Responding to a bad review

[Fiona374]

Having hosted for 4 years, I have 33 excellent reviews and am a superhost. I have recently had a group of four with a pet who left the place in a big mess. During their stay they had a problem with ants and I made a generous reimbursement to compensate. When they left I discovered items missing (they admitted they had taken home by mistake) stains on the carpet, stains on every cushion, piece of bedlinen, full garbage bins, dog poo in the backyard, etc etc.

I asked them for some money (not nearly covering my costs of laundry, steam cleaning and replacement). They have given me a poor review (my first ever!) and I fear no-one will book again! Should I respond? If so, do I go into detail or make a simple statement such as "I hope on your journeys going forward you can learn to treat future hosts and their homes with greater respect. You are suited to hotel-style accommodation"  I don't want to sound over the top because I ignore a lot of dirtiness. I wrote a review to warn other hosts.

[Anonymous]

@Fiona374   If that is what you plan to write as your public response, it would be better to write nothing. Remember, the audience for a public response is prospective guests. It is not the appropriate place to be critical of the guest - you've already done that in your review. 

The guest's review comes across as a reasonable and fair account of his experience, rather than a typical revenge review. If he made any incorrect or misleading statements, you can use the response to address them. But the main thing people are going to be worried about is the ant problem - they're looking to see that you've attended to that rather than just blown it off as a bad review.

As a guest, I don't expect any host to have 100% flawless reviews, but I'm much more impressed by the hosts who take critical feedback on board and demonstrate a will to improve than by ones who seem vindictive about it. If I travel with my dog, I'm happy to pay a pet fee before check-in, but I steer clear of listings that threaten an extra fee for "excessive cleaning" without disclosing the amount or specifying what is considered excessive. Charges after checkout are always going to sour your guests on the experience and all but guarantee a bad review, so any steps you can take to avoid having to do that are worthwhile.

[Fiona374]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. You have made some very good points which I will take into account. I am remedying the ant problem. I passed on charges from my cleaner and to replace the bedlinen and pillows they took home. I could have worn the cost and not left a review but I understand other hosts have a desire to be warned. Perhaps I will try the pet fee prior to check in since people usually do save on kennel charges and like to have their pets with them. Thanks again for your valuable perspective.

[Anonymous]

@Fiona374   It's a shame that Airbnb doesn't yet have a way of incorporating pet fees into the booking form, but you can always charge it after a booking is confirmed with the Resolutions tool. 

For now, I think if you've remedied the ant problem, an update on the situation would be the one thing worth putting in the response.

[John1599]

@Fiona374  Fiona I sympathise with your distress. I too have had my first bad review in four years of AirBnb after forty one five star reviews from lovely guest groups many of whom we have formed friendships with since. This one was unusual for us in that it was four young guys from a far off country who were working here on a contract and not our more usual family type groups. Within three days of getting the key they had caused mayhem and I asked them to leave, but they refused, insisting on completing their three week stay. If anything their behaviour got worse after my complaint. I wasted a lot of time trying to get AirBnb to help but mostly I got tea and sympathy, but without the tea ! They compounded their sins by giving me a terrible review full of lies. Again I wasted too much time trying to get AirBnb to remove the damning revenge review. They wouldn’t ! So if I am to continue I must put this behind me and hope that future guests will see this one bad review for what it is…. Revenge.

But the feeling that I have been betrayed by AirBnb runs deep with their “hands off” attitude. Of course from their perspective the guest is king as it is their recurring business that keeps them in business and hosts, while also essential, are less important individually. Justice and fairness is not high on their priorities, and we as hosts must remember that, and make more self protective choices when we accept future bookings. In my case no more rowdy, hard drinking, unsupervised, not yet housetrained and disrespectful young males, even if this means I refuse some good guys .

[Huma0]

@John1599 

Sorry that this happened to you. Unfortunately, Airbnb have no interest in removing revenge reviews and they really don't care if the author is lying:

"Airbnb doesn’t mediate disputes concerning the truth of reviews."

So, if you tried to get the review removed because it's a fabrication I am not surprised that CS wouldn't do it, unfair as that is. They will tell you that it is "the guest's experience" even if, as in your case, the person writing it didn't even stay there!

However, under the section about relevance, the review policy also states that a review could be removed if it contains 

• Profanity, name-calling, and assumptions about a person’s character or personality

It's probably a long shot, and it sounds like you haves wasted enough time trying to get this review removed, but the review does contain a personal comment about you being "annoying" so in theory this falls into the above category. Getting an Airbnb rep to see that though would be another matter.

