My first reviews were all five stars and then I got a wacko person who was highly unpleasant, unfriendly, complained about everything and even crawled on the floor looking for problems. I warned Airbnb that she was looking for a refund before she even walked in the door. I don’t know what her problem was ( she was she was as unpleasant to her own family as she was to us). Yet, Airbnb gave her the refund over my warning and objection. She really hurt my average. After that I had about three other people who were not crazy but just gave me bad reviews because we’re not a brand new modern house. And one who gave me a bad review because she didn’t like the looks of a person standing near the house and walked away. She didn’t even see the apartment. In my opinion, Airbnb should give us the option of Removing one bad review for each (say) 25 reviews, since they don’t listen to us when we warn them that there’s gonna be problems with a guest. Thus, they are giving guests more credence than we have as hosts. And that’s unfair. Thumbtack has this policy regarding bad reviews. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other such services do the same thing.
On top of that, pausing us as punishment is another way of demonstrating disdain for the people who keep their business running. Their tips aren’t bad but in these cases no tip would’ve prevented the bad review. I worked very hard to make this a welcoming and pleasant place for people to stay and I’m the only available place to stay in town. So when we are paused, all the people who would have liked to stay there are being hurt. Since guests who are considering staying there have the ability to read all the reviews and make their own decisions, this pausing does nobody any good. It costs me money and it costs Airbnb money.
Also, I think the range of reviews should be given some consideration. If some of the reviews are five stars and the others are abysmal with no in-between ground, that means that there is something else going on than that we aren’t doing our job. I am paused even though MOST of my reviews are five stars, because of the occasional person who is particularly persnickety or who just doesn’t like old houses.
