Beware of Review Errors

[Wendy-and-Frank0]

Just got a review where I got four stars on Accuracy and four stars on Cleaning.

Wrote to the guest and asked him where the inaccuracies were so I could fix it.

He had no idea what I was talking about.

He gave me five stars overall.  He said he did five stars on the other categories and doesn't think he skipped any of those but it appears he did:  accuracy and cleaning.  He doesn't remember seeing those.

Is it possible that if they don't answer, Air BNB defaults to less-than-five rating?  I trust this guy to be telling me the truth 100%.  He's a first-timer.

He offered to fix it but there's no way to do that now.

There's also a glitch and ABB via Twitter is helping me:  my place shows up as accepting pets when you choose the pets filter even thought it's clearly stated (and checked) that this isn't suitable for pets.  If there's a glitch THERE, could there be a glitch in REVIEWS?

Just throwing this out there.... God only knows how many bad feelings we harbor as hosts thinking guests are less-than-pleased when it's quite possible that it's a technical thing.

[Jim-and-Marcia0]

I've had two guests whose ratings showed 5 stars on each specific category, but a 4 star on the Overall category (the most important rating). Their naratives were very positive and nothing negative was noted in either the public review or private review. I asked Airbnb customer support about it and they were puzzled as to why a customer would do that. Could it be they clicked the wrong star accidentally? Could it be they chose a place that just wasn't exactly what they were looking for, no fault of the host, and so their satisfaction overall was less than stellar? Who knows! Even if the guest made a mistake and wanted to correct it, the Airbnb rep said it couldn't be changed. Because of so many known problems, gliches and crazy things that happen with the Airbnb platform, I have my doubts.  This kind of thing does erode one's trust. There could be errors with the review system, but we may never know for sure.

[Robin4]

@Wendy-and-Frank0 @Jim-and-Marcia0

Hi ya Wendy, exactly the same thing happened to me about 2 months ago! The guest swears black and blue she gave a straight 5 stars along with a nice review all the way, but the star rating showed up as 4 overall! Initially I just thought she was a bit 'dippy' because she gushed about how good it had been, but in my review response I thanked her for her lovely words and said she would be welcome again any time and maybe next time we could snag that 5 star....and quick as a flash she messaged back wanting to know what I meant by my last statement! She was adamant she checked nothing but 5 stars....so there you go!

Wendy I don't like getting a 4 star when it's not my fault but, I take it infinitely harder when it is conclusively and demonstrably someone elses fault.

If the platform places such importance on stars and stats it has an absolute duty to make sure they are right.

Sorry Wendy, I feel for you, I know just how hard you try...your reviews just ooze class. If I see this happen again I will want to know why!....

Marcia, maybe we should keep a record of these occurences, just on this thread we currently have 4 and I would suggest this is maybe the tip of the iceberg! I would hate to see someone dudded of their superhost status because of some internal programing glitch!

Cheers.....Rob

[Ellie36]

I seem to have a glich in my calendar which has reset itself twice, maybe three times. I am impressed that you seem to have been able to get hold of some customer relations as I do not know how to get in touch to query what has happened to me, but I had to cancel the one visitor who has tried to book as the calendar was showing incorrectly my availability. I had set it to one week and it was showing two month's worth of availability instead. 

[Wendy-and-Frank0]

@Ellie36, AirBNBHelp on Twitter is the only way I've gotten help.  And it's FAST!

[Amy38]

Doesnt everyone have 2 days to edit a review?  Thats what the site says.  Maybe you can catch this in time.

[Steve143]

Hello @Amy38,

You get up to 48 hours or until the other party leaves their review, whichever is sooner.

As @Wendy-and-Frank0 can see the review it means that both she and the guest have left reviews so it's too late for her guest to change it.

Steve.

[Yiannis5]

This happened to me on my very first review. My guest was very greatful that I could host his family of 7 at 30mins notice and confirmed his intention was to award me 5-stars which he did for every category except house rules. He didn't give any score for this category and my overall star rating was dragged down to 3-stars even though every single category was rated 5. This is where I think airbnb is a bit useless and their system is flawed as they don't allow any changes when the guest clearly states they made a technical error.

On top of that I have to suffer emails from airbnb threatening to remove my listing as my score is too low.

Clearly this is not well thought out at all and for me shows a real lack of basic understanding and ability if they cannot adopt a system which allows for technical errors.