Colleagues please help.
Our said story:
My wife and I are hosts. Our apartment is new, clean and in very good location with everything guest might need. We set it up according to what we expect when travel. Also, based on our experience in traveling we set up very high standards in our apartment for cleanness and tidiness, care for our guest. When renting the apartment via other sites all our guests had great impressions.
A few days ago we hosted a guy from UK. He was our first guest via AirBNB, so we did everything to please him. Much more that other hosts do, e.g. I took him to buy some food and drink at 1am upon his arrival. Also, I made a tour with him around the city center to show him nice places to visit and to eat. We were all the time available for different questions from his side. No problems at all during his stay.
This morning we were shocked when reading his review. He really made effort to make it very bad, but base on wrong and incorrect information and interpretation. His main complaint was that he had to go to police to register. The fact is that in my country foreigners are obliged to register. For not being register they can be fined, detained or face a court appearance. It happens rarely and ends up usually with minimum fines, but you never know. It is a simple and fast procedure and keeps them safe. We always provide our gusts with this information and leave them to decide to register or not. We did the same with this guest and he registered himself in 5 minutes.
Main point in his review was that this was not legal requirements but that we presented him that way?! Mainly the whole review is about that. Big issue for him! Other than that he has just mentioned that the apartment is not bad at all, and that I was nice guy, but nevertheless the score does not show that. He put 1 of 5! We are completely desperate and disappointed! We give our best to please somebody and keep him safe and we get such a bad response! There must be some protection from that!
I have replied kindly and send him link to UK government website, instruction for travelers to my country which proves my explanation, but the URL was hidden in my message. However he does not respond at all.
This is very important issue for us since that is our first review on AirBNB but with extremely bed score based on wrong information about things which are not true and not related to the apartment and services at all. And it is beginning of the top season here.
After all we can only consider that the reviewer was malicious on purpose since he did not react at all on my kind reply with the facts and explanations. I am afraid that this review will scare new guests and will make big damage to our reputation with no reason, and just because of somebody’s bad intentions and fun.
We need to react fast on this, so our questions to community are:
- Is there any protection from this type of reviews? How can we contact somebody from AIRBNB by mail and report that and ask for support?
- How can we repair the damage he made with this review? Does any of you have such experience? Any advice?
- How can we contact somebody to unhide the URL with the link to UK government hidden in our reply to prove the facts?
Thanks in advacne,
Zora and Isak
