Revenge Reviews

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Allie179
Level 5
London, United Kingdom

Revenge Reviews

AirBnB needs to create a new policy for how to handle REVENGE REVIEWS. My only 2 bad reviews have come from guests who retaliated after I have filed a claim for damages. I did post a reply to the revenge reviews, but that does not make up for the reviews dropping my rating from 4.89 to 4.73 and causing me to lose super host status! I have finally recovered my rating to 4.8 and just yesterday had a guest that left with nearly $3k in damages. Since I know AirBnB won't protect me from a revenge review, I'm now forced with the decision between submitting the claim immediately and risking my rating and future super host status or taking my property offline for 14 days and waiting until after the rating period to submit my claim. Being forced to take my listing offline for 2 weeks in order to submit a claim is a loss of revenue for myself AND for AirBnB. There needs to be a policy that offers protections for hosts against retaliation reviews! How do we get AirBnB to do something about this issue? There are dozens of post threads on this topic. How do we get their attention?

1 Best Answer
Till-and-Jutta0
Host Advisory Board Alumni
Stuttgart, Germany

 

@Allie179  Your guest mentions in her review, that Airbnb (support) has been involved. And she is insulting you personally.

 

Both is a no-go, and against the rules. 

 

To keep reviews relevant, we recommend avoiding the following:

  • […]
  • Profanity, name calling, and assumptions about a person’s character or personality

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2673/airbnbs-review-policy

 

Try this https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/548/airbnbs-dispute-moderation-for-reviews

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54 Replies 54
Till-and-Jutta0
Host Advisory Board Alumni
Stuttgart, Germany

 

@Allie179  Your guest mentions in her review, that Airbnb (support) has been involved. And she is insulting you personally.

 

Both is a no-go, and against the rules. 

 

To keep reviews relevant, we recommend avoiding the following:

  • […]
  • Profanity, name calling, and assumptions about a person’s character or personality

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2673/airbnbs-review-policy

 

Try this https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/548/airbnbs-dispute-moderation-for-reviews

Thanks, Till-and-Jutta! AirBnB support determined that Sheika wasn't in violation, but it might be worth rasiing the issue again, now armed with the links you've provided. At this point I'm less worried about the past review (Sheika) and more concerned about the drafted damage claim that I have NOT yet submitted for my guest Natosha that departed yesterday, leaving $3k in damages. I have drafted the claim and uploaded all of the photos and receipts, but I haven't hit submit yet b/c I don't want Natosha to sabotage my rating like Sheika did back in February.

@Allie179 Why don't you submit your review before you submit the damage claim? Then hope that your guest will immediately write a review of you. Keep in mind that you must submit your claim before the next guest checks in to keep it valid. 

“..support determined that Sheika wasn't in violation, but it might be worth rasiing the issue again, now armed with the links you've provided.”

 

@Allie179 the best way to contact Airbnb “support” is via chat, for easier communication and for the purposes of providing links to relevant policy and pasting text from said. Airbnb outsources it’s  CS to call center workers who are ill trained and rarely familiar with policy. 

I raised the concern again and this time I explained why certain statements from the guest were racially inappropriate. This time they found in my favor and they have removed the post.

Mary996
Level 10
Swansea, United Kingdom

Hooray @Allie179

Thats great news. Thanks for letting us know! 

Airbnb doesn't evaluate or value truth.  Facebook does.  Twitter does.  This is why they allow reviews that are false.

@Allie179 We also had an incident recently that I talked about in the hosting community. This guest showed up with two elderly relatives who decided that they would rather stay in a hotel, and so he fabricated this elaborate story about an 'attack' on our villa by some alleged late-night perpetrator throwing rocks who, he claimed, had miraculously managed to penetrate the walls and windows with one of these rocks and break a vase inside the villa.

 

Basically, the guest wanted a full refund and promised that he would write us a good review if we could get him one. However, we had never gone through anything like this (and were also having doubts about his story), and so when we contacted Airbnb, they told us that he could only get a full refund if he could produce "written evidence" of the supposed attack. But when we relayed this message to the guest, he became very angry, and so we put him in touch with Airbnb support. Then, when they gave him this message, he turned his anger on us and vowed to write us a bad review--which he eventually did.

 

Allie, there was so much wrong with this story that we couldn't believe Airbnb would allow the review to stand. In addition to everything that I told you above, we found out that the guest had called the police to try to add credence to his story but that the police refused to write a report because "no crime had been committed," and that none of the neighbours in the resort had heard anything resembling an attack that night. We also asked the resort security to check in on the guest, and when they found no rocks outside the window or evidence of a rock attack, the guest changed his story to say this alleged person had been "banging on the grill" outside the window and that this is what broke the vase inside!

 

On top of all that, the guest wrote in his review that our villa is unsafe because we don't have security cameras when our listing states that we do not, and that we did not provide him with emergency contact information when I had written to him days before his arrival, on Airbnb messaging, telling him where to find the emergency contact information. He also changed his story yet again in the review to say that it was they (the guests) who had thrown the vase on the floor.

