Guests who start New Accounts after recieving very bad reviews

[Anthony608]

I recently was reviewing some old messages and linking to some of the guest accounts, in particular those who had stayed over a year or more ago and had caused problems in the home.  Mainly since I was curious if the problem had persisted and what I found was interesting.

90% of the really bad guests had no further reviews after mine (which had been negative).  There were two guests who no longer had accounts.  One of those had been a homeless woman staying with me nearly two years ago and I had checked her account before and had seen numerous other negative reviews about her drug use, how she had destroyed rooms, and had smoked in houses with no smoking rules.  What makes that particularly interesting is I am almost positive I received an instant booking request recently from a no-review account, established last month, that was her.   The account had knowledge of the house specific to her stay and signed under her name, which was different from the account name which appeared to be a type of handle (see had used "Princess" before under her old account, which was not her real name).

This brings up an interesting question.  Does AirBNB simply allow horrible guests with bad reviews to just start up new accounts?  Are there no safe guards to make sure a 2-3 star guest, who had caused major issues in residences, is not simply starting over with a clean account?  I wonder, with that said, how many of those other 90%, with no reviews after mine, simply started up a new account because I gave them a bad review.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Anthony608 If a guest has a different email address and a different credit card it is very hard for Airbnb to stop them opening a new account as names do not sufficiently differentiate in many cases.

[Cristina838]

What about a government issued ID. I think it is easy to verify their real name. We as hosts have to provide personal information to prove that we are who we say we are.

[Anonymous]

@Anthony608 The majority of those badly reviewed guests probably didn't bother to start new accounts, as they were either not booking accommodation or choosing different platforms. But it's very easy to start a new account - even if you've been "banned" by Airbnb. You can even create an account with a fake name and still have Verified ID. A bad review can be a big setback to a member with a well-established reputation, but realistically anyone can have burner accounts if they want to. In other news, that lady in the dirty video is not really his Stepmom and Santa Claus was actually your parents. Sorry.

[Anthony608]

@Anonymous- The idea that people are using, as you describe it, "burner accounts" speaks volumes of how little AirBNB places on us, the host's safety. In my hosting experience, there have been about three cases where I was setting myself up for real retaliation by leaving a negative review but did so because I felt it was my obligation to post to an account that could be a danger to others.  All three were from the local area and one of them, I remember well, had actually been involved in an incident with another host where he had returned to the residence in anger about a negative review.

We as hosts can have our accounts suspended and terminated, apparently with little to no explanation, and it would be very difficult to start up again.  This not so for the guests who, with a string of bad reviews, can simply "go over the next hill", start up a new identity on AirBNB, and continue with business as usual.

[Cristina838]

I find it very disturbing to feel that your can't be sure who your guests are.

I have had guests using friends accounts with good reviews, to make reservations for them. Horrible experience for both of us.

This practice should be penalized by Airbnb or at least warn guests that their accounts could be canceled.

[Anthony608]

@Cristina838- I couldn't agree with you more.  AirBNB does have a policy *against* third party bookings but they seem to never enforce violations.  I have recently had two back-to-back cases of this.  Both were for stays of only two or three days, and we did not realize the person was not the registered guest until the end but I still mentioned it in the review.

The first case was a male guest with a generic name like John, etc who sent a message that "he was coming to town for work" or something like that.  It was later discovered that a middle aged woman had entered the house and she apparently was sick and had shown up wearing a hospital gown and had rubber tubes with her from whatever procedure she just had.  Upon checkout, she had left both the tubes and gown discarded in the room requiring deep cleaning with bio-hazard like care (I don't think she had COVID, but this still made me very angry).

Second case, just a few days ago, another generic male name, instead arrived a female guest and a small toddler.  They wound up trashing the room leaving food and trash covering our carpet requiring deep carpet cleaning.  Again, I left a negative review but other than this, both of these accounts will probably continue with business as usual.  The only solace is that other hosts can see what I wrote in the review and be on guard against these accounts.

[Brian2036]

@Anthony608 

I doubt that in actual practice Airbnb cares very much about who or what the guests are, providing that they pay in advance.

[Scott554]

Yeah, similar experience