AirBnB's upcoming Superhost rating system is a nightmare.

[Tony-and-Tania0]

What planet do you live on, AirBnB?

I've hosted hundreds of guests for years (remembering only 30% of guests leave reviews on my listing), retaIned Superhost ever since receiving it, and break my back ensuring guests have an amazing stay and create fantastic memories when they're here. Why should I suffer at the hands of people that don't read and don't care. People who book, lie about understanding the listing and reading our rules just to get in the door, then leave us bad reviews?  Reviews which show that the guest clearly did not read the listing - thereby breaching AirBnB's own T.O.S, that you then refuse to remove regardless? And this is your practice before the upcoming changes. Are you bloody mad? 

You are robbing us of our own self-determination and putting all of the marbles in the hands of fickle, non-accountable, occasionally disgusting and vindictive guests.  Your upcoming rating system is the antithesis of sane. You've been told countless thousands of times by all of us all over the forums here that it is so bad it's borderline, nay, exceeding parody. Look at your forums, look at all of the threads - can you hear us all? do you care? 

The upcoming rating system is masochism. It's mental health destruction in its upkeep and retention. You're giving us all blood pressure, anxiety and fear. 

This is not how you treat people that uphold a gold standard on your own platform. 

Listen to us. 

[Max275]

Hi I m super host for six months now after 8 months I started ruling two units apartment in Kuala Lumpur. I understand d fully the concern here as we all (I hope) target to give the best but for low or fair price compare to hotel standards. 

As the Airbnb system is computerized and non human you need to think how to deal with it as an Human intelligence and in a way hack it as Airbnb staff is no responsive. 

So my way my tip is :

When you feel or know your guests are not good persons and might damage your review rate DON'T EVER REVIEW THEM ... SO FAR NO REVIEW FROM YOU NO REVIEW FROM THEM can be publushed like this your account is not hurt. On more than 100 guests I had so far I used 2 times this trick so I don't have influence on my Superhost assessment . 

[Sarah977]

@Max275  This might have worked for you so far, but only by luck that your guests didn't write a review.  That is not how the review system works- if the guest writes a review and the host doesn't, the guest's review will still appear after 14 days and vice versa.

And you are not doing other hosts any favors by not warning us of bad guests.

[Ma0]

I agree with her. from my own experience in a case I did not leave review the guest did not leave review as well. It doesn't mean the guest is a bad guest however if a host has a feeling a guest 

will leave bad review just because this can be a solution. 

[Ma0]

agree, good point

[Christine992]

I agree I'm new to Airbnb and we always help and are on hand for our customers, then we have customer 

turn up without reading what we are and we feel hoping to be upgraded to our bnb service for nothing.

Well it doesn't work like that, then leave remakes which are unfair.  Although to our face and by email say anything is fine.  the last thing we want is to get into a war of words with people like this, so why not just remove if a large percentage of our customers leave good reviews.

these? ;(

[Alastair0]

Totaly agree with Tony and Tanya on this. We too have been hosting for years and Superhost for much of that time. We break our backs ensuring we offer the best to our guests and always ask that they read the details but nobody reads and the location star rating is a joke. Nobody can move the home and a 4 star for location screws up the chance of getting a 5 star review. 

To be eligable for this Super Superhost we get flagged as room needs attention flashed at us on the dashboard because we havent responded and and no reviews. Crazy at the room is a new one just added and no requests or bookings from airbnb have come yet. 

I start the think the same as Lynette, we do the best we can and that is good enough. (Especially as we resently stayed in Vietnam at 3 airbnbs and one was disgusting and these hosts get away with it)

Airbnb changed our lives and we always give preferance to airbnb including better rates for guests, but the ease of Booking dot com Agoda etc where guests book and be dambed is getting more attractive.

Why wont Airbnb lissen to us..

Brian,  Chip come stay with us and see a real airbnb in action and then look at the dashboard and how these restictive changes realy effect us. 

[Fiona0]

I can accept the odd 4 star review from someone who just can't bear to give me full marks, but the guest thinks he/she is rating you as 'good' but is actually sending you on your way to de-listing?  What kind of system is this?

I think I may start telling my guests that if they cannot give me 5 stars, I would prefer them not to rate me at all.

[Maria568]

Yes Fiona that is correct they give you very good feedback and comments but lower than 5 * and that is you are down ....the more I read the more I think we should refuse the system ..

[Lois10]

Yes it sucks I had a guest  cancel one hour before he was to arrive . As per  my cancellation policy he forfeits his money but then Airbnb told him he could review me and he gave me one star in all categories. That sent my rate from 4.8 down to 4.7 and now I will lose my super host status even though he never even stepped into my house  . He even said in his review why should I have to rate this  stay  I canceled . To top it off he is a host so he knew it would hurt my rating. 

[Sarah977]

@Lois10  That's bizarre- he didn't "have to" rate the stay or leave a review. You'd think he'd have known that if he is a host himself.

