Guest Had Airbnb Delete Negative Review

[Stephanie636]

I had a difficult guest who broke the house rules, showed up with more guests than she paid for, and left a mess. I left a review accordingly, specifically stating that I did NOT recommend her to future hosts. She called Airbnb claiming my honest, objective review was “unwanted contact” so they removed it citing harassment (?!). I’m utterly stunned. So much for integrity, Airbnb! If hosts can’t forewarn other hosts about bad guests, what’s the point of reviews?! Feeling abused and unspportd as a host, I’m compelled to delete my listing altogether. This is shameful.

[Phil-and-Lacy0]

We have been with Airbnb for 10 years and have manged to accumulate great reviews as both guests and hosts.  We had a profoundly negative experience with a guest who brought multiple extra guests, left young children unattended in the home, destroyed toys, outdoor lights, and other items, and flat out lied to me and to Airbnb about our interaction.  

We contacted Airbnb during the stay as we were unsure how to handle this.

We left an honest review based the experience and left a "Do Not Recommend To Other Hosts" message. 

Airbnb removed this review, sadly. 

Now how will other hosts know? How will they be warned about this individual? The "Instant Book" feature with the "Good track record" feature are now useless because this person can prey on other unknowing hosts. 

We are deeply frustrated and disappointed in how this was handled.

[Bhumika]

Hey @Phil-and-Lacy0 ,

Did you also contact Airbnb Support after you found that the review was removed? Did you get any information?

[Phil-and-Lacy0]

To be honest, Bhumika, we are so frustrated and disappointed with this result after having spent about three days going back and forth with support that we have little interest talking to anyone again. We followed guidelines, followed the rules, followed recommendations and in the end have been left with a very negative experience. 

Thanks for your input and inquiry. 

No matter what happens this person appears on Airbnb to have a spotless record. For all we know when we accepted her reservation she had another 3star, negative review removed. 

What we learned is that no review doesn’t necessarily mean that the member didn’t actually receive a review. It can also actually mean they had a bad review from a genuinely bad experience removed. 

[Frances41]

thank you  today would have be the  check out, so I guess they have 14 days to post a review if they even bother when I post mine it will be the 14th day  and I will leave  a NO COMMENTS in the text as a warning that that they were unacceptable  because after reading some of the hosts  posts,  I see that guests have the right over the host to pull down  our reviews if they do not like them  so My (NO COMMENT) will be my NEGATIVE VIEW

[Emilia42]

@Frances41

Did you ever think that maybe you were gifted with this bad guest because the last 4 hosts that hosted this person also choose not to leave a review?

This last Christmas I had the opportunity to decline a guest based on a hosts previous not-so-great review. I couldn't have sung higher praises for that host. The other host who accepted his request was not so lucky and now he has two bad reviews on his profile. Had he just been a guest with zero reviews I would have never known.

[Linda108]

@Frances41   Your pessimism is understandable but I hope you will reconsider not publishing an honest review.  As part of the host community it is so helpful for other hosts to have the benefit of your experience.  As long as you do not violate Air BNB Content Policy, it is pretty sure that your review will remain.  I have left several negative reviews, most of which had to do with lack of guest suitability for the private room type of accommodation.

[Frances41]

it seems that Airbnb should have list of bad guests names available only to hosts as a second way to background guests so we have an way to check if they are  scammers or con artists I had a couple her this week end and they stayed one night out of the 3 day booking and the second day at night 9:00 they came in from their dinner date with friends  here in town and claimed a medical emergency and had to leave they spent the whole day here with my son who lives with me playing musical instruments as my son plays guiter and they were also music fans and brought drums and flutes with them to attend the Drum circles here in fl. and they jammed out all day, and there seemed to be no problem ,  I contacted them to see if there was anything I could do being a concerned human and a host,  she then called me on the phone and told me she had felt uncomfortable with my son being here,   WHAT! you fixed him a sandwich and you and your husband spent the whole day playing music and joking around all day..... we think  their friends they met later that evening offered them a place to stay for Free, so they needed an excuse so they used Medical emergency the night they left, and the next day my son,. was the next excuse, so they lied,  she demanded I give her back the 2 nights and my 10.00 cleaning fee or she would not give me a satisfactory review in reality I should have kept the second nights fee as they did stay till 900 pm . but I am not a person of confrontation and just refunded and hope I never see them again and hope that they do not pull this crap on others we need to have a way to post these bad apples for other hosts.

[John1574]

- 

@Frances41 

That's an infuriating story, Francis. Probably a one off event. I hope you never have to deal with those kind of people again.

And I hope that they did not get to leave a negative review with you.

We've got to read the rules of reviewing so that you can let other host read between the lines: AirBnB often removes stuff that they deem unacceptable, almost always on the guests side. It is unconscionable.

Don't let them bring you down.

[Candice136]

Fenced in yard

[Candice136]

Didn’t mean to post. Sorry.

[Christopher971]

Airbnb heavily favors guests. 

[Nicole1440]

This very thing just happened to me and AirBnB did not support me at all. I am so tired of being bullied by these type of guests. 

