Review NOT about the space

[Laura2592]

My friend got the following review which ABB has not taken down and the attendant 3s across the board on the stay. Thought I would post to get the host community thoughts. She is annoyed but doesn't want to spend more effort with ABB.

"We arrived late at night and were still shocked at how much traffic we encountered but were still able to park somewhat nearby. Not a lot of restaurants we could visit in the immediate vicinity due to lack of dietary options. There was flooding due to rains at one point during our stay and the host only provided one large umbrella. Lots of crowds due to a festival we were not aware of. The neighbors across the street were noisy."

Private feedback: "Nice space. The city isn't for us and we will cross it off the list."

So there isn't a single thing mentioned about the space. The umbrella issue has been corrected as apparently a guest walked off with the additional one (space has capacity of 2 and normally my friend leaves 2 large golf umbrellas.)

The guest did not ask about any restaurants for their dietary restrictions, so my friend does not have any idea what they might have been. Her guidebook lists places nearby with vegetarian/vegan options but she doesn't break it down beyond that. They did not research what might be happening in the location during their stay. My friend says there was rain but no flooding (again see umbrella issue.) And certainly there is no controlling what the neighbors do across the street but they are not traditionally "noisy." There is no dedicated parking but street parking is typically easy to get and that is all spelled out in the listing. The guests said not a word during their stay-- older couple who had never used ABB previously.

Would you respond to this review? Continue to try to get it removed because its not relevant? Contact the guests? 

[Richard531]

@Mark116  You gave me a great laugh today!  Oh man, so funny!  

If you're gonna go granny chic, go ALL IN!  Maximalism.  LOL!  Chinoiserie.  LOL!  

So funny!  

[Laura2592]

I successfully had one review removed and it took the stars with it, @Ann72 .

[Huma0]

@Ann72 

Yeah, they lie about that. They CAN remove the ratings as well. I once had a review and the ratings removed because it was a load of nonsense and clearly a retaliatory review after the guests caused damages (which I never even asked to be reimbursed for) and were brought up on cleanliness issues and other house rules.

Okay, so those days might be over as blatant and provable lies are no longer a valid excuse for removing a review, but, more recently a guest asked Airbnb to remove her review and the ratings were removed also. I specifically checked this with the rep because the review itself was nice, but the rating was 3*. Apparently, she didn't realise that 3* was bad and she was very happy to have it removed, but there was no point if the review was removed and the ratings stayed. 

The rep assured me that both the review and the ratings would be removed and that is what happened. This was in December.

[Vanessa1676]

I was told today by CS that they were removing a customer’s reviews, with the 1 star, because it was so outrageous. I think it might depend on who you work with at CS as to how fast it gets addressed and to what extent, unfortunately.

[Ann72]

@Laura2592 @Huma0 @Mark116  Thought you might be interested in an exchange between a guest and CS about a review removed for irrelevancy.  Not necessarily taking the guest's side here but thought it relevant to our discussion:  https://imgur.com/a/MBy2V1f

[Laura2592]

@Ann72  this is unbelievable to me and makes me despair of ever going back to hosting on ABB. So this person left a negative review because the walls were "too thin" and you could hear people enjoying the pool at a shared complex? Thank heavens ABB removed it! The requirements for a host to provide an accommodation that meets every travelers individual list of idiosyncratic requirements and personal history (I mean had this guest even been in an apartment before?) is just too much for me to think about. It wouldn't be so bad if your income wasn't tied to this moronic level of "guess what I'm thinking" entitlement. 

[Ann72]

Ugh @Laura2592 I hear you.  I used to be able to say that 99.9% of my guests were great - now it's down to about 85%.  Recent guest was very abrupt in every communication.  Checked out and although gave 5 overall, had a long list of recommendations in the private feedback.  Including - "a dish towel would be nice."  Sent her a screenshot of the house manual detailing where the dish towels were and a picture of the drawer with a stack of dish towels in it.  Instead of saying, "oops, my bad," she went on a rant about how  she had read the entire listing and the entire house manual, how it was wrong of me to be so "aggressive" with a paying guest, and how it was a minor point.  (In which case, why mention it?)

In her review she noted two things:  Better for couples, and an hour from Acadia.  And here is a screenshot of the first few lines of my listing:

 

Yeah, she read every word of the listing.

[Huma0]

@Ann72 

That's interesting, but impossible to tell whether the review should have been removed or not without having read it. She also doesn't specify what the positive reviews that mentioned the other tenants actually said about them, so again, not sure if she had a valid argument there.

I suspect that the guest was probably not suited to a shared listing, but who knows? Perhaps the noise was intolerable and she asked the host to talk to the other tenants. Sounds more like she just complained about it in her review. I can see why it's irrelevant to complain about something completely outside of a host's control.

I've stayed in a lot of hotels, and even in 5* hotels, the walls can sometimes be very thin and you can hear people in other rooms, watching TV, flushing toilets etc. I've never complained about that as I think it's pretty normal and what exactly are the staff supposed to do about it?

The only time I called reception about noise was when a group of people were partying next door and in the hallway outside the room and making a complete racket at 3am. I was on a work trip so it was super annoying. When I realised that they had no plans to quieten down, I called reception and they sent someone up to tell the guests to keep the noise down. If I had not asked them, would it have been fair of me to leave a bad review for the hotel because of other guests' behaviour? The receptionist wouldn't have known about it unless I or another guest had told him. Likewise, the host wouldn't have know that people were making unreasonable noise by the pool if he/she was off site and never told.

[Laura2592]

What actually happens:

Guest- The walls are too thin! I can hear the neighbors. 

Host - (deep internal sigh ) Sorry you were disturbed. I do my best to describe the accommodations accurately and appreciate your feedback. I'll be happy to modify the listing information if I can make it more clear that this is a shared wall space.

What guests apparently want to happen:

Guest- The walls are too thin!.

Host- OMG! I'm SO SORRY you were inconvenienced in any way! I have started demolition on the entire condo complex and we are rebuilding from the ground up with soundproofing we picked up from a sale at a Russian prison. It WORKS. You won't even be able to call to one another from another room! I'm inviting you back next year to try it out at a very deep discount. Of course we have had to relocate all the residents in the building while the demolition and construction is going on,  and I'm having to file bankruptcy to fund this but that's not a problem if it means that you continue to use Airbnb!

@Ann72 @Mark116 @Huma0 

[Ann72]

Agreed @Huma0 but the point was that CS firmly took down an irrelevant review in this case but not in the case of @Laura2592's friend.

[Huma0]

@Ann72 

Oh yes, for sure CS decisions are totally erratic. 

In my experience, if you don't get the result you want (and you know you are supported by Airbnb policy), the best thing to do is either relentlessly quote back the policy to CS, or just give up and then try again with another rep.

I've actually told a rep that I'm going to hang up the phone and call again to speak to someone else because she doesn't appear to be familiar with Airbnb policy. She was offended of course, but I'd wasted enough time trying to explain policy to her. I called again and the next rep totally understood and sorted the problem in minutes.

[Mark116]

@Laura2592  It shows again how Airbnb customer service is Russian roulette.  I think we have all seen reviews that were more irrelevant than saying the walls were so thin you could hear everything happening outside at the pool...that were not removed.  This guest sounds like a nightmare and I hope she does never book with Airbnb again, but this review seemed pretty marginal.  Compared to the review of your friend's listing, which didn't mention anything at all about the listing itself, this one is definitely at least more relevant.