TL;DR: A long-term guest falsely claimed we had black mold to break her strict cancellation policy, then left a retaliatory review saying we had mold. Despite clear evidence disproving her claim, including Airbnb’s own photos, Airbnb refuses to remove the review. Their review removal process appears entirely automated and unresponsive.
Background: We host seven guests on our property and live here ourselves. Across all our listings over the past 12 months, our quality metrics are 97.3% 5-star ratings with a 4.97 Overall rating from 227 total reviews.
Details: We recently hosted a guest who booked a 6-month stay with us with a “Long-Term Stay: Strict cancellation policy”. She stayed for almost a month without issue and we had a pleasant, friendly rapport. About a month in, she contacted me to say that her work was transferring her and she would need to check out earlier than anticipated.
As our rapport had been very friendly and in good faith, I asked her to call me to discuss. When I asked some questions about the transfer, she became very agitated and hostile quickly saying things that were in contradiction of one another. I told her we would compromise on the cancellation policy that would require her to pay for a full month out of pocket, but that we still needed a 30-day window to find a replacement. This was unsatisfactory to her, and at one point in the call she said, “do you want to get Airbnb involved?”. The conversation felt so hostile I felt the need to end it. Afterwards, she began texting me repeatedly saying that the actual reason for the early checkout was due to health issues from mold in the bathroom. I quickly realized she was no longer operating in good faith and refused to communicate anywhere besides Airbnb messages. I reached out to Airbnb support and immediately documented the entire situation with screenshots.
Despite the mold claims being completely false and verifiable by photo evidence and testimony from every other guest staying on the property, we decided to let her leave as soon as she would like as we now felt uncomfortable being around someone that would use serious accusations to manipulate a situation and evade a contractual obligation even when we were still willing to make a large compromise. We accepted her request and avoided interaction for the remainder of her stay.
Roughly two weeks after this exchange, we received videos from another guest staying in the room next to the guest in question. The videos were of her wall and you could hear the guest in question screaming, crying, banging furniture, and pleading “Please no.” over and over. We found out this was the second episode that our other guest had experienced and both incidents had left them feeling unsafe and uncomfortable here. We asked her to send a message on Airbnb documenting the situation. This is an excerpt from that message:
“I don't know what kind of help she needs, but she is making me uncomfortable and I only feel safe around the house because there are other people around like our hosts.”
The next day I messaged another guest who stayed in the other room bordering the guest in question to ask if he had heard anything the night before. He told me he absolutely did, and so did his coworker on a Zoom call that evening. He stated:
“Clear schizophrenia, I would try to limit physical interaction with her as she could be dangerous”
I reached out to Airbnb support and documented the full situation with the testimony from both guests but ultimately we did not engage with the guest in question as she was scheduled to leave soon and we hoped she would leave peacefully without incident. Eventually her checkout date came and she left early in the morning without issue save blood stains on the bedding that we could not remove.
The whole thing was so stressful, we did not want to engage with the guest, so initially we did not request reimbursement for the ruined bedding, leave a review, or communicate with the guest in any way. Given her behavior, we did not expect her to leave a review. But then five days later, surprise! She did.
We took the time to write an honest review stating what had happened and published it. Upon reading her review, we found that she had continued with her story, stating in the review that we have black mold growing in our bathrooms and that we had edited the listing photos to hide it. This was even more frustrating as an Airbnb contracted photographer had taken the photos and Airbnb themselves had edited them and posted them on the listings. Here’s part of her review:
“The bathroom was clean, but there was black mold growing in the tub and in the shower outside as well. I booked because the pictures were lightened up, to NOT show the mold, which again, for the amount your spending, should have been made aware of.”
We were not very concerned as it was a retaliatory review with blatant lies misrepresenting our listing to Airbnb and other guests. There was so much evidence there felt no need to be concerned as it violated policy and would be removed by Airbnb. All the evidence stacked up:
- No prior complaints about mold from any other guest.
- Photo evidence proving no mold exists.
- Airbnb’s own professional photos of the listing showing no mold.
- Multiple guest testimonies stating there is no mold.
- Guest’s own behavior shift (initially friendly, then suddenly claiming mold only after realizing she couldn’t get the refund she wanted).
The situation transpired shortly after the new review removal process was put in place and so we submitted the form with all the needed evidence and to our surprise, received a denial 15 minutes later! We took a pause, talked with support, and then the next day submitted an appeal with even more documentation and evidence then received a denial 24 minutes later. Both timeframes were so short it would have been impossible for a human to review the attached evidence, and it became clear that no one was.
Phone calls, chat threads, reaching out to our Host Success Manager, reaching out to an Airbnb UX Researcher who I had done a paid study with the previous week. Nothing worked. It all ended in the same robotic answer of “This issue is handled by a separate team.”
Later on I did request a $69.98 payment for the ruined bedding which the guest paid for six minutes later accompanied by a nasty message that read.
“you are the worst kind of person and I sincerely hope you have the life you deserve. you are a liar and a thief, everything you've done will come back to you. I washed that duvet three times (paid you for it) and now you're charging me? You will soon regret this!”
Conclusion in comments below ⬇️