[John1599]

@Huma0 Yeah, I drew their attention to that comment that I was “ difficult” and “annoying” and to the review not having been authored by any of the four young men who actually were my guests also that the review was definitely “biased” by the fact that they were annoyed by being asked to leave by me after three days out of their three week booking !

But I obviously speak a different version of the Queens English as the ambassador considered that the perceived insults “ were in the context of their review “ and therefore could not be viewed as defamatory ! Well I never ! All three of these are given in AirBnb’s own rule book as possible reasons why a review could be removed. If I was cynical I could be forgiven for thinking the ambassador was carrying out her political brief with due regard to my lowly position as a mere Superhost with an unblemished four year history and my adversary was the accommodation manager of an engineering company with one hundred workers that were regular users of AirBnb in several European countries where they were stationed for up to monthly stays. To upset this lady would not be in their interests I would guess. So I am resigned to having to suffer on.  I confess to having been a little naively  in expecting AirBnb to see it for what it was, revenge for calling out her colleagues loutish behaviour and their constant interference with the central heating controls over riding the agreed schedule set on my remote app. Even inadvertently turned the heat off for days and then complained I had left them to freeze in my cold house.  This cost me the price of an emergency plumber to discover what had really happened.  They invaded the clearly signed Private upper floor and took a fancy to a few of my Fosters pint glasses when leaving, filled four large wheelie bins to overflowing in their twenty one days occupancy. The list is endless but then to conjure up this vicious assassination of me was the straw that broke… etc. I shouldn’t let it get to me but I take pride in giving my guests much more than they expect and other than these rough types it has always been appreciated and acknowledged by previous guests. Sorry for the rant but if nothing else it helps me get them…. and AirBnb’s narrow sense of “support”, out of my system.

The odd thing was that after eleven days of investigating my complaint and being passed through six ambassadors AirBnb agreed that my guests had earned the right to be ejected on the next day, but as their delay had almost taken us to their scheduled checkout I didn’t take the nuclear option. I think that AirBnb operate a cell system where one section does not communicate to the others ?

[Bruce-And-Jane0]

This happened to us also so I left a very accurate review. The young man then found every possible platform to bash us. He wrote the most scathing negative reviews on every site he could find. 

[Sarah977]

@Fiona374  Responses to reviews appear on your review page, not the guests'. The guest may never see the response you left, so you don't address the guest in a response, unless the response is to a good review and you are just thanking the guest for staying.  They will be read by future guests and should be used to correct or clarify complaints in the review.

So if a guest has truly lied as revenge for being taken to task for breaking house rules, etc, rather than just expressed some displeasure with something, a response should be in the third person- as in "This is a revenge review given in retaliation for this guest being told several times that they need to respect the house rules, which were ignored. Please refer to our other reviews for an accurate picture of our guests' experiences when staying with us."

And if they mention something valid, use the response to let future guests know that you have corrected the issue- "Unfortunately the water heater was malfunctioning during this guest's stay, for which we apologize. Had we been informed right away, we would have sent a repair person. The problem has been fixed now."

[Fiona374]

Thanks Sarah for taking the time to respond to my question. Writing in third person is a great idea since it is future guests that we are addressing. It's always a fine balance - hard to describe how much mess and damage a guest can do without appearing to be a clean freak. I hope my response is measured. I'm sick of worrying about it now! Thanks again

Fiona

[Beth4406]

I so need some advice about this.

I'm a new airbnb host, though I did join briefly back in 2016, to find that my daily workload didn't allow for giving full attention to guests. However, I did receive a glowing review from that period.

After starting up again, I hosted my first guest a few days ago. She requested a stay for one, and then changed that to two, once we began messaging and i realized her 11 year-old daughter would be accompanying her. She arrived in a camper van that had doodads glued all over it, with a hoarder's supply of more doodads jammed in the cab and camper. She was quite a free spirit, she informed me, adding that her ex-husband was summoning her to court to claim full custody of their daughter. But she'd written a letter to the judge during this pre-trial stage, explaining why she'd pulled her daughter out of school and was traveling around the country with her. Sort of a free-spirit school, I gathered. She also shared that she 'used to be a horrible alcoholic.' I asked if she was in the AA program. No, she said, that hadn't worked for her. Apparently she'd simply swapped the addiction to alcohol to the love of affixing doodads on doodads.