[Sarah977]

@Mallika7  What a terrible story. It's just unbelievable the lengths Airbnb goes to to appease horrible guests. If a guest had the audacity to say to me "Well, 7 are coming anyway", my response would be,  "Well, they may be coming, but they won't be staying here, so you'd better let them know that they'll need to find alternative accomodation. They won't be allowed on the property and if they try to, they'll be trespassing and I won't think twice about calling the police."

[Mallika7]

The same thing happened to me.  The guest came with extra guests that had not been approved.  She had booked for four, and I had confirmed with her the number.  She came with 7 guests. I let her know the were not approved, and she said, "well, seven people are coming anyway." She then caused a lot of damage and expenses for me, due to the 7 guests.

I pursued a request for extra guests fees, since she had brought unapproved guests, and my listing contains a fee for additional guests.  It was a long, drawn-out process, badly handled and mismanaged by AirBnb, to say the least, with each customer support person giving a different version of the policy.

In the end, one case manager asked her to pay half of the expense (I had already compromised down from what my listing fees indicated was the extra guest fee).  She said she would, but only if I took down the review I had posted, that said many positive things, but I also said that she brought extra guests.  I declined to remove the review, because it accurately reflected my experience.  However, after I declined, she then asked AirBnb to remove her positive review of me.  They deleted it.

They claim they have a policy against extortion, but they do not.  She wrote a review before seeing mine.  Once she saw my review, she offered to pay for damages only if I were to remove my review.  When I did not remove my review, she removed hers. 

This undermines the whole transparency of the AirBnb review process.  The community is based on honesty and transparency in reviews.  When someone is allowed to engage in "tit-for-tat" behavior, it means that I am pressured to not post an honest review on the guest.  In this case, I did not cave, but it was because I believe other hosts have the right to know that this person was rude, entitled, and never once even apologized when I messaged her individually to let her know that it was not okay that she brought 7 guests.  The system has no credibility, since they allow guests to seek revenge by removing their own review, and this is against their own publicly stated policy.

[Maria969]

I had a horrible guest, advantageous and cheater.    How can Airbnb side with a guest if is flagrantly abusive and diminished?

does someone has a good story when Airbnb sided with the host and put the guest is it’s place?

[Mary996]

Ooooh I'd love to hear that too! But it seems the Host in this story won out in the end! xx

[Letti0]

@Maria969  I had a few times where they have sided with me on issues. One was regarding theft, damage and late stay. I got paid for all the theft and damage of $339. I only got $50 for the late stay though and my cleaning cost was double cost and time. Recently had a guest book a group booking that finally timed out after 6 days only to have her rebook it as a group pay again later that night. After 2 more days of her still not paying I involved AirBnB they got her to pay it. Then she wouldn't sign the rental agreement and AirBnB stepped in again. She ended up canceling the next day. She wanted to rent a boxing match on pay per view and realized we lived on property and her party was over when she read the rental agreement. I have had 2 cancellations that guests wanted refunds and they held up my strict policy in both cases. They have explained to one guest that my infant's must be paid for rule was valid when the guest kept insisting it was against AirBnB's rules for me to charge for them and that they needed to pay for the 2 infants. There are a few other times also, but twice they gave me a hard time about canceling a reservation penalty free until I directed them to their own policy and then they finally did it. I think if you document everything in the AirBnB messaging system and are polite and reasonable to the customer service rep you can get good results, but you must also know all of AirBnB's Term of Service and all their Policies to fight back and win. That's one of the benefits of all these hosts on the forums, they know a lot of the Terms of Service and Policies you can use in your favor, so you can get help to argue your case, usually rather quickly. 

[Mary996]

Fantastic Letti.

Well done and thank you for being here. You are a treasure.

Actually Letti... have you considered being a Host employee? I'd like to suggest to abb that they consider appointing Hosts working from home to timescales as much or as limited as we'd like ... to respond to other Hosts ...instead of their appalling agents who currently can't do a decent job. What do you think? Not that we'd like to lose you from here but a strategy for improving the service from abb is desperately needed.

[Ken60]

I just hosted a guest who had five stars and great reviews — until an unreasonable, sour host destroyed her rating over “dirty dishes”. The guest was shocked by this accusation and realized it was an excuse to keep the cleaning deposit. Her response to the host was polite and non-accusatory. She was afraid I would not accept her reservation because of the bad review. In fact, she was one of the best guests I’ve ever had.

[Victoria567]

Hi @Ken0

Glad it worked out for you.

Perhaps it’s a perception of shared values?

What is acceptable to one host is unacceptable to another.

I recently hosted 2 guests from Salt Lake City, Utah with 9 glowing reviews.

Unfortunately this pair did not glow particularly brightly during their stay with me.

This pair of entitled chancers thought it smart and acceptable to not honour payment for use of my laundry services despite my listing clearly stating a fee was to be paid.

One hosts bundle of joy can morph into another hosts sour grape, but at least I would appreciate if air bnb allowed hosts reviews to be published, so at least hosts may make their own minds up as whether to host certain guests.