Please fix the review system

[Robin4]

There have been a lot of posts recently with the same content as this....it is a complaint about reviews.

Up until just recently I would not have been bothered to do this yet again (it's been done to death) because I felt it achieved nothing! But, it appears we have had a win by grizelling about 'Group reservation Payments' to the point where the option has now been removed, so, maybe someone does take notice of what we collectively say here!

Like most of you, I put my heart and soul into my hosting.

When I started off I never thought I would be successful because I didn't have anything to offer a guest, just a daggy old building! But I tried with every hosting to make it special in some way.

I resisted the temptation to list on other platforms because I didn't want the effect of, or my efforts 'watered down' by having reviews spread around......15 here, 21 there. So I have ended up with a block of more than 150 reviews here.

And it seems everyone likes that...... except Airbnb!

In my Airbnb hosting career I have had 144 five star reviews and 10 four star reviews, but in only three of those 4 star reviews was I actually criticised for anything I could improve! In the other 7 they are fine, nothing I could fix. I did nothing wrong but, because they were an overall 4, my 5 star review rate has slipped to 92% .

Why is Airbnb penalising me for something I can't make any better?

Why is it my fault that the guest booked and paid for my property, in the full knowledge, it wasn't where they wanted it?

Why is it my fault when a guest who has been given a specific address in a short street with a row of 12 houses with large numbered numerals on the front wall and also on the letterbox at the gate can't find the property?

I would like to know how many other Airbnb hosts put an Airbnb sign up at the driveway or entrance to identyify the property, as I now do!!

Or even worse, have to deal with a star rating like this.....

If my 5 star review rate keeps slipping because of reveiws like these, I will lose my Superhost status....all because of something I could do nothing about.

Will Airbnb please consider dropping the 5 star review rating as an assessment criteria? There is little, or no, correlation between it and a hosts performance.

Cheers.....Rob

[Lisa723]

I feel ya, @Robin4

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/for-your-amusement/m-p/817554#M197041

[Robin4]

@Lisa723

Yeah how exactly does that work Lisa....they loved your location but, the lovely location wasn't the lovely location they had in mind!!!

Idiotic comments like this are hurting we who go out of our way to fly the Airbnb flag to the best of our ability.

We don't want to have to grovel to guests to stay in business, that demeans both us and the platform but, Airbnb are now actively turning guests away from leaving a review, and those that do decide they will face the barrage of probing need to be coached in the consequences of their perceptions and what the outcome of that can do to hosts.

One thing that did intrique me Lisa, if a guest leaves me less than a 5 star in any category an explanation as to why they left that particular rating will appear directly below the category.....does that not happen for you? 

Cheers.....Rob

[Lisa723]

No @Robin4 not in this case at least.

[Lisa723]

@Robin4 so I asked the guest what I might do to improve his 3-star location rating and 4-star overall rating, and this was his reply:

"Some of the powers-to-be at Air BnB need to sit on a cactus. Your place is wonderful. I thought I gave your place a 4.8 out of 5.0. Lack of phone service, road construction throughout Oregon City, rush hour traffic from 7am to 7pm, and poor layout of roads/bridges made navigation difficult."

Cell phone service is highlighted as an amenity limitation in our rural listing, where there is no traffic. We are literally the dead end of a gravel road. So I guess I'll get to work on replanning the Portland metropolitan area's roads and bridges.

[Crystal144]

You should charge an extra $10 per person per night, to replan, engineer, and construct new infrastructure in the Portland metropolis 

[Tamra3]

In my opinion I think it comes down to what a guest perceives as “five star”. If it’s just based on accuracy, location, cleanliness , ..then yes it meets the criteria. However for some guests it’s more subjective...in that a five star rating is the very best of the best, and a four star stay is very, very, good and you would go back to. I have had a few guests where this became clear to me in that “this is not a five star property”,it should have this...this... etc. however all of the features they were suggesting would be a $700 night place versus a $150 price point. I  have also stayed at other superhosts’ air BNBs that I really liked, but I didn’t think they were exceptional or five star in that there were other things that made it slightly less than five star. I however know how superhosts are ranked, so I choose not to leave appropriate ranking as I did not want to penalize great welcoming hosts that provided five star service and amenities for a four star property. I didn’t want them to loose superhost status when they really were “superhosts” and thought other guests would enjoy their properties. So I elected on a couple of my past stays to not provide a review, or on one occasion because of super hosting I gave what I thought was more of a four star property five stars. I think that is where the star rating is flawed in terms of superhost status as the star rating is subjective and superhost status should be judged more on  the quality of the experience and what the hosts do for the guests, such as not cancelling long held reservations. The one thing I found that mitigates this is establishing at least a friendly engagement with the guests. This seems to promote most guests leaving five star ratings because their experience is five star. 

[Robin4]

@Tamra3

You make a very accurate  post Tamra and your experience is similar to mine and I guest most other Airbnb users....We all live in this hosting Utopia where we pat each other on the back and say what wonderful people we all are. We gloss over issues that we are not happy about, but don't feel strongly enough to jeapardise a 'stellar' review over.

And lets face it Tamra, a stellar review is the only thing which maintains the equilibrium on Airbnb.

