@AZ-Housing0
I agree with @Mike-And-Jane0 that you don't have any valid reason for this review to be removed as it wasn't a 'no show', nor did the guest cancel for reasons beyond the host's control. YOU cancelled on the guest last minute. You may have valid reasons for doing so (and I trust you got Airbnb to cancel the stay for extenuating circumstances) but the guest still has the right to leave a review.
And your response to the review really makes no sense and does you no favours. If I was you, I would ask Airbnb to remove your response. Remember that it is potential future guests that will read it and you should always write your responses keeping them in mind.
"I have to let you know that review violates several airbnb review and content policies." Erm, no it doesn't, as has been explained already.
"If a guest never arrived for their stay or Experience, or had to cancel due to circumstances unrelated to that stay or Experience, their review may be removed." This doesn't apply to your case because, as mentioned before, this was not a no-show/guest cancellation but a host cancellation, and, even if the guest had cancelled, the circumstances are not unrelated to the stay, are they? You had a burst pipe.
"Main complaint in review is about guests not receiving a refund on time, which made a retaliatory motive to write in it and according to review policies above "Members of the Airbnb community may not coerce, intimidate, extort, threaten, incentivize or manipulate another person in an attempt to influence a review, like promising compensation in exchange for a positive review or threatening consequences in the event of a negative review. Reviews may not be provided or withheld in exchange for something of value—like a discount, refund, reciprocal review, or promise not to take negative action against the reviewer."
Erm, what? Where is the extortion? Did the guest threaten to leave you a negative review if you didn't compensate them? If not, then they have not broken this policy at all. All the guest said was that, because you cancelled so last minute, they were left without the funds to book somewhere else, which I suppose is quite likely as the refund hadn't been processed yet. It doesn't matter if you hadn't been paid and the money was still with Airbnb, there is no extortion here. The guest is simply stating what happened. The guest did not withhold/provide the review in exchange for a refund, did they? They were annoyed that they did not get refunded quick enough and that's understandable. Is it your fault that Airbnb takes time to issue the refund? No. But you were the one who cancelled last minute, so it's not surprising the guest was annoyed.
"review unrelated to that stay or Experience, their review may be removed." guests complain was not related to reservation, it was related to airbnb's refund timing."
No, incorrect again. The guest's review was not only related to the timing of the refunds but the fact that you cancelled the booking last minute. It is therefore relevant.
You would have been much better off writing something more accurate and sympathetic such as:
"It was very unfortunate that we had to cancel X's booking but, as we explained to him, a pipe burst in the neighbour's apartment above, causing substantial damage to the ceiling and the water also had to be switched off, so the listing was uninhabitable that day. Of course, X received a full refund. However, Airbnb receives and processes the payment for bookings. The host only receives their share some days after the guest checks in so only Airbnb can issue the refund, which does normally take about 48 hours. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to X and wish there was something we could have done about it, but both the burst pipe and the timing of the refund were totally out of our control, and this was obviously an unusual circumstance."
