Overall Rating & Category Rating

[Nic21]

My guest personally claimed that he gave me all 5 stars, but it ends up the 'Overall Rating' is only 4 stars.

I'm wondering how it works? Because I thought the Overall Rating shall be calculated by a formula based on all Category Rating, for example like: 30/6 = 5 stars.

Overall Rating shall not be rated by Guest anymore, because the mistake they've done during rating it, they cannot undo it & it affects the Host's listing rating unreasonably. 

Anyone knows or experience this before?

[Marzena4]

It's not average, @Andy370, guests set that value independently - manually.

[Andy370]

Exactly, that’s the problem!

[Husen1]

I have no idea how rating works.  Does Airbnb every explain it to us at all?  We are brining business to Airbnb.  Where is the support????  I can't believe this. 

[Lydia94]

Hi Nic, I am so happy to find a person with brain to bring up the problem with the rating for hosts. I wish we can find more hosts ready to fight Airbnb on the rating system. Some times the guest thank us and write personal messages, and don,t write a review. The star rating by guests is not working. But to make

matters worst the horrable guests use the star system to destroy our reputation and our business. I am fighting with Airbnb about this problem for a very long time, but nobody has any comon sense. When I as a host have a conflict with a guest and I report the problems to Airbnb this need to be put on file and the guests review can not be published. The last bad experiance was with a muslim women, burning my new bedding and my carpet in the room and try to cover the damages by moving the rug on top of the burn and lie about it. After we confronted her she start accusing my non-muslim worker of harrasment.

The review was ONE STAR and Airbnb with there strict NON DISCRIMINATION POLICY allow this type

of action. No host is able to recover from a review like this. Now I have a guest bringing strange women in to my home every day, but as a host I am not able to say anything to the guest, because if I 

say something I will have another ONE STAR review. I don,t even wish to waste my time reporting this guest to Airbnb because the people we talk to by Airbnb don,t have a single clue and tell you how busy there are and overwelmed with complants. The rating system has to be changed desperately and I hope more hosts will fight for it so the guests are no longer able to hold us hostage and blackmail us.

[Hugo240]

Guys, I have this problem all the time.

I agreed with someone who said the overall rate must to be a calculation based on all categories.

Let's ask for thai change!!

[Carol-Lee1]

A couple of times I’ve received an overall 4 star rating but 5 stars on all categories.  Has anyone found out how this happens?  I’m starting to think I have bad breath or something.  Is there a category we as hosts don’t see?  It really bothers me to think I’ve somehow missed my guest’s expectation in some way.  I think most of us try really hard to give our guests the best possible experience so when we get dinged without any way of knowing why we can’t make improvements.  

[Letti0]

@Carol-Lee1  It's the new review process they are asked a question for the overall rating and do not see the stars. 1* much worse than expected 2* a bit worse than expected 3* as expected 4* a bit better than expected 5* much better than expected. I have removed some of my amenities I had listed, so that when the guests show up hopefully I get a much better than expected rating, this is so sad for us hosts. The review is a ton of questions about what's in the listing and huge data mining questions, so it takes a lot longer to do the review now and many are not bothering to review for this reason. Two of the things needed for maintaning your SuperHost status are trip reviews at 50% and 4.8% overall rating this is going to eliminate many SuperHosts which I believe is AirBnB's desired effect to make it more special to be one. 

[Carol-Lee1]

Thanks for explaining that.  That is really not fair.  If they are going to ask those questions they should not use the star system.  Getting a rating “as expected” that gives you a 3 is ridiculous.  As expected should be 5 Stars.  The question should be as or better than expected, 5 stars.  I guess I’ll have to start explaining the very unfair system to my guests.

[Scott-and-Silvia0]

We occasionally have exactly the same, 5* in every individual category and the 4* overall. I did write to oe guest and ask if they could help us to identify what we needed to do better. His reply was that he could hear outside noise. he made no mention in his written review which I guess was kind. I thanked him for taking the time to let us know and of course didn't argue. It is frustrating though.

[Breighana0]

I've had it happen and yes there is a category we can't see called "respects house rules."  If the guest leaves it blank (but I should clarify that the guest can't actually see it either) then airbnb lowers your 5 stars to 4.

[Yeri0]

This really frustrates me. Us as hosts should not be rated down on location. It is the guest’s responsibility to research the neighborhood and location. Granted, if the host posts misleading information,  it is reason to consider a lower score. With that said, I do get people who normally live in the suburbs regularly giving fours on location since I live in a diverse city. Airbnb also needs to protect their hosts more... we are the ones letting strangers into our homes. There have been a couple of times where I received guests that were not right upstairs, but I can’t do anything because I’m afraid of losing my high rating.

[Rosanna51]

I got 5 stars in all categories and overall rating of 4. This guest nit picked a few things. I wish they would have just messaged me as none of the things were really an issue. I think some people just make a point of finding fault. But I’m not happy as reviews like this bring your overall ratings down. 

[Karen1525]

Same thing happened to me, all 5 stars in categories and then a 4 star overall, which lowered my rating to 4.9. It is so frustrating that I got a glowing review and I suspect that the click was just a mistake on their end. Does anyone from Airbnb monitor this to take a look at what's happening? the categories should be calculated for the overall rating.

[Stephane246]

Exactly, it makes no sense mathematically to have an overall rating lower than all categories rounded up.
This is a flaw in the Airbnb rating system, and God knows there are many flaws in their rating system... Hopefully, they improve on that as many exceptional hosts are getting destroyed by this unfair process.

[Samantha-and-Colin0]

This situation seems a complete nonsense!

We've had completely 5 star ratings both overall and for individual categories for the last dozen or more guests. Suddenly, the last two have rated every category 5 stars and the overall 4 stars - how can this be? - There is no logic!!

We, like many other hosts, thought that the overall was based on an average of the total of the individual categories - which would make sense! As such we came on here looking for an explanation that the rating system had been changed, evidently not.

Now the "headline" of some reviews is only 4 stars and we are concerned that that will have a bearing on how potential guests choose the property and our Superhost standing, not all of them will look further to see we have 5 stars for every category and the overall rating is arbitrary. It makes a mockery of the catergory system!!

Are Airbnb going to take note of all these threads about a