How best to phrase this message without seeming like I am harassing her?
2. This guest instant booked. I only turned on IB because I felt I must (once Airbnb really started to push it, my fully booked listings dropped to the bottom of the search results, which is disastrous in London where there are so many Airbnbs, and only recovered when I turned it on). If this had been a booking request, I would not have accepted it without the guest answering all of the pre-booking questions, which she hadn't. So, should I turn it off and risk my listings disappearing again? I'm tempted, but not sure that's the best idea given that her rating may already have an impact on bookings? A very low percentage of long-term guests IB, but the rest might not even see my listing if I turn it off, so I am not sure that would be to my advantage.
PS apologies for all the grammatical errors in my recent posts. Has something happened here with the autocorrect on the CC? I've noticed that a lot of my posts are filled with mistakes I would never normally make. Not that I don't sometimes make mistakes, especially when typing at speed, but I am paid for writing as well as editing/proofing other writers' work, so I am normally more coherent!
I've noticed since I started posting again recently that there are numerous errors that I am surprised about if I happen to read the post again.
@Huma0 I see now that your entry ( How One Guest Destroys five years of Super Host status) has garnered 93 responses. Is that a record? Is there a message to be learned and embraced going forward in this business endeavor? Is there a message to the corporate heads of ABB that the business of the service we are all creating is provided under the umbrella of an agreement of protective shelter of the Booking Agency where our money is entrusted to and dispersed according to the agreements signed by all parties. The stated goal of CEO Brian Chesley is ( Belonging ) do these wonderfully created places to stay and sleep and to live -Belong? Just asking.
I wish that was the case but sadly, I think not. There are some threads on the CC with several hundred responses, and most of those 'hot' topics have not been addressed by Airbnb. They might send out some sort of appeasing announcement of a new token policy (like the one I mentioned above) that doesn't really deal with the problem or try to reassure us that they are dealing with it, but I've seen very few cases where there has been any significant change.
There are a few though, so it is still worth speaking out and pressing for change. It's always going to be a long battle in each case though.
@Susan990 "has garnered 93 responses. Is that a record?"
Not to belittle Huma's post, but I think the record is a post I made almost 3 years ago, which garnered 2,772 thumbs up! What happened is it had a few hundred, then a host in NZ put it up on his hosting Facebook groups and it snowballed within half a day. I was shocked.
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Airbnb-Updates/Making-reviews-more-fair-for-hosts/td-p/958608
And guess what? 2,772 thumbs up that Airbnb ignored and is still doing business as usual. As evidenced by Huma's thread and many others.
The latest update on this is that I kept the message open on this case. As @Quincy kindly reached out for me and was told there was no open case and that I should contact Airbnb CS again, I have done so, but they just tell me they don't know anything about that conversation and they haven't confirmed to me whether there is an open case or not, even though I have asked.
Instead, I am still being passed around from one case manager to another and, each time I respond telling them they are not answering my questions, I get a message saying sorry, I'm going to be out of the office for a few days. This has happened too many times for it to be a coincidence. It is clearly a tactic to try to make you give up. During each rep's absence, I usually get a message asking if all is resolved and do I want to close the ticket. I get the same BOT message every time I am told that the case is being passed on to someone else and that someone will get back to me.
I know I am fighting a losing battle here, but I thought after @Quincy had spoken to CS that I might be able to get some sort of help. While the first rep I spoke to on the phone was at least understanding but ultimately said he couldn't do anything, the rest are just trying to fob me off.
What I did get them to confirm though is that the review AND the rating can be removed if the guest requests it (in which case they must remove both). I had actually given up the idea of messaging the guest as her English comprehension was so low and she was not the best at responding to messages even before/during her stay + I thought that even if she requested it, Airbnb would only remove the review, not the ratings (the latter being the problematic part).
However, now it is possibly worth a shot.
Meanwhile, I had another guest check out on Saturday and leave me 5 stars across the board. It won't make any difference though. Even if all guests leaving this month do that, it still doesn't bring me up to 4.8, never mind the 5.0 I was at before.
