Superhost failure Airbnb failure

[Shawn117]

Wow, I'm fairly amazed at how the superhost status is calculated and equally by the Airbnb  costumer support .

Firstly, below is an email I sent to support, it explains fairly well what my objection is, namely, that superhost satus is calulated and penalises hosts when guests fail to review.

MY MESSAGE TO AIRBNB

I would like you to explain why is it that when people fail to leave a review that is counted in the superhost rating.

I'm happy enough to be judged on the reviews people leave because those reviews reflect the experience guests have when staying at my accommodation place. HOWEVER, when someone fails to leave a review that is no indication of the quality of my (or others) accommodation but probably an indication that the guest is perhaps, perhaps too busy, perhaps distracted, perhaps doesn't realise how important it is to leave a review, perhaps traveling and not had the time to review in the time frame required or perhaps any one of a million other reasons why someone might not leave a review but whatever the reason I shouldn't be judged by their failings.

I can not hold a gun to their head (figuratively speaking) and demand they review their stay. I think this is a real failing of the airbnb review and superhost status. By all means, work your superhost status out on completed reviews and make a determination based on actual submissions as it is hardly the hosts fault if someone fails to lodge a review is it,  and it is hardly a good indicator of the quality or otherwise of the accommodation if someone doesn't leave a review.

Also, the impact of someone failing to review your accommodation is enormous in real terms. Think about this, 1 review not submitted means you lose 6 possible 5star ratings and that will very quickly knock your percentage down especially if a few people fail to review.

I think you seriously need to look at your superhost status requirements and only link them to "ACTUAL' reviews not total number of trips.

Also, look at my communication percentage which is '100%'. Why should I be marked down because others don't communicate or review in a similar manner? I don't receive superhost status, not because my accommodation is poor or of high enough standard as, based on my reviews, I would gain superhost status, I don't gain superhost status because a handful of people don't bother completing a review, is that fair?

Please, I await your considered response.

END MESSAGE FROM ME TO AIRBNB

Ok, I'm amazed this happens and it really is an easy fix. It is a simple problem with coding where by the arithmetic should sample 'ACTUAL REVIEWS SUBMITTED' rather than 'TOTAL TRIPS' or guests.  Put simply I, (or you) should not be judged or scored because of the failings of others.  We all know that the online world is full of requests to complete this survey and that survey and your inbox is often full of requests to review and I'm sure even Brian Chesky doesn't get time to respond to all requests to review. 

Finally, as I began, I'm not only alarmed at how percentages are calculated for superhost status I'm also dissappointed by the response. You would think that a problem that is critical to the integrity of their platform would be responded to and yes when I sent in the message I got the standard auto response, 'Thanks you for your message - you can expect a reply shortly'. 

So, rather than respond to it they pursued a rather novel approach to costumer service and support and after a short period I got this response,

This support case is now closed.

You can no longer reply to this thread. If you need additional help, you can always visit our Help Centre.

It is amazing, no other organisation, be that a reserch, statistical, financial, government, gaming or any other that I can think of would ever include 'NON SUBMISSION'  into a calculation but airbnb not only does this to determine superhost status  but when you try to point this out to them they just simply fail to respond.

Just as an aside I also contacted airbnb about a failure in their coding and finally after protacted conversations they accepted the coding was failing on one aspect of their website and I got a response saying a team was 'working on it' . Well, it is still failing and I haven't heard back from anyone about this. I'll post a discussion on this shorlty but in short I'd be concerned if I was the CEO if their hosts who are well motivated  and well meaning have their attempts to bring up issues that relate to failings and problems are ignored because you a feeding a storm of discontent.

[Mike340]

@Shawn117

They take your message to them as " feedback" and as such they do not give a response to feedback...they just pass it on to whoever might just put it in the waste bin or put it on top of the stacked high papers of "to be considered" .....

[Shawn117]

Thanks Mike, yes we are all aware of what a waste of time it is to give 'feedback' as in  really it is just a black hole and airbnb are not alone in this. Nevertheless automated responses of, 'you can expect a reply' is a triumph of window dressing over reality. Having said that, the digital world is full of companies that were once rosters and as they say, 'todays rosters are tomorrows feather dusters' and almost without exception the road to becoming a feature duster is blind disregard for your clients.  As hosts, our clients might be people who sleep in our beds but airbnb's clients are us and it seems they don't have any integrity and dealing with shortcomings in their platform. I can articulate and document real problems in their system but their is a communications firewall between the company and the people who host for them. Airbnb is a good company but it needs  to take a hard look at itself and do a communications audit when it comes to its clients, us.

[David126]

@Shawn117

Please let us know if you get a reply, not sure if I have seen someone who did.

[Fred13]

@Shawn117 An intelligent post and argument. There are a few threads already on the absurdity of this policy. In essence, Airbnb is asking hosts to 'ham' for reviews from the guests. 

   Perhaps you may enjoy reading the recent thread here -  'Oh no, my Superhost badge is back'. Well, not for long, I am bound to loose it again in the next round, because about 50% of my guests leave their 'review' in our Guest Book, which 100% of them love to read and leave comment in during their stay. My 'unusual' present, but on-thin-ice stats are:

[Rebecca181]

@Shawn117 I just posted my own post on the problematic review system. Need to add this to the list I started. Sometimes it seems that some very crafty and manipulative psychologist thinks of ways to keep us hosts in a state of uncertainty and fear about our security on the platform; kind of like the Stockholm Syndrome. Exhausting, unnecessary, and unfair. Other times I just think I have an overactive imagination!

