Retaliation Rating and Review

[Kelly-And-Jeff0]

Hi Everyone,

We have been hosting for awhile now. We have 72 reviews. In the overall category they have all been 5 star until our latest guest. All those 5 stars didn't come by accident. We worked very hard for them! And held our tongue on some bad guests as well. We recently had a guests ignore check out times (and we had a check in that day so couldnt accomodate a late checkout which we always will) and I don't want to get into the long and short of it but was just a very entitled guest. Kept telling me that it was fine the house would turn over very quickly. Our check out time is 11am and check in is 3pm. Our next guests were already in town and just waiting to check in... When I finally got into the house, for a 2 night stay it was not very clean. There was quite a bit of garbage around and just a lot of things had been moved. Normally that would have been annoying but fine. I would have had enough time. But this time I didn't. And I cleaned like a mad woman. And in the end I came up short and it negatively impacted our next guest's arrival (although they were very understanding).

I was pretty upset about this and tried to charge the guest a late check out fee of $50. I have never done anything like this but I just REALLY did not want him to just get away with this! Anyway a bit of a back and forth. I tried to stay calm and just stick to the facts. I basically for the first time ever told a guest that their behaviour was NOT ok! Then today almost 2 weeks after check out I get the dreaded email.... he has left a review. He left us 2 stars in every category. He even told me that they were going to book our place for the summer but after I confronted him forget it. Do you think you would book a 2 star place?

Anyway. This is my first retaliation review and I'm guessing there is nothing I can do about it? Cost of doing business? Should I never confront a guest on bad behaviour again?

[Alice-and-Jeff0]

You don't have to live with it @Kelly-And-Jeff0.  Contact Airbnb. 

[Fred13]

  Forget 'bad behavior', that is for his social circle to deal with; if he has to get out at 11am, he HAS to get out at aproximately 11am; check out time is NOT 'Let's Make a Deal' time. 

  When he didn't, that was the time to call Airbnb, especially the minute he got huffy, meaning its a 'problem' guest and then you would have had the ammunition to kill his follow-up retaliatory review.

   Of course, now call Airbnb and let them know when he did finally leave and what it took to get him out. When was that by the way? 

   P.S. Honestly, I just don't get where these guests I read here having the guts to tell the host when they 'feel' like leaving are to be found.  Are you kidding me? 

[David126]

I can only thing of two occasions where someone has pushed it, once they just had a lot of stuff to carry out and I worked around them and the other time I was in there stripping beds, think they got the message...

Never occurred to call AirBnB, local management issue.

[Thomas192]

  "P.S. Honestly, I just don't get where these guests I read here having the guts to tell the host when they 'feel' like leaving are to be found.  Are you kidding me? "

I had a similar guest, cliff notes to portion of this story goes like;

was vacuuming the guests' room on a saturday, noticed the room window had been left wide open with drapes flappin in the breeze.  Totally unsafe, unsecure, easy access for home invasion, you get the point.

Anyway, when they returned that evening i asked if  they'd been leaving the window (listing says i enter room once per week to clean) open and unlocked every day or was just a one time occurance .  

The mans reply;   we've left it wide open on purpose since arrival.  I then told them that was not acceptable, my house rules are locking securing doors/windows behind you whenever leaving the home.

I would like to think that any normal person would understand the reasoning behind the rule and also not want anything to be stolen or worse due to something as easily preventable as locking a window before leaving.

This guest looked at me and said, Nope, i am not going to do that for you?   

I've never used Airbnb as a guest, only host.  But i am now curious, how does Airbnb Pre-qualify or vet the guests they send to live with us for a while?

[Vinay7]

Hi @Kelly-And-Jeff0,

Its commendable that you have been maintaining 5star ratings. Congratulations!!

In my opinion,

1. You should never accomodate late check-out at the cost of delaying check in of the next guest. It's fine if you don't have any guests coming the next day and then you allow late check-out.

2. Have you mentioned any late check-out fee in your listing that you tried to charge Harman? If you haven't mentioned it earlier, you should reconsider before asking a guest to pay for it.

3. I believe Harman checked out by 12PM (as per your comment on Harman's review) and you had time till 3PM for the check in. Are you saying 3 hours was not sufficient for cleaning up your place? Or Had you offered early check-in to the next guest?

