Retaliation review by a guest due to booking the wrong geographical location

[Yuki-and-Charlie0]

Today we got our 2000th review! 

Quite a milestone for our family, my wife and son manage a handful of short term rentals.

We have an average rating of 4.97/5 with Superhost on every listing, since 2018. Not once losing Superhost. 

Funny how things happen but our 2000th review happens to be our worst review by far.

a 1 star review in all categories.

This guest accused us of incorrectly advertising the location of the property. 

saying that nowhere on the listing did we post the location (address) or name of the resort.

This is obviously not true as it’s clearly stated in multiple spots on the listing. And geolocation.

We also include it in multiple message to the guest in our check in information.

What a horrible experience seeing that was… I felt that it wasn’t okay and shouldn’t be allowed…

Well I called the dreaded Airbnb Superhost helpline and spoke with someone from the overseas call centre. 

Juliet with Airbnb told me that it’s Airbnb policy to review the review for 24 hours, and also review the private messages and message chat.  
That’s stressful but fine, I don’t think that’s actually the policy but I didnt overly mind. She didn’t seem to quite understand what I was saying and I think she wanted to speak with her supervisor to find out what the policy was.

I always find incredible difficulty contacting the Superhost support staff in any situation. I’ve never once actually had help from Airbnb support so I dread calling them. It’s always a terrible experience. And it’s a emergency last resort calling Airbnb because I always get some copied and pasted message that never really makes sense.

Roughly 2 hours later I receive a message stating she is going off shift and she will be unavailable for two days and if I have any questions to contact Airbnb/help…. Oh boy.. here we go.

like…? Seriously….?

It just feels like such a slap in the face. This is incredibly stressful for us. Our life is hosting and I feel like we should have some minimal level of support from the Superhost team. But I knew this would happen..

My message to her was.

Juliet… in our conversation that you told me was recorded you needed 24 hours to review this case. Which I know isn’t actually policy. (Something that her supervisor confirmed to me isn’t policy in a call I made after this) and that you would get back to me at or before those 24 hours. I was fine with that because she clearly had no idea what to do and needed to reach out for help. Everyone is learning, especially everyone at Airbnb support.

To be told then that she was going off shift and wanted me to wait 2 days for her even come back to this case was enormously frustrating. 

Not ten minutes after I sent the above message she replied to me with another copied and pasted message saying that there was no violation to the review and guests are allowed to post a review publicly, privately and in the Airbnb chat that clearly state the listing was incorrectly advertised for location. (Which is absolutely not the case) and that it doesn’t violate for biases, irrelevance or contract. Essentially there wasn’t any hate messages so it was allowed.

To me that seems wrong, Superhosts, hosts, shouldn’t be held hostage in situations where guests make mistakes booking a suite and realize it hours after check in time. 
Then hold us hostage to that.

To me this screams of irrelevance and slander. Which are part of the policy. 

I would love someone’s opinion on this and hopefully an ambassador to review my case. 

Our family has hosted roughly 15,000 guests to date. Leaving them with incredible experiences and positive memories and we as a family plan on continuing to do so for years to come. I just wish we had more support from Airbnb. I feel like sometimes we are nearly worthless to Airbnb.

I think hosts deserve more from Airbnb than what we are currently getting from the support department. 

It pains me to write this but I feel like I must.

[Kate867]

@Yuki-and-Charlie0   I do sympathise with you.  I have had to message and speak to customer support on a few occasions and have dreaded it every time for the very reasons you have outlined.  Fortunately I have always had a positive result, however you do have to work your way through the process, get passed between different members of the support team, get the inevitable ‘going off shift for 72 hours’ (time buying exercise) and all littered with the extremely polite flowery platitudes.   I suspect that the call centres have quite a high turnover of staff and a distinct lack of training which simply exacerbates the problems for both Hosts and Guests.

Guests are notorious for not reading listings properly prior to booking and then complaining/reviewing based on the absence of things that you never listed in the first place, or on the location (which they chose) amongst many other things.  It is incredibly frustrating at times.  We had a guest 6’6” tall complain because he bumped his head on a low beam.  Our cottage is 450 years old and the photos clearly show low beamed ceilings.  The review remains in place because I simply could not face the inevitable battle to get it removed.  However, the guest that complained about the lack of a Hot Tub, Unicorn, Rose petal strewn red carpet and numerous other missing and non-listed amenities did get his review removed, not because of his complaints about missing amenities but because he actually admitted in his review that he had not read the full listing details.  

Airbnb expect both guests and hosts to be honest and accurate in their reviews and understandably, unless a review violates their content policy, are reluctant to try and arbitrate.  However, in your situation a simple quick glance at your listing should prove to them that the bad review was given because the Guest was negligent and did not fully read all the details.

Their negative review will get ‘buried’ amongst all your other excellent ones in due course and those few potential guests that do actually find it will see it for what it is, a guest who did not bother to read.

[Gwen386]

@Yuki-and-Charlie0 First congratulations on 2K reviews and for consistently holding your super host badge. It’s an amazing and wonderful accomplishment. 

And, for this outstanding accomplishment, I implore you to not expend a lot of energy focusing on the 1 star review and the lackadaisical support from AirBnB staff, but know that the majority of guests will not give a hill-of-beans of what one guest says out of thousands.

When I read reviews on anything I purchase, one low review is not the decision maker for me. I take everything in its totality. So, honestly, it’s going to be okay. Just rejoice in your accomplishment. And don’t let this one guest’s unjust review rent space in your head. In the scheme of things, it’s not worth it. 

Again, congrats on this milestone. 

[Huma0]

@Yuki-and-Charlie0 

I know this is very disappointing and I would also be very annoyed. However, I really had to scroll down several pages of wonderful reviews before getting to the one you mentioned. You host a lot of guests and this review is already buried. Even guests who take the time to read so many reviews would not pay attention to this one. 

Although I can see why it's worth a shot, I doubt you'll have luck getting the review removed because it doesn't mention anything about the location. Even if the review is untrue (retaliatory due to refusal of refund), it doesn't violate any of the content policies. 

I once had a guest who marked me down for not being informed of something and mentioned this in her review. This particular thing was not only mentioned several times on the listing, but in three messages to her before she booked. I contacted the guest to point this out and she said she would change her review. However, when I explained she couldn't change it, only ask CS to remove it, she became angry and told me to stop bothering her as she was on holiday. So, I called CS and they told me it couldn't be removed because it was "the guest's experience". I explained to them again that, no, it was not the guest's experience to be not told about something when they were told about something. That is not the guest's experience, that is the guest's mistake and that is 100% provable. They didn't care. They just would not remove it. The review policy even has a clause in it saying they will not remove reviews for being inaccurate.

On the other hand, if your guest threatened to leave a bad review if you did not refund him and you have this in writing, then that is a strong reason to get Airbnb to remove the review and ratings as extortion is 100% against Airbnb's policies. If you have this, I would go back to Airbnb and argue with them on this point, rather than whether the review is accurate or not.