[Tuenchai0]

Hi everyone, my name is Tuenchai,

I've been hosting since 2013, with 22 listings which are mainly my own apartments, some I co-host. I have 1,370 reviews, I'm a Super Host and up until yesterday had never received lower than a 3 Star rating. Then it happened, a guest that is brand new to Airbnb left a 1 star rating and a false review against a villa that can only be described as minimum 4.8 Stars.

The reason being is that the guest never bothered to read the house rules regarding electricity, that had been acknowledged and agreed too. The guest stated in her public review that she only became aware of the electricity policy when checking in, which is in direct contradiction to the fact that she had already acknowledged the policy. The guest took it out on me with the review. It is shocking, that a vindictive guest can be permitted to do such a thing with impunity and that I has a Super Host, who has hosted many thousands of guests can do nothing apart from respond to the false review.

Worse still is the fact that the guest gave zero indication that there was a problem, was friendly and polite to me, and treated my villa with respect. I therefore left the guest a great review based on that interaction. Therefore other Airbnb hosts will read my review and believe the guest to be an honest, polite friendly person, not the lying vindictive person that wrote a fake review and gave a 1 Star rating to my villa.

I rent thousands of nights a year via Airbnb, and cannot believe that a person who joined in May 2018 (I'm their first host), can inflict so much damage to my reputation, and there is nothing that I can do about it. It is unfair to cite it as a guest's personal experience when they leave a 1 Star Review for a listing that received countless 5 star reviews just prior to them staying. Standards can slip, but that’s an avalanche! Such a guest would only give the Grand Hyatt 3 stars.

IMO there needs to be some safeguards put in place whereby in the case of a dispute about an unfair star rating & review, a guest has to properly account for their star rating, and their claims. An adjudication process should be put in place, so that when there is such a difference between the star rating that a single guest awards and what many other genuine Airbnb guests consistently award, fairness can prevail. It is just common sense. That way lying, vindictive guests can be banished from Airbnb, not just hosts that do their best but fall victim to such unscrupulous guests!

Those are my thoughts, thanks for reading!

Tuenchai

[Angela714]

Something very similar happend to me...a couple booked a private room for 1 night in April, guessing it was an entire apartment by looking through the pictures (they didn't read anything, not even the text next to the pictures). When they realized (on check-in-day!) they accused me of posting misleading pictures (huh??), did obviously not stay at my place, but didn't cancel either (according to my cancelation policy they'd lost the money for that night, anyway). So I already imagined what to expect and immediately contacted Airbnb to let them know that these people were no shows, that they were angry with me because of their mistake and that they also refused to cancel. In short, there was nothing they could "review" or rate since they were no guests and didn't even see the place.

Well, they were allowed to review and rate, and as expected, 1 star in all categories, which will result in me losing my SH status in July. Since then I had 21 (!) 5-star ratings (and one 4-star rating from an elder couple who loved everything, except the location that can clearly be seen in the listing), but the needle doesn't seem to move above those 4.7 again. I don't know how many 5 star-ratings one needs to compensate for something like that, it's absurd...

[Nancy194]

Airbnb definitely need the ability to identify and remove vindicative ratings from bad guests that do not comply with house rules. We had 5 star ratings for many stays and things were going great. Most guests have been fabulous and we do our best to ensure that the guests have a great stay.  We even have remained in contact with many guests after their stay. Then it happened, we had one guest that smoked in the house and despite reiterating the review they kept on. We asked the person to leave and the guest as a result gave us a 1 star rating. That froze the room for bookings and resulted in us not getting superhost again.  The rating system needs to take in to account these situations. We phoned and complained but nothing was done.

[Alastair0]

Something Airbnb doesn’t appreciate is the distress that it causes to hosts. It’s all very well thinking it’s only a bad review but we feel it.  We spend downtime feeling upset and thinking what we did wrong, why didn’t they read the details, why is the other guest praising our home while another it’s thinking differently. The fact that we bother to convey our experience and concerns on the forum shows that it means much more to us than an unwarranted bad review. Airbnb want personal service, well personal service means we care. When will they start caring more for us?

[Ross648]

This has been an illuminating conversation that has confirmed everything I had been thinking about AirBnB.   They don't care about hosts at all.  

We have been insanely busy for the last four months, without a break at all.  During that time we have had two difficult guests, one who didn't like our three thousand dollar sofa, another who wanted to be comped in full AFTER he had checked out.   Both gave us one to two stars and knocked us down to 4.6.   AirBnB does nothing, of course, even though one review was packed with obvious lies.  

I've blocked my AirbnB dates after November to decide how to proceed.   I don't know if I can find a platform that is less hostile to hosts.   And I see two particular problems with AirBnB: 

1. the star system encourages extortionate guests who threaten a bad review if not comped and 

2. the star system drives hosts crazy -- it is no longer a relaxed experience but rather makes us paranoid about crazy guests.