 

Anyway, we sent all the screenshots of these messages and photographic evidence to Airbnb along with the contact information of our neighbours and the local police--and Airbnb just ignored it all and said that the review would be allowed to stand. We kind of expected that, however, because the other hosts had warned us that Airbnb ALWAYS sides with the (paying) guests. It was just sad to see it happen when the proof that this was a total fabrication was so blatant.

 

Oh, and then, to add insult to injury, Airbnb wrote to us about a week afterwards to tell us that we would be losing our Superhost status. We had continually been Superhosts almost from the time that we had first started renting on Airbnb, and then, with one review written by an extortionist liar, our status was gone. But as some of the other hosts have rightly noted, we are not going to make that status the centre of our renting Earth, and you shouldn't, either. Just keep doing what you're doing and the good reviews will come again. 

 

Anyway, we're really sorry to hear that you had to go through this, and we wish you good luck in your battle.

@Rich-and-Yan0 I'm not sure when this happened to you, but the new policy from late last year explicitly says they will remove all extortion reviews. You should submit another request to remove and quote the policy (link to policy is in another message on this post). I was able to get my bad review taken down. Good luck!

@Allie179 Thanks for the response. FYI, this only happened recently to us. As I mentioned before, we laid out all the evidence to Airbnb, including the messages where he promised to write us a good review if we got them a refund and then vowed to write a bad one after Airbnb (not us) had told him that he could not get a full refund without "written evidence." @Anonymous , who is on this thread, was one of the hosts who kindly pointed the extortion policy to us, and we were sure to mention that in our message to Airbnb.

 

However, as many hosts have attested and has also been our own experience as well, when dealing with Airbnb support, it often seems to be a "luck of the draw" thing regarding who you get to look over your case. The person who contacted us, whom I won't name, first sent us something that looked like a form letter, which was more or less like this:

 

Dear Rich & Yan,

 

After examining the case in question, we have concluded that the guest's review cannot be taken down.

 

Here is a link to our review policy: (link provided)

 

We thank you for contacting us and want you to know that we are always here for you and our other hosts.

 

 

Honestly, Allie, that is basically what we got for a response. After us having sent them something like 20 screenshots and photos and having laid out all the points chronologically, this agent didn't even mention even one single detail about our case.

 

Well, we wrote back to protest that response, and in about 200 words, we laid out why we thought that decision was wrong. And that same support rep wrote again to tell us that if we did not agree with Airbnb's review policy, then we could send feedback to Airbnb letting them know what was wrong with it--though he added that there was "no guarantee" that it would be read or considered.

 

So that's that. We did go ahead and send that final feedback to Airbnb, but we're not optimistic at all. As I said above, the support agent you end up often seems to be random. We've had some very good ones in our nearly two years on Airbnb, including the two ladies who first dealt with this guest, who rightly seemed to recognise that he was trying to scam both us and Airbnb and told him that he MUST produce actual evidence of this supposed 'attack' in order to obtain a full refund. (One of them even said that his behaviour in the messaging to us had been "inappropriate," and I sent that screenshot, too.) But we've also dealt with indifferent support people as well--and unfortunately, that's what we seem to have run into in this case.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the response. If anything comes of this, we'll be sure to let you know.

Oh my lord! I thought I had the ultimate liar guest but yours wins all time award. Holy cow!

 

These bad guests are out of control and Airbnb is allowing it.

 

i am now only using my husband’s name on the profile to see if it helps with the extreme bullying and retaliations I am experiencing from multiple guests. 

This is awful and further backs up my thinking that it is NEVER worth having anyone in your house who asks to cancel. Just give them the money back and move on. It just isn't worth the stress and hassle they will cause you. And they they will cause you stress as they will look for and find what ever way they can to get  revenge for what was their error

@Allie179 Allie, we just recently had this exact experience. Unfortunately it was on a newer property with only 3 prior reviews, so the zero stars review resulted in dropping from 5 stars to 4 stars. Also, the renter seemed to be experienced at doing this and left a compliant, but not complimentary nor true, review. We offered that AirBnB could leave the review but we didn't feel the stars should impact us. Despite repeated efforts with the AirBnB CS (and significant delays), they just kept saying the renter didn't violate the terms of reviews. It's ridiculous as the renter only submitted the review in retaliation for us submitting a claim for damaging our stove and for violating each and every house rule.

Airbnb refused to remove two revenge reviews, for me, one guest didn't get refund because past time other I reported damages but both guests made assumptions of my character, not to mention used my disability to do it.  When I brought this up to Airbnb they said they could not make a personal opinion in regards to the reviews. So regardless of the fact and laws of a protected class, Airbnb allows two guests to use my disability to make assumptions of my character and use it against me, to make me look bad.  I wonder outcome for Airbnb if I  contacted ADA and EEOC let them in on Airbnb character.  Would Airbnb feel something like I do?  To be made fun, publicly humiliated because Airbnb (looks like they condone discrimination), goes and post it and leaves it posted.  As a host, (superhost) I'm not feelin like Airbnb got our backs.