My earlier "hosting help" post marked as "spam" ???

Jackie218
Level 2
Boulder, CO

My earlier "hosting help" post marked as "spam" ???

I'm a new host and I posted earlier, trying to get some help / input about how to review (or not review) a recent guest who was very problematic. I didn't mention names or say anything inappropriate or untrue, yet my post was marked as spam for reasons unknown to me.

I'm finding this site to be very difficult to use and trying to figure it out is taking a lot of my time. Can anyone explain to me why my post was removed? Meanwhile, I'm seeing so many negative posts about air bnb being unresponsive to hosts that I am seriously considering removing my listing.

Thank you in advance,

Jackie from Boulder

16 Replies 16

@Jackie218 I didn't realize postings here *could* be marked as spam.

 

You will find a lot of complaints on this discussion board because this is the place people go to when they have something to complain about. The vast majority of hosts have a very normal and business-like relationship with Airbnb. Hosts very rarely come to this board and post messages that say "Well, another month with nothing to complain about!"

 

Reading this board will give you a skewed perspective on what it is like to deal with Airbnb support. It is better to form your own opinion based on your own experience with Airbnb support.

 

This discussion board is good resource if you do have any specific questions though.

 

Thanks for your responses,  @Matthew285 @Sarah1006 !!! I saw in my profile under "posts" that it was flagged as spam. I was (and still am) looking for help with the issue of my last nightmare guest and suggestions from the community about how best to review (or not review) her.

Also, I received an inquiry at 2:00 am last night from someone in Texas with no profile pic and no previous reviews, who just joined air bnb this month. How does air bnb allow for no picture identification? I declined the reservation, as it made me very uncomfortable. 

@Jackie218 you don't necessarily have to automatically decline a guest who has no profile picture.

Many hosts just ask the guest to provide a clear, recognizable photo of themselves, and many are happy to comply.

 

The reason that Airbnb doesn't really require a profile pic before booking is that Airbnb discovered that stopping the guest from booking until they uploaded a picture was resulting in many guests just abandoning the whole Airbnb platform. This was not good for hosts, so Airbnb relaxed the requirement.

 

As a host, though, you are free to require a clear photo of the guest. If the guest does not comply, you can then decline the reservation. Many hosts have even said that they were allowed to cancel a confirmed reservation without penalty if they informed Airbnb support that the guest was refusing to cooperate with the host's request for a clear profile photo.

 

 

Again, thank you @Matthew285 so much for all of the information you're providing to me. I really appreciate it!

Since my last air bnb experience was so negative, I'm not going to host anyone again who doesn't have prior reviews. This person who contacted me in the middle of the night had neither a photo or reviews, so I'm feeling good about my decision not to host them. Safety is my main concern as well as a guest who may not understand the notion of house rules, as my last guest had many boundary and rule breaking issues. Thanks again!

I just tried to post for help with a bad guest's review, and AGAIN my post has been removed as spam. This is far too frustrating. I will simply not review this guest if I'm unable to get any community input about how to proceed. Thanks for all of your previous responses.

@Jackie218   Makes me wonder if the guest who you have issue with is also on this forum and doing this. Hosts post plenty of bad guest reviews here asking how to handle it, that don't get removed. Maybe contact one of the forum administrators here to see if they can see what's going on.

Hmmmm, good point @Sarah977 and interesting thought. I guess I didn't think travelers would be interested in various hosting help posts, but anything is possible. Thanks very much for your response. I'll see if I can reach an administrator.

Well, this is the Help forum section, not specifically Hosting, and there are lots of guests who post here asking for help about some issue. But maybe you posted originally on the Hosting section.

Well @Sarah977 perhaps I can ask for your advice then? Let's see if this response gets removed...

For starters: This guest broke the shower fixture off of my bathroom wall and didn't tell me. I discovered it on the floor of her bathroom in pieces. She used 3 rolls of toilet paper in 2 days, clogging my main line which required professional repair / snaking, even tho my listing and house rules state that my plumbing and septic are delicate. She was immediately hostile upon arrival (arriving with her unannounced, unapproved friend) when I reminded her that my listing didn't include use of my kitchen. To keep the peace, I told her she could use my refrigerator to store her wine and beer. She wound up using my kitchen as her makeshift "office" and also freely roamed the rest of my house, even opening my private bathroom door without knocking, to ask me a question, while I stood there in my bathrobe after showering. She walked through my muddy horse pasture in flip flops and didn't rinse her mucky feet because she wanted to "absorb the nutrients". She stained my mattellasse coverlet and left dirty tissues in the bed as well as dried leaves. She was a complete slob and ignored all of my house rules. Should I review her at all or just not review her? I'm not interested in having her retaliate.

Thank you for any and all input concerning this awful guest.

@Jackie218   Terrible guest for sure. Definitely review her, otherwise other hosts will be clueless and have to suffer her as well. Keep the review professional, no need to go into all the gritty details, just mention that there were damaged items, arrived with unbooked guest in tow, disrespect for common spaces and host's privacy, and left a mess. "Not suited to shared-living accomodations".

As reviews are blind, she can't see your review until they are both submitted, or if only one of you writes a review, it will appear in 14 days. So wait until the 11th hour (but don't miss it) to submit your review, otherwise she will get a prompt from airbnb that you have submitted a review, which might result in her writing one, when in fact she might not otherwise. 

If you write no review, you could be faced with a situation where she writes a bad one, it gets posted after 14 days and you are then too late to leave one yourself.

She can leave a public response to your review after it is posted, as you can to hers, but from the sound of it, if she does, she'll probably come across sounding like the bad guest that she was.

For the life of me, I can't understand how people manage to break shower heads off the wall and plug up toilets. I'm in my late 60's and I've never done that in my life, nor has anyone I know.

Thank you so much for your advice, @Sarah977. I will do my best to wait until the last possible minute to review her. I think she was drunk when she broke the fixture, maybe hanging on to it for balance? FYI, this guest was in her late 50's! She shared with me that she lives alone in an apt. with 13 cats... 

Thanks again for all of your help!

@Jackie218   Oh no, a crazy cat lady! I guess you can be grateful that she didn't sneak every stray cat in the neighborhood into her room at your place. Glad I could be of assistance. It's been recommended by other hosts here that it's always a good idea to wait until near the 14 day mark to review a bad guest, for the reasons I mentioned above, but also that we have a chance to cool down and get over our irritation so we can write professional sounding reviews rather than scathing put-downs in the immediate aftermath.

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Matthew285@Jackie218   I have also had a response to a post removed- another poster said she "reported" me (because she obviously misconstrued what I was saying, or was just offended). I'm not sure how she got it removed.

But I wanted to say that I just had a very responsive exchange with support- I was concerned because I hadn't heard back from a guest who arrives in a week after I sent her bus and check-in info a few days ago. I had read on this forum a few hosts saying recently that their guests weren't receiving their messages, so I was concerned there may be a tech glitch. I sent a message to support, and while I am accustomed to not receiving a reply for at least 36 hours, this time the support person replied in 10 minutes! She had confirmed that the guest had received my messages and I got a message from the guest right after apologizing for not responding sooner- she has just been busy.

Jeff158
Level 10
Caernarfon, United Kingdom

@Sarah977

To get an inappropriate post removed, click the down arrow in the little square box on the right of the post and choose "Report inappropriate content"

Further options appear and spamming the forum is one of them. Quincy removed one a few days ago for multiple posts advertising a business.