Consequences of Leaving Negative Reviews

Branden0
Level 1
California, United States

Consequences of Leaving Negative Reviews

I recently had an unfortunate experience at my stay. I want to leave a negative to review to warn future AirBnbers about this place. However, I am worried that leaving a bad review will prompt the owner to retaliate with an unwarranted bad review of their own. Is there anything in place to prevent this? I would like to continue AirBnbing in the future and don't want a negative review to prevent me from doing so. 

 

Here was my experience below if that makes a difference:

 

I arrive right in the middle of the 2 hour timeslot that I selected. The owner had previously sent message for the lockbox to get into the unit. Upon arriving, I attempted to input the code into the 2 lockboxes that were on the door. After about 5 minutes I begin to knock on the door and call the number listed, no answer for the door or number. Finally after about 5 more minutes someone inside lets me in. She's not the owner but is a permanent tenant of the place. She looks at the code I've received and proceeds to tell me that it's not the correct one. I find my room number in the place, but there's another lockbox on that door as well. I look through my messages and see that I've not received a code for this door. After about 20 minutes of calling the number and looking for other places to stay for the night, the permanent tenant starts trying to help us call numbers that she thinks can help. Finally, she comes back into the living room with a code, which finally works. It is then that I finally receive a message from the owner with the correct code to the front door (saying that they had recently changed it) and the code to the room door, without an apology. It took us about 45 minutes to get into our room and this was unfortunate because this made me late to an arrangement I had. 


The room was as fine and as listed. The only other complaint (not really the fault of the owner) was that the bathroom had no floor towel and other tenants would get out of the shower wet, walk around the whole bathroom, and leave the floor almost flooded with water.

 

 

 

 

8 Replies 8
Gerry-And-Rashid0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Branden0

 

You can leave a brief honest review: The room was fine, as listed and comfortable. There was an issue on arrival where I was unable to gain entry as I was given the wrong code for the lock box. Otherwise, all ok.

 

All the host can do is reply and hopefully they will be professional and apologise. If you don;t leave a review they may leave you a negative one anyaway, so you lose out...

Thanks for the advice!

@Gerry-And-Rashid0 gave some great advice on the review. I would also add a note in the private section that you really wish there had been a bathmat or a towel for the bathroom floor. It may simply have never occured to the host that it's needed and perhaps no one has ever mentioned it before!

If they leave a bad review, it won't be in retaliation.  AirBNB doesn't let either of you see the reviews until both are entered.  Or if you wait fourteen days to read their review, then it is too late to enter yours.

—— 
Wes Groleau
伟思礼

unfortunately it is not true. the host can read the guest review and then write his (so he can write a bad review in retaliation of a bad review from the guest).

@Eliana52, not quite right. The reviews are double-blind. Neither party can see them until both have written reviews or until 14 days have past if only one wrote a review. What the host can do though, is write a comment below the review on the guest's profile once the review is posted. I think that's what you're referring to. More often than not, retaliatory comments from the host in that section backfire on them & don't harm the guest that much - the hosts come across as argumentative &/or aggressive & put off future guests. 

 

I can see as a guest this would be concerning, but good hosts take the opportunity to learn from the complaints rather than tear the guest down, and bad hosts just show themselves as what they are. - Karen 

Thanks for your reply Karen.

You say: The reviews are double-blind. Neither party can see them until both have written reviews.

Question: If I am a guest, for example, does it mean that when I write a review it is not immediately published and visible to the community (aka it is not visible to anybody until the host publishes his/her review)?

Thanks again for your clarifican, it is really helpful.

 

Eliana

 

 

Yes @Eliana52, that's correct, exactly.