I will no longer post a bad review about a guest

[#1]

I had an awful guest experience and tried to settle it with the guest personally. She stayed at a reduced rate and then needed to extend her stay. We gave her an even bigger rate discount. When she left, she left the place a mess. Dirty, greasy dishes, pots and pans. All the furniture was in dissaray, both sets of blankets/quilts had spots and stains on them, there were crumbs in all the beds on the mattress pads (which had to be hand picked off), and she ruined a set of sheets.

I took 3 days to cool off before I texted her because we really went out of our way to help this guest and she took advantage of us. I told her I was unhappy about the state of the place and asked her to pay $50 to replace the sheets. Prior to this text, she had nothing but glowing reviews and thanks for me in all her texts. She did not understand why she should have to pay for her sheets because I was a woman and the damaged sheets were a result of a "woman thing" and thus I should understand. I said I shouldn't have to pay for her "woman thing".

After much internal debate, I decided to warn other hosts and gave her an appropriate but still not brutal review, even leaving out the refusal to pay for damages and passing on her lame excuse for the mess. She then gave me a bad review, lying about my place and me. Prior to this review, I had 5 star reviews. Now people think my place is noisy and I am rude. My bookings have almost stoped dead in their tracks after her review. Plus, my 3 month pre-book for Jan-March canceled right after the review. I have contacted Airbnb twice about this to no avail. I had responded to her bad review, but not in much detail because I assumed that if I could prove it was a retaliatory review, it would be removed. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Not only will they not remove it, they won't even let me expound on my explanation to her bad review.

So frustrated! I am knee deep in the process of spending a lot of money to make my other 2 rentals Airbnb rentals and now I can't even get bookings in prime season. Airbnb penalizes us for trying to warn other hosts about bad guests.

[Sanjana2]

I made the mistake of trusting people off Airbnb once. Never again. They very petty enough to not vacate my place when the checkout time came, even stayed for a few hours till our other guests for the next booking turned up. We had to tell them to wait while we cleaned. And it is later we realised they stole our cloth iron and a thermal blower, applices which cost enough to make their rent for the night. 

Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

[Sathya0]

Yes, Although my guest had booked through Airbnb. They got more guests than they had booked for and on top of that stole my new fire stick remote and a transformer figurine.

[Marlene78]

Recently a pillow case from a matching set of sheets disappeared. I have had 2 washcloths get stolen but the topping on the cake was my plug in carbon monoxide detector. That really upset me. I did not notice until three days after....so it was difficult to determine which party it was. ...there were 3 rooms being rented. To think that someone would jeopardize the safety of other guests is disgusting. I wonder if air bnb does criminal record checks on guests.

My friend just had a guest break into her back yard when she wasn't checked in. The calibre of guests isn't always there. 

[Jiw0]

That used to be my understanding too that reviews are blind, however I'm not so sure anymore that this is always the case.

I'm a co-host for another host and on her account she definitely sees guest reviews right away as they are submitted, so before she submits her own review.   I think her account is being used for a test run of proposed new features. 

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some guests are also used to trial this, and without adequate information, as usual.

(on my own account the reviews are still blind.)

However, that said, I never leave bad reviews either.  I'm just completely uncomfortable with the review mechanism. I'll still use it to say something nice about great guests when I know they had a great time at my place (fortunately a big majority) but not anything else.

[Angie29]

---

@Jiw0 wrote:

That used to be my understanding too that reviews are blind, however I'm not so sure anymore that this is always the case.

I'm a co-host for another host and on her account she definitely sees guest reviews right away as they are submitted, so before she submits her own review.   I think her account is being used for a test run of proposed new features. 

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some guests are also used to trial this, and without adequate information, as usual.

(on my own account the reviews are still blind.)

However, that said, I never leave bad reviews either.  I'm just completely uncomfortable with the review mechanism. I'll still use it to say something nice about great guests when I know they had a great time at my place (fortunately a big majority) but not anything else.

---

So in other words, per your last paragraph, your horrible guests will book my house and I will never know they were horrible because you didn't warn me.  Is that  correct or am I missing something?    

[Michael4416]

Angie you think I should be afraid of leaving a negative review? You're right we should leave honest reviews to warn the next person. However I doubt many people do. 

[Shakila1]

I would  review  the guest if  bad or good whatever they have to improve   because the other host should not suffer due to

the bad influence. even I give them five star and when I see the review which is not upstanding and which has Envy in it and hatred and bitterness in their heart I would give them reply for good thing for them just to improve themselves better.

I see the difference, and may be all will .I really appreciate honest. Trouble maker should not get away, but we  need to train. 

I feel that the more I  give ,the more ungrateful reviews I get. Hard to digest. 

So I may stop giving the service beyond the airnb request. 

Basic is good, not more than that. 

I have experience with the cute dog ,over feeding makesthem to poop and vomit all the places which is night mare.

[Jennifer--And-My-Brother0]

I thought about that in my situation and I think those guests won't come back and won't refer other guests and if they do, they are bound to be abusive as well so a positive review is not positive diplomacy.   