As I have said before, if I do something wrong, smack me and I will fix it! But please don't whack me when there is nothing you can tell me I have done wrong.

Tamra, I have mentioned this before here. A guest gave me a 3 star for cleanliness! Would you like to hazard a guess why?  The guest claimed the authenticated triple knotted persian silk rug I had on the floor of the listing looked....'old and shabby'!! That rug is worth more than a reasonable mid range new motor vehicle these days. Do you know how I fixed that 'cleanliness' issue? I headed down to the nearest Ikea store and bought a 'Lohals', one of those matting type things that never shows any dirt, and if you walk across it enough times it will remove a layer of skin from the soles of your feet!!

I don't get 3 star cleanliness complaints any more!

Cheers.....Rob

[Donna366]

I myself had a bad review of 1 star per category with the majority of all my other guests rating me 5 stars.  This hurt a lot.

[David122]

I just had that happen.

all 5 star reviews and I told this guest to leave the hot tub late at night as the  neighbors were not happy  so they gave me a one star review.

still trying to work that out with air b.

They are not interesting in helping much at all.

it changed this last year.

geez

[Alice595]

AirBnb's review system needs to be improved in the following areas. Otherwise, it discourages hosts from providing great service to AirBnb guests.

1. Overall star does not reflect stars given in the individual categories.
(1) I received a great review from a guest and she provided a five stars in all categories but accidently clicked 4 star for overall. That was what she told me after I asked her.
(2) My suggestion is to average the stars given in each category for the overall star. Or at least provide a prompt to the guest about the contradict of stars given in the overal.

2. Any terminated staying due to various reasons should not be provided a chance for both host and guest writing a review. The termination always involves some types of causes such as emergency situations, hosts and guests conflict due to violation of rules etc. In such a case, the review definitely is biased

3. AirBnb should provide a 48 hours period for both hosts and guests to be able to revise their reviews. If a review is so important to both guests and hosts, a very short time and one click of submit could not really reflect the real experience. 

Please provide your feedback at Airbnb's feedback link https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

[Noel63]

@Robin4It is absolutely ridiculous that your guest dinged you for not having a sign. You live in the Adelaide Hills. Streets make sense and GPS works. Houses are numbered. You are not a motel.

We do have a sign, but that is because Google Maps keeps sending people on a wild goose chase. Also, we got dinged on communication for not telling  a lady to take the main entrance into Coober Pedy. Our directions are now ridiculously long.

[Rachel0]

@Robin4 I've got 244 reviews, 95% 5 star and until  last week had never had less than 5 stars  for check in or communication.  We can't have a sign outside as the council would not allow it and I am  not sure I would want one anyway.  When I message guests with the directions to get here I make it SO clear - "Get off the bus at the stop called xxx, cross the road where you will see our road with a kitchen shop on one corner and a deli called yyy on the other.  We are at number x which is the 3rd terraced house down on the left hand side with a grey front door."  These guests who were from S Korea had come from another Airbnb in London to spend 7 nights here but owing to their inability to follow simple, clear instructions they wandered about knocking on blue doors, pink doors and purple doors on the right hand side of the street.  So they gave me 4* and an "incorrect information" response.  I felt like spitting when I read that.  To add insult to injury they gave me 3* for location - presumably because here in Ealing we cannot see Big Ben and the Tower of London out of the window.  I make it perfectly clear in my description that we are mid way between Heathrow and the centre of town, that it takes 25 mins from our local tube station to get into the centre but THEY DON'T READ.  I can't do anything about my location, the house has stood here for over 100 years without complaint, but that is not good enough for some people it seems.

[Robin4]

@Rachel0 Yeah Rachel you make a good point!

Rachel, we don't understand how people in other parts of the world perceive directions, and I am afraid it really is a case of....... 'A pictures is worth a thousand words'

One of the conditions local council allowed me to rent my property was, no advertising signage!

So once this incident happened where we really did strike 'blind Freddy....well dopey Freddy' I once again had a word with them and asked for their ideas on what I would request permission to do! I have found out over the years, if you approach Council asking for answers, they are pretty good. If you go to them telling them what you want....God help you! You always have to let them make the decisions.

I drew up a bit of a sketch of a letterbox with a small Airbnb sign where the mail would normally go and asked what they thought of it. They told me as long as it would only remain visible for the hour or so that guests were expected they would accept it.

So here is what I ended up with, and Rachel, it is working wonderfully...

There is no part of  'what don't you understand' about that! It doesn't matter what language they speak, they know when they are here. There is even a solar light on top of it for nightime arrivals. After guests arrive I lift it off the pole it sits over and take it inside the garage.

So Rachel, good did come out of that review! But it is not something that Airbnb should suggest be adopted by hosts because all hell would break loose if hosts everywhere started doing it!

Rachel, you can see a native bottlebrush tree just to the right of the garage roller door...that is the tree where I photographed our Koala that you see in the listing photos! They definitely are becoming more brazen and moving into urban areas. I have five photos of that Koala around the place, I am just hanging out for the time I can actually get a guest holding it!

Cheers.....Rob

[Victoria567]

Hello @Rachael0

Regarding location.. to quote AE Houseman “ 3 minutes thought would have found this out, but thought is irksome and for some.....3 minutes is a LONG time!”

The entitled guest.....onwards and upwards!