I am a host with over 100 five star reviews. In the past year, I have worked very hard to receive and maintain superhost status. I recently had a very bad guest. She arrived in the middle of the night (stated she would arrive at 7:00 PM). At 1:30 AM I received a message stating she was "terrified" and "could not stay here" as claims she saw 3 spiders when she arrived. We maintain a very clean home and have never received complaints of spiders (however it is summer, guests leave windows open, and I cannot control nature). I did not receive the message until 5:30 AM at which time I responded requesting her to send pictures and asking if she was still at our home. She did not respond, so I drove by our rental and saw her car still in the driveway so did not enter. This guest finally responded at 9:00 AM stating they "managed to fall asleep despite their horror". I thought her complaint was ridiculous but offered her a refund for the remainder of their stay. Guest was upset as she wanted a FULL REFUND for entire stay. I feel I was being more than accommodating as this guest did not even leave our home until after check-out time (so was obviously not legitimately "terrified" ) and was only charged for the night she stayed. Guest proceeded to leave a two star review and even worse, she left horrible written feedback regarding items that were true nor accurate.
I contacted Airbnb host support who informed they could not remove the review. If this guest had left a ~legitimate~ review complaining about the 3 undocumented spiders , I would totally understand Airbnb policy to leave the review up. However, this guest was upset that she did not receive a full refund and in retaliation left multiple negative comments about our home that were not true. Airbnb support said she would love to take down the review but this is against Airbnb policy. She also informed me that it is very hard to get a review removed, even if review is obviously unfounded and inaccurate. Apparently the only way for the review to be removed would be if guest threatened in writing to leave a negative review if I did not give her a refund.
AIRBNB NEEDS TO REANALYZE AND CHANGE THEIR REVIEW REMOVAL POLICY
In an industry that relies on positive and accurate reviews, an inaccurate and vengeful review that cannot be removed is VERY damaging to us as hosts. Potential guests often focus on one negative review versus hundreds of positive reviews. We are moving towards a society where ratings on platforms such as these are important to our reputation. As one of the leaders in the peer-to-peer review systems that are built into the sharing economy, Airbnb has a responsibility to be proactive in ensuring reviews are accurate and reliable. Their current review removal policy does not protect their platform users and needs to be re-evaluated.
