Guests stole from us, opened an illegal restuarant in our appartment, AirBnB still let them write 1-star reviews which diosclose where we live, our financial details and more.

Guests stole from us, opened an illegal restuarant in our appartment, AirBnB still let them write 1-star reviews which diosclose where we live, our financial details and more.

Some guests recently stole from one of our properties. This is not a matter of opinion, AirBnB actually paid us a settlement for the stolen items. She and her husband then had the nerve to yell at us about damaging their reputation online saying that "reputation is all that matters!" WHILE they were standing at our door and handing back some of the items they'd taken! It was a surreal experience. The guest was allowed to post a review which was clearly spiteful, it was a 1-star review that was clearly written out of mallice. (We have been SuperHosts for a decade and the property was good enough that the guest extended their stay by two nights, so it clearly isn't a 1-star place. We've hosted over a hundred thousand people over the last ten years at our properties, because we are honest and offer fair vlaue and GREAT service to our guests.) The review also insulted me personally, calling me desperate, it told people where we live and it also disclosed my personal financial information.

 

That's right, this review tells people that we are millionaires AND tells people where we live! And somehow the braintrust at AirBnB don't see this as a problem. Despite a 3-HOUR long phone call with AirBnB, they have refused to remove the review, saying that there is no violation. "It doesn't have your actual address." Well, it says that we live "right next door to Unit A." How much more exact does it need to be? 

 

Last year other guests opened an illegal restaurant in one of our apartments and had to be escorted from the property by police. We have video! And AirBnB let those people post a 1-star review of us as well. 

 

THE FINAL INSULT IS THAT THIS MORNING WE RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM AIRBNB THAT THEY WERE CONSIDERING DE-LISTING THE PROPERTY WHICH HAD BEEN STOLEN FROM FOR POOR REVIEW PERFORMANCE! What do these geniuses think is going to happen? That people who are escorted out by police are going to leave honest reviews? It's an obscenity. AirBnB doesn't care about its own rules, certainly not about protecting its hosts. The message from AirBnB here seems to be VERY clear; they DO NOT want hosts to claim for losses caused by bad guests! AirBnB clearly wants property owners to put up with anything from anyone, including theft, damage and even in the case of the illegal restaurant, potential catastrophic legal repercussions should we have been sued. A guest did something so bad in one of our properties that we could have lost the whole complex, and AirBnB STILL let them post a 1-star review about us! It's madness.

28 Replies 28

@William1246  Is this the review you're referring to?

 

"The owner waited for me to give me code since I was the person that booked. Gave me a lecture about how if it was a worked tripped I have to call Airbnb, I didn’t feel it’s I had to do that since I touched the slider where it asks if it’s a work trip when I booked. He lives right next door and accused us of taking towels and charged me. After I explained to him my husband went through our guest bags to look for the towels. We broke an old can opener but replaced it. He also accused us of taking a few silver ware which we didn’t but bought him new ones. I got charge 19.50 for 2 used towels. Paid him half since we told him we had gone through everyone’s items to make sure no one took his towels. I didn’t know I had to do inventory on what’s in the property. So how do I know if it’s true we are the cause of those missing towels and not the ppl prior to us. Cause when we booked the places wasn’t even ready so what makes it seem if the items were even counted properly! I payed close to $1000 for 5 days not right what I’m being accused of. Good luck on anyone booking make sure when u rent the place you & host do a whole inventory before you stay! If not you will be overcharged and replace whatever old items needed to be replaced already! I rent from Airbnb a lot, whole year round and had never run to a host this desperately after he mentioned he was a millionaire!!"

 

As far as I can tell, there's no clear violation of the Content Policy. But the review's grammar is deeply offensive to the English language.

@Anonymous as an off topic aside, I have noticed in both my online business and my Airbnb that people who spell "paid"  p-a-Y-E-d are typically troublesome. Don't know what the correlation is, but when I see that my alarm bells go off. 

@Laura2592  You know, I always say that the correspondence is the best predictor of how the guests will behave, regardless of the prior reviews. And yes, I have declined requests because they were poorly written. Not out of snobbery, but out of genuine disbelief that these people had enough life skills to be trusted with my home.

 

Even McDonald's wouldn't hire a job applicant whose CV was full of misspellings. So why would you hand the keys to your house over to someone who couldn't compose a simple sentence?

@Laura2592 bad grammar rubs me the wrong way as well. Still, we also have a company in Costa Rica which until the virus hit was hosting 15,000 guests per year. So we don't usually pay much attention to grammar. It's funny, we'vehad more issues with this little project here in two years of hosting almost entirely Americans, than we had in our much larger one in Costa Rica over the course of 12 years hosting people from all over the world, bad English and Ggrammar skills notwithstanding! Maybe we Americans really ARE bad travelers? Kidding ha ha. 😉

@Anonymous That's the one. It calls me "desperate" and insults are not allowed. It says that I live "right next door" and disclosing personal details about a host also isn't allowed. It also says that I am a "millionaire" which is personal financial information, also not allowed. Also, it is a 1-star review meaning that it was filthy and disgusting, that we lied about location etc. None of these are true, they even extended their stay by two days. The AirBnB policy prohibits reviews which are written out of spite or which are knowingly inaccurate. 

