Arbitration to remove 1 star review

[Dexter-and-Misty0]

I’m a superhost with over 200 5 star reviews. I just had a guest leave a 1 star review after encountering some termites that showed up on their second night. When I spoke with him at 3AM that night, I profusely apologized and immediately offered him a full refund. My house is professionally maintained by Orkin for termites but being in Florida near the coast, termites are impossible to 100% prevent. Anyway, the person did decide to leave the next morning but then he sent very nasty messages demanding an additional $500 on top of the full refund. When I told them that this is not something we are going to do since they already got all their money back and Airbnb itself won’t allow it, he asked to send him the money to his checking account. Again I refused as that’s also against Airbnb policy. I was calm and very professional in all my messages with this person. I also had Airbnb support involved all throughout. He kept sending very threatening messages about giving us the worst review, lawsuits, etc and kept asking for $500. We kept declining it politely. He then posted a 1 star review.

My issue here is how he tried to intimidate us for more money with threats of consequences. By demanding additional money, it influenced the review since by not giving into his demand, he posted the 1 star review. If we paid him, that would have been construed as us influencing the review.

Anyway, I disputed the review through the new process and one of the options for removal there was “reviews must be unbiased and if it involved intimidation or any form of coercion” then the review is to be removed. 

Clearly, with his intimidating messages demanding for money, I was confident Airbnb would remove it. But after 2 attempts, they refused without any specific reason. I escalated with a Supervisor but just got the standard “the backend team is now handling review removals and its decision is final”. I was then told that if the review contained any statement that is relevant to their experience, they will not remove it even if there were any threats or intimidation involved. 

Someone suggested we go through Arbitration to have this review removed. Has anyone done something like this and succeeded? 

[Joan2709]

@Dexter-and-Misty0 

I have not heard of anyone getting a review removed via arbitration, but most likely more and more Hosts will go this route due to a very flawed, AI driven, review dispute system that really needs human supervision.

Unfortunately, as you admitted, there were termites and you didn't speak to him until 3am. This part of his review is factual and I'm doubtful even with arbitration you will get the review removed. The guest did conveniently forget to mention he demanded more than the full refund. 

You did mention this in your response to his review, and I thought overall your response was professional...a bit too long though. Hopefully you will get some addl bookings and guests will not hold this one against you. Might I suggest though, you have a better system for responding to guest complaints. Not sure when the guest tried to contact you, but it does seem it took a long time if you didn't reach him until 3am?

[Dexter-and-Misty0]

He called around midnight and I called him back around 3AM. I did explain that nothing could be done at that time for the termites as it would require a professional company to deal with it. He wanted us to send someone at that hour. Even if we did send our local contact, what are they going to do?

Anyway, I am not disputing his complaint, hence the full refund. It’s really how the policy that Airbnb has for reviews that involve intimidation. It looks like the actual threats need to be part of the review otherwise their AI system does not catch it. The photos they ask you to upload are probably not even analyzed by the AI since that’s very hard to do unless it’s an actual person looking at them.

Thanks for the tip. My reply was a bit long but that was my last chance to put more context into the review. 

Anyway, the old review system has always been biased towards guests I feel. With the new system, it’s now seems virtually impossible to successfully dispute any reviews.