Guest cancels before check-in, then Airbnb asks me to review them?

[Lisa1485]

Hi all,

We had guests due to stay for one night whilst visiting family in the area. The day of check-in, they contacted me to say the due to their daughter being ill (whom they were visiting) they had to cancel. I asked them to cancel the booking or amend it to a later date if they wished to defer. They cancelled. Due to our moderate cancellation policy, they are not due a refund other than for the service charge.

Today I have received an email from Airbnb asking me to review their stay, which clearly I can’t do, as they didn’t stay. Do I just do a generic, “xyz‘s communication was great, sadly they had to cancel their booking at late notice, due to family illness. However, they were quick to advise us of their change of plans” 

Or do I not review them at all? Seems a bit pointless to me!

[Sandra856]

Hi @Lisa1485 🙂

I would not review at all. If you do so the guest will get a notification mail that you reveiwed and airbnb will ask the guest to review if they want to read your review. If they didn't ask for a refund my experience is that they won't review you at all. So no need to "lead" them towards reviewing you 🙂 

[Lisa1485]

Can a guest who cancelled review you, if you don't review them? 

[Lisa723]

@Lisa1485 yes, if the cancellation was on day of check-in.

[Maeve9]

Yes and I had one forgetful guest who didn't remember his check in day so missed his day with me. No refund so he was angry and reviewed me negatively even though he never crossed my thresh hold.

[Sandra856]

@Lisa1485 if you get an  email to review, the guests do too. 

[Sandra856]

@Lisa1485 It is not seldom that we hear about guests leaving bad reviews for hosts because they are annoyed that because of the cancellation policy they won't get any back. So no need to "prompt" or how you say it in english 🙂 by leading the guest to think they should review you by leaving them a review. 

[Sandra856]

@Lisa1485 Hope you could use some of our inputs.

Best, Sandra

[Lisa1485]

Thanks for all your input Sandra. I found the whole concept of reviewing a guest who cancelled before check in weird!! I’ve taken you advice and will not be inviting trouble by reviewing her! Thanks again. 

[Sandra856]

@Lisa1485 There has also been a lot of discussions about it because how can a guest who never entered the listing review? And I have also seen a video of I think it was the annual airbnb host-guest summit with questions where airbnb stated that guest should not be allowed to review if they never checked in/entered the listing. It might be possible to get the review removed because of that. I think the reason why they have the review option when guests cancel within the same day is because a guest could show up to a very dirty or not as described listing and because of that cancel and review the listing in order to warn people. 

Glad you could use our inputs 🙂 

Best, Sandra

[Susan17]

@Sandra856

It was Clara Liang, Airbnb Director of Product, who stated in the June 29th 2018 Q&A (with Brian Chesky sitting beside her, nodding in agreement) that guests should not be allowed to leave a review if they never checked in, and that if it did somehow happen, that hosts could call CX to have the review removed. 

However, within days, Airbnb had done a complete U-turn on that and said it wasn't correct, and that guests can leave a review, even if they've never laid eyes on a place. They also removed the relevant clip of Ms Liang making the statement from the Q&A video, and deleted the associated paragraph from their written synopsis of the event. 

The following is a very long discussion on the issue, but if you scan the first and last few pages of the thread, it gives a general overview of what transpired. 

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/To-Clara-Liang-Product-Director-Last-min-cancellation-be...

[Sandra856]

@Susan17 A belated thank you for clearing it up! 🙂 

[Maeve9]

I didn't review my absent minded no show guest but he managed to review me for spite by using that new Airbnb system of icons! He picked no toilet paper, no bedding, no towels, etc etc 

[Helen350]

In these circumstances I sometimes  leave my review at the end of the morning of the 14th day, so there is very little time left to write a neg. review in anticipation that I was negative....

[Pamela485]

I had one experience where the guest never arrived, I gave her a full refund, and she still gave me a 4 star rating, which is a B-.  I recently had a guest make a reservation for 1 person, and when I tried to confirm the 1 person, he informed me that there would be 3 people total.  He didn't want to pay the cost for additional people and subsequently canceled the reservation.  I allowed him a full refund but I am just appalled that this person could potentially give me a poor review.  I was looking at the review policies and found this under Hosting Help, Reviews:

The following are violations specific to the type of the content on Airbnb:

Reviews

• Reviews that do not represent the author’s personal experience or that of their travel companions

I will wait to see if this person does, in fact, give a review.  I will not be reviewing him because it would be fraudulent to do so as he never stepped foot in my home.  I would like to see Airbnb address this issue and not just tell me that there is nothing that can be done about it.