[Fred13]

Maybe both @Rebecca181. 😉

[Shawn117]

Hi Rebecca, there is a saying in Australia, but probably know many places,  that goes, 'if it comes down to a consiracy or a F%#K up, then it's usually a F%#K up.  It very likely just comes down to lazyiness. We often forget that these sites are coded up by individuals not the company itself.  Some computer programing nerd who knows a fair bit about coding but not too much about arthmetic wrote the code and in his/her mind it is a simple equation to divided total trips by five star ratings. In computer jargon the number of trips can not be know in advance so it becames a 'variable'. The trouble is they/he/she is sampling the wrong variable and not be calculated on the amount of guests we have but rather the ACTUAL REVIEWS.  Any market research company that produced results based on this kind of methodology would be the laughing stock of the industry so I can't understand how airbnb can ignore this.

Fred above mentioned that he thought airbnb are expecting us, (airbnb's clients) to 'ham' for reviews from (our clients) those people who sleep in our beds and generate our income who inturn generates the airbnb companies profit as well.

I'd like to actually know what airbnb's position on this is.

[Jacques-Et-Laurence0]

We had a very bad experience showing a failure in Airbnb safety systrem:

A looted house, hacked accounts, following Airbnb rental, without any compensation (damages € 10,000), thanks to security breaches of Airbnb

 Following the rental of our house during our absence from 7 to 9 April 2018, through AIRBNB, 5 people, our house was looted by those present.

 The locked office room was opened by picking the lock, then the locked cabinet was also opened. A Visa Blue Card has been stolen along with checkbooks. From April 9th ​​and just before opposition, the CB was used for an amount of 3600 €.

Our Airbnb account itself has been hacked (change of email address, name, photo). The fraudster has paid with our visa card a rental in Lyon. We immediately alerted Airbnb who immediately refunded the rental, but let the fraudsters enter the apartment in Lyon a few days later. Of course, this fraudster damaged the Lyon apartment and we were initially held responsible.

The car was also used, as proof of the two fines received for speeding on 9 April at 1am.

Items stolen from our home include: 1 3D printer, a dozen watches, 1 PC, 1 IPAD, 2 IPOD, 1 SLR camera, 2 Sapphire diamond gold rings, a Bose speaker, a Mont Blanc pen, etc ...

The house was in a deplorable state. The tenants had a big party with alcohol, drugs ... The neighbors even intervened twice because of noise.

We will have to change the lock of the house because the thieves had access to the keys of the house and have surely made a copy of the keys.

The authors are known to Airbnb who claims to have verified the identity of the person who rented the house.

[David126]

I am not sure I understand what you mean by safety system, AirBnB is basically a booking site. They put Hosts in touch with Guests.

I trust you have contacted both the Police and your Insurers.

As a general comment I would not leave valuables, credit cards etc in a rental. Not sure where the car comes in.

Hopefully the Police can track down the miscreants.

[Ned-And-Laura0]

I suspect their rational is that people who leave reviews are either really happy or really upset.  Most who just had an ok experience (I.e. just a place to sleep for the night) won't leave a review.  So if more then half your guests aren't happy enough to leave a review then maybe airbnb thinks you don't deserve super host status.  Not saying they are right, but that's possibly their motivation for the change.

[David126]

@Ned-And-Laura0

Do not try and rationalise the review system, there lies madness.

[Ned-And-Laura0]

I just try and look at things in the way I deal with them in the rest of my life.  When I visit small businesses I only leave reviews when i am really happy or really upset.  I simply don;t have time to review every single place I visit.  Every bagel i buy, every cup of coffee, every chinese restaurant.  I just can't.  Only if something really wonderful happened do I take the time to write a nice review.  I suspect that's how most people are.  It does seem to me that airbnb is making it harder to become a superhost, but I must assume that is intentional.  Maybe they thought it was too easy and too many people were superhosts, so many that it didn't mean anything anymore.  I don't know what their thinking is, but as long as I keep getting bookings and making money, thats all I care about.  The little medal icon is more a matter of personal pride to me and I don't think it will effect my bookings.  I am willing to bet 99% of the guests have no idea what a super host is or even care.  They look at the pictures, the price, the location, maybe browse the reviews for a second and that's it.  The die hard airbnb guests care, those who really believe in the concept and only stay at airbnbs and are experienced in the "culture" of airbnb, yes, they care.  but everybody else?  They are looking for the best price and pretty pictures.

[Shawn117]

I tend to agree with you in part,  that the failing is intentional.  They want to push the new "VIP" status and I'm guessing they get better returns from these hosts. So, yes, they don't want too many superhosts competing with VIP host so they ignore the irrational arithimetic of including 'non reviews' in the calcuation of your status.

I think you under estimate the value of the superhost status especially when there are a range of options at a similar price. Sure, people are motivated by price and photos but if they are all about the same then they'll think, 'why not go with the one with superhost status.