Is it worth it to leave a negative review about a guest after the guest review is removed?

[Vanessa1676]

We had a guest leave us our first nasty review. I posted about her experience and behavior in a previous post. As she warned in her message to me, she did indeed leave a negative, 1 star review when she did not get a full refund. I contacted AIrBnb who looked at her review and then took it down, along with the 1 star. However, unbeknownst to me, her review was visible for several days - I thought the guest reviews weren't posted until I wrote one as well, but that isn't true.

(Nothing that went down was truly terrible: it was a reservation for herself and a child, she brought extra teenage kids, then left them all in our guest suite while she went out. We live in the house full time, and our listing is very clear about that. The kids got loud, I called, messaged and finally walked over when I got no response, only to discover the adult was gone and the three kids were unsupervised. I asked the only adult on the reservation to return to the property via message since she was not answering her phone. She came back, collected the kids and left at about 9pm.)

She has two positive reviews from previous hosts - and I don't want to leave a negative one, but our experience was really upsetting for me due to her being so mean. And her version of events differs from what actually happened. I also have zero interest in her being able to respond to me.

Should I just let it go? Based on her 2 previous hosts she was a good guest - I think she chose a property that wasn't a good fit this time.

[Enri1804]

@Vanessa1676  IMO you should write a short fact based review. I’ve let things go before but as some hosts have told me, if you don’t write it, then you are not letting other hosts know this person is a problem. As a host, I would want to know about any potential guest who: broke rules, smoked, caused damage, brought extra people, brought unapproved pet, left kids unsupervised, or threatened to write bad review if no refund. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Vanessa1676 If the guest's review was posted without you leaving one then you are outside the 14 day review period so it is too late to review her

[Vanessa1676]

@Mike-And-Jane0 no, the guest just left 6 days ago. I still have 8 days left to leave a review. I had no idea the guest reviews were published immediately - whether or not the host posted a review! 

[Helen744]

@Vanessa1676 they are not ,they may have been available to the rep but should not have been available publicly. How did you find it ?I am not sure that you can leave a review at all if hers has been removed. If you can then go ahead , bearing in mind that other hosts can read between the lines and do not need you to spell it out ,so keep it simple.Say very clearly that the original bookee'appeared ' to be an adult making a' baby sitting arrangement and young 'unknown people were left in the home  unsupervised by the booking adult'. This is against all Airbnb rules and caused some upset. The guest was secretive and seemed to think this was okay and angry when told this was not okay . Then condense it . Good luck but in future check who is coming to your place well before they arrive and if you are so close you really should be meeting every guest , also add in the review that you 'do not recommend this guest' in fact clearly stating this may be enough , with low stars for house rules ,communication and generally overall H

[Mark116]

@Vanessa1676  They're not, it must have been a glitch.  I'm not sure why you don't want to leave an honest review here, this person came to your property, brought more than the allowable number of guests, and left unsupervised minors alone, who were loud.  She also appears to be vindicative.  Wouldn't you have preferred to have a warning from other hosts so you could have have said no to hosting her?

You can say something that is fairly neutral, like XX wasn't a good fit for our space.  She had trouble following our capacity rules and there were other issues related to her stay.  You could add you wouldn't recommend her if you want or not.

[Vanessa1676]

@Mark116 I think neutral makes sense I just worry she will continue to harass me on social media. But yes, I think it’s fair to let other hosts know.

[Kristina46]

I once had a guest make big threats after I left a very honest review. It was all hot air. They might be mad for a while but will get over it. It's easier for guests to make new accounts than hosts. I would just leave the review she deserves and let the chips fall where they may. 

[Caroline2151]

That is something I thought about too! Its not at all the same situation for someone that hosted like me for years and now if i get a bad egg and she would put me down I will absolutely call to have that removed. I really, really dont like leaving bad reviews so even i had someone here getting high i just said that she was ok, kindof. I think for me it was an unqritten rule to at least be decent, since we lived togheter but what i noticed is not all guest think like me and they can complain about wierd things and many put down I hava a small room when the room size is absolutely visible on my site! I have no idea why they would write that negative things after telling to my face they are all good, and i dont like that kind of behaviour... for me its feels a couple of years ago my guests were all very nice and now i had one good, one bad, one bad and so on... I do trust air bnb- to see that if i have 4.5 stars and someone gets kicked out for smoking and beeing disrespectful and threatening to me they will let me take down that review. I do not know if they will heko me refund though since its a first so will see. But hopefully air bnb understand it affects host more! and I feel If i get payed I will leave her alone and hopefully she will thibk twice next time since she wanted to be awake in the night and my house rules said 22, she told me i was beeing not at all like the other places... I even told in an extra e-mail are you sure 22 is ok with you and when she comes she wont obey... very ennoying but she will say like that, that i am too strict and I would not want that on my site when it is my rules that i also explained several times. I think air bnb should consider and hopefully does that we as host need our reviews to be accurate, not writted my mad guests. 

/Caroline

[Kelly149]

@Vanessa1676  That would be really odd for a guest review to be visible on your listing prior to the 14days ending. So, to be clear, you saw the guest review & stars published on your listing??

Not just the “Sue has written a review” email??

and then after you saw her review on your listing, you were able to get CS to take it down? And you’ve still not reviewed this guest?

[Vanessa1676]

@Kelly149  I did not see the review - I thought I had 14 days after they checked out before it would appear as long as I didn’t review her, and didn’t think about it. But when I got the email saying the guest had left a review (considering she had threatened to give me one star if I didn’t give her a refund) I called CS to have them look at it. The agent said that it had been published and visible to others, but that they had deleted it and would remove the 1 star rating as well. I said “OH MY GOD PEOPLE COULD SEE IT?!” And she said yes, but that it was now deleted since I reported it. Within an hour we got a new booking after several days of no bookings, so I suspect that it was visible. But to be clear - I never saw her review with my own eyes (and never looked for it or asked anyone else to look). I still have 8 days to write her a review.

[Kelly149]

@Vanessa1676  My guess is that CS didn’t know the difference between SHE could see it vs EVERYONE could see it. 

that’s a weird glitch for sure if she was right. But I doubt it. And she should have deleted your ability to review the guest after telling you what the guest wrote & starred bc reviews are supposed to be blind. But she may not have known that either. CS is a crapshoot these days. 

[Vanessa1676]

@Kelly149  I’m glad it’s a glitch or misunderstanding and not how it usually works! The CS rep gave me zero information about the review that was written other than that it was removed because it did not have anything to do with my listing, and that I didn’t need to worry about the one star because that would be removed as well. I had a full negative review from the guest in my guestbook here at the house so I had a pretty good idea of what she would write online 😞 and the guest told me specifically that the review would be negative so CS definitely wasn’t giving anything away haha.

[Huma0]

@Vanessa1676 

Every time you mention this woman's behaviour and attitude, you re-confirm that this is someone that neither I nor many other hosts would ever want as a guest. Please leave an honest review. Just don't make it personal. @Mark116 's suggestion is good. Just relate the facts in a succinct and professional way.

What did she end up writing in the guest book, by the way?

[Caroline2151]

Its good they took that away for you! its really insane that mad guest would be allowed to do that but i guess its a system glitch then dont know who checked out normally or who got thrown out, so you have to report it manually it seems. Im so grateful for all my good reviews, that sounds really hard..