I realise this is partly my fault. I should have chased guests for reviews given how slow this year has been. I only had three Airbnb bookings for this particular room in 2021 (and another current one) and this problem guest was the only one of the three that left a review. Of course, I can't know for sure that the other two would have left 5 stars...
So, I did eventually message the guest but she hasn't responded yet.
What about the aunt? The Superhost who contacted me on her niece's behalf telling me how lovely my listing was, and that she was trying to convince her niece to book it even though it was over her budget and her niece was very 'poor'?
Would it be worth an attempt to contact the aunt and explain how her niece has caused such damage?
UPDATE
Having not heard back from the guest, I eventually messaged her aunt, who is a Superhost (she had previously contacted me about her niece's booking). She responded straight away and, shortly after, I heard back from the guest.
She told me that she had enjoyed her stay and didn't realise that 3* was a low score. She asked if she could change the review. I explained that wasn't possible but she could ask to have it removed and she said she was happy to do so.
Then followed a bit of back and forth with CS. They told me the guest had to contact them but, when she tried, she was told it was too late to remove the review. Meanwhile, I am still being told it's not too late, but she must call, so she called again to be told the same thing. While this was going on, I suddenly got a message that the review had been removed. Today the stats updated and I am back up to a 5.0.
After this experience, my conclusions are:
- It's sometimes worth contacting a low scoring guest for feedback as they might simply not have understood the real meaning of the scores they gave. I didn't challenge the guest, just asked her for honest feedback.
- CS can remove a review (that doesn't violate the review or contents policy) AND the ratings, but only when the author of the review requests it. They absolutely won't do it otherwise.
- Don't assume that a CS rep is necessarily giving you the correct information. Call/message again. The guest was still being told it was not possible to remove the review even after someone else at CS had already removed it.
- No CS representative I dealt with (there were several) had any knowledge of policies relating to 'outlier' reviews, so it's my belief that no such policies exist. This is something I believe we hosts should push for. In the same way that the cancellation criteria was changed from 0% to less than 1%, Airbnb could introduce a policy whereby a very small percentage of reviews could be removed at the host's request, e.g. 1 in 50, if the host otherwise has a good score.
Thank you @Quincy for your efforts to help with this. It's very much appreciated. If you do happen to get any answers back on whether there is a policy for outlier reviews or not, that would be useful to know.
Thank you! Yes, it took a bit of effort to get there, but I'm glad I followed up otherwise I would have been disgruntled about it/wondering what went wrong with the stay and now can move on.
That is, unless the guest who recently left unexpectedly early leaves me 3* and then we are back to square one! 🙂
Dear @Huma0 really happy for good ending, but concerned about how Airbnb brakes a policy with back door argument. In the policy there's no option for guest to delete it's own review.
Warm Regards.
Thanks for your well wishes.
However, that's not true. Almost as long as I've been hosting, I've been aware that it is possible for someone to ask for their review to be removed. Please see here:
Perhaps they don't mention this on the main review policy document because they don't want it to happen too often, or it's just not a request that they get too often...
Also, I guess there are a lot of policy documents out there that supplement the main one in more detail.
I just noticed this one for the first time:
https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/548/airbnbs-dispute-moderation-for-reviews
Much like listing descriptions, sometimes they are set up that you have to click on the links to see the full story.
I had the same experience people don’t realize how important its for us that host the 5 Stars ⭐️ If we get a client that its never happy that always look for the little dark spot what can we do????and maybe hes place doesn’t even compare with the beautiful place we have rented him !!!!
Yes, it's tricky, but I think often it is Airbnb's fault rather than the guest's as they present 3* as good and 4* as very good, when we know that anything under 5* is problematic.
Many hosts have been complaining about this unfair disparity between how Airbnb communicates star ratings to guests and what it means to hosts for a very long time, and yet Airbnb ignores this, so I can only imagine that it's deliberate on their part, i.e. it's a way for them to keep us on our toes and to fear confronting a guest in any way (damages, breaking of house rules etc.) for fear of a retaliatory review.
After all, Airbnb makes most of its money from GUEST fees, not the host fees.