 

Any -one- of those should be sufficient to remove the review, there are four violations and it is still up anyway. On top of this, the guests stole from the unit. They are posting a bad review out of spite because AirBnB makde them pay for what they took. Simple, it shouldn't be up.

@William1246  The review and response that you wrote accused the guest of theft. In terms of libel, that's far more serious than calling someone a desperate millionaire. 

 

Actually, she called you "desperately," which is an adverb and doesn't even make sense.

 

Your argument sounds like quite a stretch to me, but I'm not the one who makes these decisions. If the review does indeed stick, though, I think we can safely say that it presents no immediate threat to your safety. Nobody out there is going to mistake the bloke in a Fred Flintstone costume, who lives next door to his Airbnb listing, for Daddy Warbucks.

@Anonymous The theft occured and was paid for through the AirBnB Resolution Center. It's not an accusation, it's a fact. **

 

**[Inappropriate comment removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

@William1246  Oh how I love getting educational advice from Fred Flintstone!

 

But if someone wanted to have a review removed on grounds of defamation, nothing would make it easier than being accused of a crime. It's beyond dispute that items were missing, and that you were successfully paid out a claim for them. That does not strictly constitute a conviction or a legal admission of theft. There have been cases where websites like Yelp have lost libel lawsuits due to the content of reviews, and as the publisher of your review, Airbnb would be the liable party if the guest raised a fuss about being called a thief.

 

You're probably right that the guests intentionally stole those items, but hosts will only benefit from the review if Airbnb doesn't get cold feet about hosting it. If you have the misfortune to get a lousy guest like this again, and you want to make sure your review sticks, you might want to yabba-dabba-do yourself a favor and stick to the observable facts ("several items were missing after the guest departed") rather than any unprovable assertions about the guests' intentions.

@Anonymous theft doesn't have to be admited to in order to have occured. **

 

**[Inappropriate comment removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

 

 

@William1246 Andrew is giving you some good advice, which is whether or not the court of Airbnb has decided the guest owes you money, the mention of theft can get a review pulled. It doesn't matter if it's true or not: the mention of drugs, theft, bodily fluids, etc. can get a review removed. If you want your review to stick, just don't mention these things. It doesn't make you wrong. 

 

How does it come up in conversation with guests that you're a millionaire? "Make sure you leave the place tidy when you leave. Here's the air conditioner. I'm a millionaire, you know!"

 

@Alexandra316 hello from a fellow Torontonian! Before 10 years in Central America and now a couple years down the road from the new TESLA factory in Texas, I was a Queen West brat, regular karaoke junkie at the Gladstone and sipper of martinis on the roof at the Drake! Miss that town! 🙂

 

**

 

As for your sarcastic comment/scenario, "Here's the air conditioiner, I'm a millionaire," you're assuming that the review is true too. Which is my point! It never did come up anywhere other than in the guest's theiving little brain! She asked where the "gorgeous" canvases on the walls came from and I explained that we took the pictures ourselves, some in Italy, some on Malta and some in our own backyard iN Costa Rica where we also have a vacation company that serves about 15,000 guests per year and added that any guest here in Texas gets a 10% off of a trip to CR with our company there. THE GUEST said, "Must be nice to be a millionaire!" and laughed, I changed the subject because I DON'T discuss my finances.

 

The guest lied, which isn't surprising given that she's a ** thief, and again, the tone of your post and of your comment assumed that the thieving ** was true and that I'm the sort who goes around bragging to guests. Your comment is also kinda ** and not helpful, but more to the point demonstrates why the review shouldn't be up: Not only is it about my personal finances, but it's also wrong. NO personal info about hosts is allowed in reviews. Maybe redirect your sarcasm elsewhere?

 

**[Inappropriate comment removed in line with the Community Center Guidelines]

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@William1246  "Any -one- of those should be sufficient to remove the review, there are four violations and it is still up anyway. "

 

"Should be" is immaterial. Nothing the guest wrote could be interpreted to violate Airbnb review policy.

 

Certainly there is a big load of overhaul that should be done to the review system. But saying the host lives next door doesn't constitute giving your address, and many hosts make it clear in their listing info that they do live next door, as it discourages the types of guests who try to sneak in more people, or throw parties. 

 

I'm not sure why you're giving this review so much energy, except on principle, as it makes the guest look unhinged, and potential bookers will gloss over it as an obvious outlier.

@Sarah977 I'm giving it energy because the 1-star review rating has trashed that listing's star rating. AirBnB has sent me another, separate email threatening to de-list the property! I'm not sure that you and us share the same perspectvie, as that threat seems fairly consequential to us. 

@William1246  Well, you didn't mention anywhere that you had received a threat of delisting as far as I read, so I'm not sure how you expected me to know that.

 

Those warnings are computer bot generated, and according to other posts I've read about it, there really isn't any follow through. There are listings on Airbnb with 3* ratings.

 

But I agree that if Airbnb believed your accusations of theft, and paid you out for that, they shouldn't allow the guest to leave a review. However, hosts have been protesting this for ages, and Airbnb turns a deaf ear. There are thousands, if not tens of thosands of hosts who have had these revenge review scenarios.