Why airbnb did not want to remove rude review???

Wang57
Level 2
Adelaide, Australia

Why airbnb did not want to remove rude review???

I had a Airbnb listing with 50 reviews,  all reviews are very positive. 

 

However I had a guest booking in June. After checked in,he wanted to cancel the booking because few apartment facilities closed due to COVID19.  After refused,  the guest left human **bleep** everywhere in my bathroom and filled **bleep** in soap dispensor.  He even left very rude public review to me.  We tried letting AIRBNB know everything  and asked to remove this review. I could not understand AIRBNB refused to do it???    Airbnb agreedto pay a soap dispensor to me  only , it is funny. 

9 Replies 9
Inna22
Level 10
Chicago, IL

@Wang57 that sounds crazy and gross- sorry you had to deal with it. You have 9 listings so to be honest I did not have an attention span to go through all of them to find the offending review. Do you mind posting it? In general a review has to violate very specific guidelines to get removed and even if it does, sometimes it takes a few tries to do that. I do have a question for you. If the guest booked with an expectation of certain amenities for the amount paid and the amenities were not available, do you think it was fair to not let him leave? Did you offer a discount? Did you warn him in advance? 

Wang57
Level 2
Adelaide, Australia

The guest did not privide any expectation of using amenities on booking. He finally had all his money back using the tricky cancellation policy,  where we did not get any inquiry from Airbnb about this cancellation.  That means the guest cancelled this book successfully but left rude review and his excreta to us.  

Huma0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

@Wang57 

 

I have not read the review, but it sounds horrible. Your experience also sounds really horrible and I am sorry it happened to you. It's totally unacceptable behaviour and I believe Airbnb should do something more than offer you a soap dispenser! 

 

However, when you say the guest did not provide any 'expectation' of using those amenities, that is not the point. If the amenities were advertised on the listing, they should have been provided, whether the guest expressed that expectation or not. I don't list that guests have use of my kitchen and then deny them access because they did not message me before saying they wanted to use it. Naturally they should expect to use what is advertised.

 

I understand though that if certain amenities were not available due to COVID and that was out of your control, there was nothing you could do about that. Still, the sensible thing would have been to inform the guest in advance of this, as soon as you knew about it.

 

If I have misunderstood and those amenities were not advertised, then the guest had no right to be angry about them.

 

Either way, it does not justify his behaviour, which is just awful and unacceptable. This guest should be removed from the platform ASAP!

Helen350
Level 10
Whitehaven, United Kingdom

@Wang57 

I found the review, by Philip from Sydney on your co-host Doris's profile page. - What horrible things he said!

 

Maybe you could ask for it to be removed on the grounds of 'defamation'? He wrote 'Doris is a horrible host'..... 'She has an attitude as well'. That's PERSONAL - not just listing deficiencies of the facilities.

 

I note you did not review Philip.... (He has one review only, and cross referencing shows he made petty criticism of his other Airbnb experience.) I think you SHOULD HAVE REVIEWED him! - Don't you think future hosts need to know he is a man who leaves excrement in soap dispensers and other places when not completely satisfied?!

@Helen350   The Review Policy appears to make pretty broad allowances for rudeness, although the new relevancy standards say that to keep reviews relevant, they recommend avoiding "Profanity, name calling, and assumptions about a person’s character or personality"

 

The problem is that the majority of the review does appear to be relevant. I don't know if any portion of it was actually true, but if the guest's complaint about the advertised amenities was a lie, Doris should have corrected the inaccuracies in her response instead of talking (literal) sh*t about the guest. Having no review of the guest, as you say, was no help to future hosts but it also weakens the case for removing the review.

 

 

Helen350
Level 10
Whitehaven, United Kingdom

@Anonymous All true, I was just trying to be encouraging & positive I guess!

Thank you Helen for your opinion.  I will try to open third resolution with AIRBNB to see if they can help this time. 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Wang57  Like Helen, I also wonder why you neglected to review someone who purposely left such filth. Why would you decline to warn other hosts of his behavior? Never mind his review of you- he needs to be reported to Airbnb and banned from the platform.

@Helen350  Defamation and defecation 🙂

Sam397
Level 10
Reno, NV

@Wang57 , well first of all what the guy did crossed the line for sure and BnB should remove his review. But as it has been pointed out so many times in the past getting BnB to remove a negative review pretty much takes an act of congress so I wouldnt hold my breath as far as that goes.

Now in my opinion where you messed up was refusing his cancellation request. If a guest request to cancel their stay for whatever reason and the host refuses to refund them, two things are going to happen, first thing is the guest will leave a bad review and the 2nd thing is  BnB will not remove it. It may suck and it might be wrong but that is how it is. That said whenever a guest asks to cancel (in the middle of a stay) the only thing a host needs to consider is will that income you might make  be worth the bad review that you are going to receive. And to me its not a hard decision, give them the refund and hope they dont leave you a bad review anyway. 

I have not figured out the new format of the review section so I am going off memory here but I went somewhere around a year of receiving nothing but 5 star reviews and having a five star overall rating. A few months ago I received a 4 star review,  and that dropped  me from having a 5 star overall rating. Since then I have received 15-20 straight 5 star reviews and I still have not gotten back to a 5 overall rating.So if one 4 star review takes that much to make up I cant even imagine what a 1 or a 2 star would do to your rating. Definitely not worth a few days income.