If a guest doesn't book because of the bad review then maybe they were potential problem guests as well and your negative review shooed away possible troublemakers.   Like a prescreening. 

I just gave a glowing honest review to my first male Arab guest and he gave me an overly glowing review which I feel I dont really deserve but I don't know if that will deter other guests from booking because they may be sharing with someone from a Muslim country.    But you know what, not being Muslim didn't make some of my guests too great - and maybe I could have done without having them book. 

I just want nice people who behave themselves while they are staying with my brother. If I don't get an avalanche of bookings from passive aggresives who can pay the rate, then so be it. 

[Jennifer--And-My-Brother0]

I would have expected a guest to not mind paying if they damaged sheets.   I cleaned up after a guest who was having her period and she clogged the filter in the drain with her blood and didnt clean out her own hair either.  She also left dried purple dye on my ecru sheets and had a very soiled washcloth and she refused to reimburse me.  I was going to let it go because she was having a tiring week but I felt just asking for reimbursement of the non regular dirty linens was okay - she disagreed and wrote me a review instead.  But she and the guest in the other room which she made a point of claiming she had no issue with - were both doing things in the bathroom that would have empowered one another to write me a bad review so I was wiping down that bathroom walls and floor and tub every day except one and it is a good thing I did. 

So my awareness and conscience are clear even though her feedback claimed otherwise.  I have the large pile of lysol wipes and the fact that  I had to open a new tub of wipes to support that I was doing an extraordinary amount of wiping down for their stay.

She was specifically subtly mean and dishonest about me - she never told me she needed more pillows but mentioned it in the review and claimed my messages were unnecessary but they included one about an extra set of towels for her - if I hadn't messaged that or offered that - maybe she would have held that against me as well.   She also claimed there were fish vendors on my block and there was not. 

I wouldn't want to have that type of guest again so if my negative-ish review stops that from happening - that is fine because this peculiar kind of weird meanness ... that is just weird.   It's not normal to torture customer service and we had the brother of a guest do the same thing - it is very odd like you just saw someone's serial killer profile or something.   

[Amy451]

I had crappy guests over thanksgiving eho fries turkeys in my yard and left a review claiming i didnt have a shower curtain! In the private messages he claimed he wanted a plastic shower curtain instead of the very expensive cloth one i have.. he left me a four star review for this, and for ‘not having enough seating in my kitchen’... i have a table and chairs...

[Amy451]

Fried* turkeys ^^^

[MaryBeth22]

I guess I am lucky that only once has a "woman thing" damaged my bedding (quite literally the blanket, both sheets, the mattress pad, and the "damage control" thin pad under the mattress pad)--and the guest compensated me for all, at cost (and I immediately replaced all). Yuk. This is one of many areas where we are NOT a hotel (they can pay for a hotel if they want to bleed all over), and it dismays me to hear about how little Airbnb will do to help quickly resolve a "so obvious" situation.

[Christopher187]

I would not have tipped off the guest and just written a very bad review.  Then after the guest wrote her review you could pursue the security deposit.

[Jennifer--And-My-Brother0]

In my case which is viewable on my reviews from her and my review for her, the guest ... just refused to discuss the compensation for the purple dye on the fitted sheet and the wrecked face cloth and immediately posted a review with a lie about the block being fishy and some other stuff.   I was just .... 

But I feel firmly that we must be honest in reviews - kind but honest because more of such guests could book otherwise.  

[Jiw0]

Haha.. I realize that this is exactly what the review system is making people do..   

However in a non-AirBnB world (a.k.a. a sane, 'normal personal interaction' world')  I would never think of doing that: playing nice to someone when she checks out, and then hit er with a bad review and payment request..  

But yeah.. I too tell every guest how awesome they were.  But if I have doubts if they had a truly great time then I don't review, because being teased with an invisible review is very likely to trigger the guest to leave a review of their own. 

Although, to be honest there is no personal gain for hosts to leave a bad review.  Other hosts have mostly been forced into InstantBook anyway and won't cancel a booking just becuase another host left a less than glorious review.  So there's really very little point.   

(Also noting that I've seen on these forums that many hosts have WAY higher expectations of guests than I do.. I expect the occational thing to break, I'm already happy if they tell me.  And I expect that towels and blankets won't last forever.. if I happen to end up replacing a couple a bit earlier than expected and some a bit later then so be it, it evens out. )

So if I have an InstantBook booking for a guest and I see that another host left a bad review for the guest not doing the dishes and leaving a mess then I'm seriously not going to cancel.. I mean that's what the cleaning fee is for.

I haven't bothered to read a guest review in months!  And besides guests change accounts all the time, or let their friend/mother/brother etc. sign up.  They already do that just to get some free stuff from AirBnB for inviting another guest, and they could definitely do it to make some bad reviews go away.  

The ONLY reason to review a guest is to tease them into letting them review you, IF AND ONLY IF you're confident they had a great time.

/End Cynicism mode. 😉