@Shirin-H0
I remember seeing several accounts from hosts describing very similar situations in the past: guests who never showed up but were still able to leave a review, sometimes giving one star across the board. Some hosts said Airbnb removed the review after verifying that the guest never checked in; others said their removal requests were denied.
If the first-line support team rejects the request, ask to have it escalated to a case manager or supervisor.
Airbnb explicitly says, on its page about reviews after a cancellation on the day of check-in, that a guest can review certain aspects of their experience even if they never completed check-in, but they shouldn’t rate things they have no first-hand experience of, such as the location, amenities, or value for money.
Airbnb also says that reviews should be honest and based on a genuine reservation, and that it has systems in place to identify reviews that don’t relate to an authentic stay.
So, in your case, I wouldn’t frame the complaint simply as “the review is unfair.” I’d frame it as: the review contains ratings on aspects that, by the guest’s own admission, they couldn’t personally verify because they never checked in or even had access to the property.
I would also ask Airbnb to explain which specific provision of its Reviews Policy allows them to keep those ratings, given that Airbnb’s own policy appears to say the opposite.
“Your policy says that a review is irrelevant when the reviewer never arrived and had no first-hand experience of the listing. Why have you made an exception to this rule in my case?”
In this particular case, the guest even wrote “I don’t know” when it came to cleanliness and location. That directly confirms that they had no first-hand experience of the property’s cleanliness, location, accuracy, etc. on which to base those ratings.
