Relist? Is this an option?

Ain5182
Level 2
Marbella, Spain

Relist? Is this an option?

Hi guys

 

Im new to the community, and had a bad luck booking that is bringing me down a lot. Every time I open the listing to work on it, it gets me all riled up again.  I've only had 3 bookings, and 1 of them posted a really unfair revenge review after I needed to charge for cleaning and broken items.  I was upset and posted a longwinded response, which I now regret. There's nothing to be done about the review or the response through Airbnb support, so I was thinking of starting over and relisting the house from scratch. Would you if this was your place? Is it even an option to delete and start again?

 

Thanks.

22 Replies 22
Mike-And-Jane0
Level 10
England, United Kingdom

@Ain5182 You can't just delete and start again I am afraid although some hosts have done so and get banned from the site if/when caught.

What you could do, if you have a partner, is have them create a new listing in their name. Then just block your existing calendar and start afresh as a new listing. 

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Can you recover from a 1 star review? I only let my place out occasionally throughout the year, so I think it will be almost impossible to get back up to 5star.

Matt682
Level 9
Hednesford, United Kingdom

@Ain5182 I feel your pain, I had a revenge review once. ABB said, “not our problem”, and that I “should be happy I have so many other good reviews and it won’t matter”. The guest didn’t even step into the property.

 

You can recover to a degree… I’ve had 5* reviews for months and months and one of my listings is still only 4.90*. There is an algorithm that buries any anomalous reviews at the very end of your reviews though so if you keep up the good work, guests won’t see the bad one at the bottom with all your great reviews on top.

Mike-And-Jane0
Level 10
England, United Kingdom

@Ain5182 If you are getting bookings then don't worry about the star rating. I should have said you 'own' your response so you could ask Airbnb to remove it. I am not sure if no answer is better than your answer - Others will hopefully provide their views.

Yes, thank you, Im torn there also. I am considering removing my response, just to have less negativity on the listing.

At the time of writing, I was fully expecting Airbnb to remove the review. Their Resolution Center ruled in my favor on all the damages, extra people, and extra cleaning required, but theyre not budging on the review. 

The issue is when you need to request additional funds from a guest, you need to do so before the next guest checks in. In most cases,  this means you are requesting funds right after checkout,  at the exact time the guest is writing up their review. The chance of getting a dishonest revenge review is really high in this situation. My guest even mentions that I requested funds in his review, so its clear his negative review is based on that. Not sure if anyone knows how to avoid this catch22. How to avoid a bad review when forced to request additional funds, it seems impossible.

 

 

@Ain5182 yes it is almost impossible. It's best to wait until reviews have posted before requesting funds, and if you can't, then do it only if the amount is large enough to merit the risk of the retaliatory review-- which, for a new listing with few reviews, would have to be an extremely large amount. This is yet another reason to list on platforms other than Airbnb; of course if your next guest is not an Airbnb guest then Airbnb has no way to apply this ridiculous requirement.

 

In your shoes I would ask to have your review response removed. Your place looks lovely and your most recent review is good so I think you probably can recover. But list on other platforms meanwhile, if you are not already doing that.

Thank you for your response. I am going to have a look at other platforms, I'm just Airbnb at the moment. Thanks for the tip!

Brian2036
Level 10
Arkansas, United States

@Ain5182 

 

I just don’t know about removing your response.

 

It’s too long and detailed but people may not read it all anyway. The first 4 sentences would be enough for me to decline that person.

 

 Unfortunately you can’t edit your response, it’s either leave it or delete it.

Thank you for your time responding. For you more experienced hosts, how often do you get the "bad apple" guest, is it 1 in 5 , 1 in 10, 1 in 50? Was I really unlucky or is this something that happens regularly where a guest doesn't respect the property at all? Just weighing up if I need to increase the security deposit and get extra home insurance etc. Thank you.

@Ain5182 in six years of hosting three properties we haven't had this kind of experience. We've had very messy guests, and some minor damage, but no outright disasters, and we have avoided revenge reviews by never making a claim before reviews are posted. Anecdotally, this seems to be more likely to happen to newer hosts/listings.

 

And as noted in other comments, bargain-hunting guests in our experience seem to value the property and their stays the least. 

Mike-And-Jane0
Level 10
England, United Kingdom

@Ain5182 Touch wood we haven't  had a bad guest yet in  3 years of hosting. We are lucky though that we live next door to our listings so guests cannot have parties/excessive guests.

The so called security deposit isn't actually collected by Airbnb so don't bother increasing it.

Have you checked if your rates are too low? Low pricing seems to attract low quality guests.

That's a really good point. I dropped the price to get a last slot filled over summer, and got this booking. That's also why it upset me so much. They got a really good deal but didn't value it at all. Good to know about the security deposit not having much point. It's been a learning experience for sure!

 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Ain5182  It isn't just that your response is too long-winded, which it most definitely is, you don't understand who reads the review responses. A review response appears on your profile page, not the guest's. It is read by future guests looking at your reviews, not other hosts looking at a guest's review page.

 

So if you leave a response, it is for the benefit of prospective guests- it isn't the place to post what amounts to a review of the guests.

 

Therefore a response should only be used to briefly correct or clarify anything misleading the guest wrote in the review, or to indicate, if the guest mentioned something that you indeed were responsible for, that you have now fixed whatever the issue was.

 

Thank you . Yes , I understand this now and will be a lot more thoughtful in the future when it comes to reviews. Sadly there's not much I can do about it once it's posted, except for removing my response. This is my dilemma, do I remove my response, and leave the guest review without response, or leave my long winded response. Showing a response at least gives a bit of my perspective but Im not entirely sure what is best to do in this situation.