Host Response to Reviews missing in the App

[Jeet0]

Hello,

Sometimes guests write false/fake reviews and as per the new policy, Airbnb refuses to take them down coz "free speech", instead, the customer support team suggests you to leave an appropriate response so that the potential new guests know both sides of the story. This is fair. However, the app does not show host responses, it only shows guest reviews.

This needs to be solved as their is an inconsistency between how the app and site treat reviews and most hosts in my area use the app so they miss out on my clarification to negative reviews and often ask me through the messages to clarify the negative reviews.

This is a poor experience overall and needs to be addressed soon.

Thanks!

[Helga0]

That part of the app is doubly annoying. Not only do the public answers not show, the reviews are not linked. If I get a booking, I can’t see on the app, what kind of place the guest booked before, nor what he wrote about the host, including that host’s statement. 

That the answer does not show, is not only concerning for bad reviews. I got half a page of compliments, exxagerating everything and most of the extras being breaches of my house rules, which I did not even allow, but beside of hiring two strongmen to carry the guest with her chair to the street, there was nothing to be done against overstaying. Now I have a review saying I invite that behaviour. My reply will not show. 

[Claire388]

Did Airbnb case managers know what free speech is and what defamation review is? "Free speech" should not be an excuse of defamation reviews. Defamation review is against the law. For a defamation review, you can sue the person who generated the defamation review and the website who distributed the defamation review. Airbnb has the policy to remove false infamation. Airbnb should be a honest and friendly platform. Airbnb should not be a place allowing people with bad intentions to distributing defamation reviews.

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

@Claire388 - Agreed.  We had a guest who attributed an entire conversation to me, replayed in his response to our negative review, which never happened because I was in bed, asleep.  His words were not too harsh: "defensive", "confrontational", "not willing to discuss"  or something of that nature, but I found them to be insulting and, since they were a complete fabrication, a lie - something Airbnb says they will remove, but, of course, they didn't.  I tried to get Airbnb to tell me when does defamation come into play with regards to reviews.... they could never respond to my question, dancing around it over and over.  They are going to get themselves in trouble sooner than later.  

[Helga0]

@Alice-and-Jeff0, that would me interst too. The Terms say a review needs to be truthful, but there is no definition, what a truth and what a lie is (it's not the ordinary definition) and what could ever be enough to remove a review. 

I had a guest, who was very strange and insistently posed indiscrete questions, even after I refused to answer. I left her alone, wrote a story about a sleeping local guest in my kitchen, keeping me from dinner. I was chatting with friends about that, also in the morning, whilst she got up early. As it was still in what counts for private time for the guest in my listing, I left her to her morning and breakfast preparations, but commented on her early checkout on the chat. When I heard the house door, I went into the kitchen and said good bye. She returned some things she had borrowed for her party in town. 

In the review, a tenday later, she wrote she felt so uncomfortable, that she had to find another solution to sleep. With 2 star ratings in a few categories.

The chat has time stamps, it's easy to see, that she did not leave after arrival and she did not call the service either. 

That's still an expressions of opinion. You can make up conversations like in your case, or even that the service could not be used at all, whilst using it, like in my case, it's not a lie, it's "opinion". 

And the answer does not show on the phone.

[Amy-And-Gin0]

Agree.  I have had guests who pressure me to bend my rules and take revenge by writing bad reviews if I don`t bend myself backwards to please them.  It`s tough.  I had a guest who retaliated against me and Airbnb Case Managers did nothing..

[Linda750]

I had guests who did not either read or understand both the location and limitations of the booking.  Instead left bad reviews and privately terrible comments which were totally untrue.  We need to be able to respond and be able to disprove incorrect comments.