Lack of response by Airbnb Support!

[KevinandAnnie0]

There was a huge party in our home in January (despite a city-wide lock down). During the party, I reached out to Airbnb Support to open a ticket, and we received complaints from the neighbours. We also had our property damaged. We sent videos of the entrance (showing people coming and going, with speakers in bags), as well as cars pulling up in the middle of the night.

Post-party, the guests left a poor, inaccurate review that is still up, because we were trying to reach them. We're superhosts, and have been receiving consistent 5-star reviews up until this point. It's been months, and Airbnb has still not given us a proper response. Our support person has gone MIA since the beginning of the month, despite asking for a detailed breakdown of events. It has been such a frustrating experience and wanted to see if hosts from the community had any possible solutions. 

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@KevinandAnnie0 Try approaching them via Twitter. The policy is clear - in the event of a party Airbnb may remove the guests review. You never know you may get lucky.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@KevinandAnnie0 Any reason why you didn't review this guest?

[KevinandAnnie0]

Thinking back perhaps it was the wrong call. But they're local guests looking for a place to party. They know where we live and we didn't want any retaliation in escalating the situation publicly. We vet every request, but this time they outright lied.

[Helen3]

Do you have cctv at your listing . If not then do install this if you are hosting remotely so you can monitor your listing and then you'll be able to shut down parties before they start, rather them an rely on your neighbours alerting you. 

you say you vet guests so did a local booking not make you query the booking.

you leave reviews as much for future hosts as you do for guests - so please always leave an honest review 

these guests don't know where you live they just know where your STR is. 

[KevinandAnnie0]

We do, we have a camera at the entrance. We attempted to "shut down the party" at 3am, except calls / Airbnb messages to the guest went answered, and as a woman by myself at the time, didn't want to physically confront them. Looking back, should have called the police to break it up. However, I didn't want to make a huge deal in the community in the middle of the night. Airbnb phone support also advised to only call if I was being personally threatened. I'll just count as my bad luck for the party, but the post-party "support" has just been ridiculous.

[KevinandAnnie0]

Yes, definitely queried the booking. But as I mentioned before, they outright lied. A "quiet night with girls" turned into much more than that. Question is what else we can do about the review at this point.

[Sarah977]

@KevinandAnnie0  I wouldn't worry about that review at all. It's a total outlier among your pages of good reviews. And when guests go on a long rant like that, with a laundry list of complaints that no other guests have had, coupled with the "they must be racist" go-to that a some guests of color will use to distract from their bad behavior, it just makes the guest look bad, not you. 

Guests are not dummies who believe every review they read. It's obvious that when a host has pages of great reviews, that the outlier isn't true. It's just like looking at a guest's reviews. If a guest has 20 reviews saying they were lovely guests who left the place spotless, would you believe one outlier review that said they were terrible guests who left the place filthy? I would assume the host either mixed up the guest they were reviewing (which occasionally happens if they have more than one listing and high turnover), was a fusspot host who expects guests to leave the place totally immaculate, or had reason to believe the guest would leave a bad review, because in fact the host is  a bad  and defensive one, so decided to make something up about the guest (Yes, there are some bad hosts out there who do things like that).

If you only had a handful of reviews, then that review would be troubling, but as you have so many, it's really no big deal. Any guest who would focus on that review and take it at face value is probably not a guest you want, anyway.

[Sarah977]

@KevinandAnnie0  I have often read hosts saying they didn't leave a review for bad guests out of fear of retaliation. But I have never heard of that actually happening. They aren't going to come back and vandalize the house or burn it down over a bad review.

If you really don't want to be specific in the review, at least leave a coded review other hosts will probably understand and which the guests likely won't. Like "One night booking from locals. Never again."

[Mark116]

@Sarah977  I don't know, people do crazy things these days, even if it was unlikely, it is still possible.  For us, since we actually live on site, so guest know exactly where we live, we have definitely gone easy on some guests, who were also 'local' for the same reason.  Fear of retaliation.