Hi, according to AirBnb policy.."guests should not write biased or inauthentic reviews as a form of retaliation against a Host who enforces a policy or rule."
I just recently got a retaliatory review (1-star, my first one after 4 years of SuperHost) and I can't believe the "standards" being used by AirBnb's customer support. Here is just a few clips of their response to decline my request.
"In order for a review to be removed, the contents of the review has to be in violation of our policies, after checking several times through the review which was left for you, the review did not violate our polices. We also do not remove review based off truth or fairness."
"Based on the content in the review, we could not find any content or language that goes against our policies, we understand that this may seem unfair to you and wish that there was something else that could be done however, we are not able to make exceptions or override the policies."
So, doesn't matter to AirBnb that the guest violated my house rules (exceeded # of max guests/brought a 6-year old into a home that was designated "unsuitable for 2-12 year olds), that he got upset when I didn't refund him for 2 nights, only one, of his 3-night reservation even though I had a strict no-cancellation policy) , what only matters is that his review didn't violate AirBnb policy, and they don't care if it was truthful or not.
Your policy is to not look at anything else (Host's reply/response of Host's current rating) in determining whether a review is retaliatory or not, so how can that be determined if you don't hear the Host's side of things? I've busted my butt for the past year and maintained a constant 5-star overall rating. Before this vindictive review, it was 4.89...now it is 4.2. How is that fair to me? Oh, wait...because "We also do not remove review based off truth or fairness."
What is also not right is how can a guest (even this one who left 1-star) rate you on all the other review components (communication, cleanliness, checkin, etc.) by giving you 5-stars on almost everything, yet an OVERALL rating that is much, much lower?
I just need to understand Airbnb's logic here. I obviously can't stand behind my house rules and enforce them because a guest can just violate them at will and leave me a bad review as a thank you.