4. You have amazing reviews. Also Harman has great reviews! I guess some arguments have gone on between you two  for some reason, which has resulted in the negative review. May be this was avoidable??

My suggestion is that you have to be polite and at the same time affirmative with guests when it comes to your house rules. Don't worry too much about this review. Your response is very good and does the damage control well!

Take the learnings from this situation and move forward. 🙂

[Fred13]

   I tried to read the exchange, but my Internet was too jumpy. If he did get out by 12pm, with a 3pm check-in, I am in total agreement with you @Vinay7. Heck, my guests are that sloppy all the time. I thought this guy stayed right up to 3pm the way it sounded.

[Barry-and-Lera0]

@Kelly-And-Jeff0: Have you thought about shifting your check-in and check-out times? We adjusted ours from a 11am check-out to 12pm and moved check-in from 3pm to 4pm. We found that guests liked to go out to breakfast in the morning or sit by the pool the day of check-out and the noon time made it more relaxing and not as rushed. Moving the times was also based on a majority of guests showing up at 4pm-6pm when we had the orignal check-in time at 3pm so shifting everything really didnt matter much on that end.

[Fred13]

Good points; yes, make it more a relaxed scene for the guest.

[Biagio-And-Kudzai0]

I think it's important to simply state the facts to the guests. I agree it's sometimes hard to not take offence but like you said yourself "the cost of doing business". Stick to your policy and reasons why you have specific check-in and check-out times.

Believe me most guests look at the overall ratings and make informed choices. Your record speaks for itself.. 

Thanks for sharing your experience with the community.

[Rebecca181]

@Kelly-And-Jeff0 We have same day turn-over pretty much all the time. I wrote into my House Rules on ABB that I charge $50.00 for every hour the guest stays beyond check-out. Having this written into my House Rules which the guest supposedly agreed to when booking (whether they read it or not) gives me a bit more ground to stand on if I need to charge the guest, first directly through the Resolution Center, or later, via ABB Customer Support. Also, it gives me more ammunition if I want to petition ABB to have the review removed (because clearly my House Rule was broken, and my calling the guest on it resulted in a retaliatory review). So far, so good - I have had only one late check-out and as the next guests were coming very late and I adored the current guests (who were still furiously scrambling to try and get out on time a half hour after check-out) I offered them a late check-out at no charge. The woman was so grateful she nearly broke down in tears. So there is alway flexibility, at our discretion, when it comes to our own rules. Sounds like you handled a tough situation very well!

[Henry122]

@Kelly-And-Jeff0 Did you manage to get Airbnb remove the retaliation rating and review? 

We got 2 retaliation ratings in a row :-(.  The first one didn't read our listing which clearly mentioned the small room with the measurement.  So he gave the accuracy 1 star.  How can Guest blame Host for accuracy if he doesn't read the listing?  We've had people staying in the room for months and gave us 5 stars for all category. The second Guest chose to buy parking permit from the city and blamed us for parking ticket he got. He is a Host and gave us 3 star rating.

I called Airbnb and they don't even care. Saying it's personal experience of the Guests. But those low stars hurt our ratings from 4.9 to 4.6 as we do not host too frequently.  We might loose our Superhost status just because of this retaliation rating.  

[Susan525]

@Henry122 I just got my first retaliation review after I bent over backwards to help a guest… Changed her dates, didn’t charge cancellation fees, put up with her dog that I clearly stated was not allowed but she brought anyway and I had a puppy in the house… Accommodated early check in, late check out.. Let her bring stuff over a day ahead of time with no charge… Let her leave it here between bookings… Watered her freakin’ plant for her when she was gone for 5 days… put up with her leaving the front door open at night when I was gone.. Not turning off the gas stove and filling house with gas.. Continyally leaving a space heater on with no one at home… leaving her dog unattended yapping for hours… And Airbnb’s stance? Even though the second review was three stars (from previous st five stars).., Nothing we can do. It’s freakin’ ridiculous. They should be able to take something down that is obviously retaliatory.

[Kate597]

There are some really crappy guests. We all have them, and those reviews should really not be part of your overall rating. Totally unfair! 

[Kate597]

I make a point of telling people there is a potential for noise, as I live on a main road, and then they complain about the noise and there’s nothing I can do about it, they give me an inaccuracy In profile note, which is not the case because I let them know I had a time there is a potential for noise. If people would just read the listing there wouldn’t be a problem