I recently had a guest who left me a bad review. She had two complaints - one, that our apartment was marketed as non-smoking, and she smelled smoke in the night; and two, that she went to use our building's pool (without our permission, or even discussing it with us) and was angry when she got turned away at the pool for not having the right pass.
Both issues were completely out of our control. We are non-smokers, and we live in a non-smoking building. If some other apartment had a guest who happened to smoke, and it came into her room through the ventilation system, there's really nothing we can do about it. She waited until the morning she checked out to tell us about it, so even if we could have done something, she didn't give us the opportunity to. We could have called the front desk and complained, we could have covered the vent somehow, etc. But she didn't even tell us about it until it was too late.
The pool issue was also weird. We don't market our room as having access to the building's pool, because you need to be a resident of the building to use the pool, or be a guest of a resident - but the resident has to be there with you at the pool at all times. We don't want to get involved in having to babysit guests at the pool all day, so we don't even mention having a pool in our ad. But somehow she figured out that the building had a pool, and she felt she should have been allowed to use it. But again, she never even asked us about it, she just took it upon herself to go and got mad when she wasn't allowed. If she had asked, I might have been able to accompany her for an hour or two, if my schedule allowed. But again, she didn't even give me a chance.
She seemed so upset the morning she checked out that she was crying when she told us about these two "nightmare" problems she had staying with us. We felt bad, so we refunded her stay. That was WAY generous of us. We were as sweet and polite as we could be when handling her. But still, she gave us a four star rating.
Her public rating explanation was very good. She didn't mention the specifics of what she felt went wrong, and she even commended us for "exceeding her expectations" in handling her complaints. But she gave us four stars. I feel that I can't reply to her written rating, because the written rating itself was very good. But I can't do anything about the star rating. I don't think guests understand how the star rating system works, and how just leaving off one star can damage a host's reputation and income. And Air BNB doesn't seem to give us any way to respond to a star rating. I also can't even seem to find a place to complain to Air BNB directly and explain the situation. I'm sure they'd agree that her complaints were beyond our control and our star rating was unfair.
Why can't we do anything about this? Surely they understand that some people are just impossible to please, and to place so much importance on a rating that we can't do anything about is not just unfair, but hurts their hosts - AND hurts their own income! They can't take a fee from me if I don't have a booking. Shouldn't they do everything in their power to make sure I get the most bookings possible?