She began moving her collection of those into the apartment, and spent the first day jamming the place with them. For some inexplicable reason, she invited me in, and I noticed brown stains on the wall-to-wall carpet. Yes, she giggled, she'd tripped while carrying the coffee pot from the kitchen area to the couch. No big deal.

She invited a guy friend over, and he wound up spending the night. Meanwhile, I noticed that her camper van was leaking oil like crazy. Her parking area in the driveway would have to be pressure-cleaned. She responded to my concern about that by sending message after message, long epistles that detailed her childhood sexual abuse, the unfairness of the custody battle, the shallow aspect of life in general, as lived by people other than the free-spirited types. And finally, after I hadn't responded to those, a real chiller of a message detailing my abject standing as a decent human being.

Only one more day to go, I thought, though I did plan to register a complaint against her as soon as the oil-leaker rumbled out of the driveway.

She worked throughout the last night and morning hauling her boxes of doodads back to the vehicle. Quite a bit of junk was left in the apartment, as well as a filled heavy-duty leaf bag of souring remnants of fast-food meals. Many of my things were missing-- forks from the matching silver service set, the kitchen-scissors from set of knives in the butcher-block holder, books from the bookshelf,  matching towels from the bath. The embroidered kitchen towels were stained badly. The bed cover had a blotch of some sort of glue. The frig was full of leftover food.  The interior of the microwave was splattered with what appeared to be a combination of spaghetti sauce and meat fat. The exterior patio grill was covered with grease from the guy friend's go at making hamburgers.

I've communicated with the dispute department at airbnb, and initially, it looked like this guest would be banned from the service. There were a few overt threats in her messages to me. As well as plentiful evidence of emotional instability. But yesterday one of the leaders of the dispute department called to let me know that this guest is still allowed to write a review of her stay here.  Of course, I would be allowed to dispute a negative review, if it turned out to be so.

For the life of me, I can't understand that reasoning. And it sounded like the ban, which we had discussed earlier, was now simply a figment of my imagination. The guest was still being referred to as an airbnb guest, with the full rights of normal guests. "But she isn't normal," I pointed out. "You've  read her messages. How can anyone consider them 'normal'?  Nevermind the damage she'd done to my property.

This morning I received a message from the dispute department. The case is now closed. All I can do is pray that this woman doesn't take up her poison pen again and trash me as a host, for prospective guests to read.

If any of you have the least idea of what I can do from here, please let me know.

Thank you,

Beth McKee

Grand Junction, CO

[Fiona374]

Dear Beth

I'm sorry you have had such a bad experience. I can tell you from my hosting that Airbnb will NOT back you up.

Hosts ask that you write a review to warn them of such a guest but once your review hits she will be reminded and most likely write a retaliatory review. Even if you respond (mostly directing your polite words to future guests) your ratings will be affected. I had 34 great reviews, 1 poor guest, ratings dropped and I lost my superhost status.

Once you get more guests and reviews, if she does review, her review will drop out of sight. I also read a tip that hosts should respond to every review which pads the whole lot out!

Try to stain proof your furnishings (cover sofas) and put anything you love away.

Happy to Dm if you need further help.

Best wishes

Fiona

[Colleen253]

@Beth4406 Airbnb CS is unreliable, as you've now discovered. All you can do is review this nightmare, to help stop her from terrorizing others. Compose your review, but wait until the very last minute, literally, to post it. That will avoid trggering one in return. Although this sounds like the type who won't even have it together enough to do one for you anyway. Also report her once you've done that. 

[Anna11818]

New to Airbnb but studied up on how to be a supervisor and get five star reviews by providing excellent cleaning, customer service, amenities, ect. First guest was 5star. Before my 2nd guest ( 4 guys) arrive I hired a professional cleaning crew. I was home during the whole 4 hour cleaning and they did an immaculate job!  My guest just left me a review saying my home was “not that clean.” They the left my home with many permanent stains to the towels, kitchen items, stove now extremely hard to clean and worse they left broken class in the bedroom , took 2 throw blankets. It’s kind of petty stuff that I was going to just forget about until I got the bad review of the cleaning which is unexplainable. Anyway tip if you didn’t know- I found out about AR review where you can see all guest reviews of hosts before you let them stay in your home. If someone chronically gives bad reviews you can say no to them, I don’t think it’s fair to host them if you give your hard time to making things perfect only to be put down by someone extremely picky. Although this will effect whether u want to instant book vs screen guests.