We recently joined Airbnb in January. We have a max of 14 guests. Two weeks ago, one group brought in 24 guests (we have video evidence). We got a call from a neighbor complaining about 14 cars in our driveway and on our neighbors property. We asked them to move them and they complied. We then searched our Ring and found they had 24 guests, not 14. We asked them to pay extra or they could decide to vacate. Nothing threatening, very polite. They responded with "sorry it got out of hand. we apologize. we are fine to pay the extra". Then we decided not to leave them a review bc we didn't want a retaliatory one from them. After the 14 day timeframe, we received a 1 star review from them saying that they brought back 10 extra people due to a tornado warning (they never messaged us once their entire stay, and especially not about bringing in extra guests). We confirmed with the Natl Weather Service and have documentation that there was in fact NOT a tornado warning that weekend. The review called us "profiteers of low moral character", "threatening their safety" and "evil". We responded to the review with the details listed above and have now received a private message from this guest threatening to file a lawsuit against us if we do not remove our response to his review. MEANWHILE, my husband spent 4 hours on the phone with customer support yesterday to remove the review, submitted 2 separate review removal requests and was told over and over that the review does not go against Airbnb policy. That it was our guests' experience and even though he broke house rules, and wrote a retaliatory review, they will not remove it. WHY do we even have house rules if we cannot get the support from Airbnb when they are clearly broken?! And to allow your hosts to be treated in such a way publicly is UNACCEPTABLE. We are at a loss and cannot seem to get any higher in management than the customer service reps. Apparently the people who remove reviews are a super secret group who has no line of communication with anyone and are ghosts... Is there anything else we can do???
