Peculiar AirBnB policy about revenge reviews evaluation…

[Don-And-Emily0]

We are new to AirBnB and had a nice streak of excellent guests until we rented to a very young man without reviews.

He turned our home into a frat party house! He brought in extra guests (we caught him on camera) and huge amounts of alcohol, smoked behind the house, damaged our new jacuzzi, broke a door screen and then stole robes and towels…etc 

At the end of his stay he said he really liked the house and would like to return, however, after we confronted him about the stolen items he got angry and left a lengthy malicious 2 star review full of lies.

We have asked AirBnB customer service 5 times to please remove his review to no avail, and each time they come back with the SAME cookie cutter reply: “his review does not violate the AirBnB review guide lines”

What we don’t understand is the narrow-minded  AirBnB policy of ONLY looking at how a Guest WRITES rather than how a guest BEHAVES  in our homes.

We have an excellent 5 star track record with our guests and as you all know, a lot of effort goes into that. We work really hard and strived to offer a top notch product to our guests and to AirBnB. 

This particular guest has contributed NOTHING to the AirBnB community and yet his revenge review is allowed to stand.

The obvious question is: why is AirBnB not looking at the entire picture with some perspective, taking into consideration both parties’ track record, and they only make a call on whether somebody writes within their set guidelines??

Are we to believe that guests can break the house rules and vandalize our property but if they “write pretty” they are off the hook and there are no consequences for their behavior?!

We feel we brought value to the AirBnB experience, but someone who has done nothing is allowed to negatively impact our ability to rent our property going forward. How does that help us or anybody in case?

Airbnb needs to review this policy and do better. As hosts, we don’t feel supported or appreciated in this “partnership”. We have one more (return) guest and after that we will take down our listing unfortunately. 

Thank you for reading.

[Lisa723]

@Don-And-Emily0 yes we had a "google places" page. In fact this page was originally created not by us but by a guest of a guest who wanted a place to leave his own bad review after the booking guest left a five-star one on Airbnb (because the guest's guest apparently thought they paid too much). We had addressed this by asking subsequent direct-booking guests to leave reviews there, so the original bad review was buried in great ones. When the recent retaliation review appeared, rather than starting all over I pointed out to Google that the page was in violation of their guidelines, which don't allow pages for vacation rentals, so they just took the whole thing down. In the case of Facebook, we are in charge of that page so we just disabled the review feature there.

Sure it's unfair, but I think to maintain your mental health in this endeavor you really have to just never take anything personally and approach each challenge as an interesting problem to be solved. And when people behave this way, I remind myself how lucky I am not to be them.

[Don-And-Emily0]

Great perspective! Thank you for sharing.

[Elaine701]

@Lisa723 

Yes, I agree. We actually did have one minor payout from the host guarantee some years ago. But that was the only time ever. Everything since has been declined. But we've largely stopped accepting bookings from "no history" suspicious sounding guests (I've declined 3 just in the past week!), unless they're otherwise extremely convincing. And we haven't had any incident since. But we're still getting bookings. Fewer, but really nice, honest people. 

I did have a guest in February or March, who didn't cause any serious damage, but booked for 2 yet very clearly had 4 sleeping in the house, and smoked inside the house (expressly forbidden), and left it pretty messy. I had plenty of irrefutable evidence of it all,  we lost the revenue for the 2 extra clandestine guests, but I didn't bother making a claim. It's just a waste of time when we need to be quickly cleaning up the mess for the next guest's arrival. The added stress of fighting Airbnb in addition to the stress of cleaning it up is just not worth it. 

She did write a very nice review of the place, and I a wrote a truthful review of her. After she read my review, she wrote back to me (off platform), with burning vitriol and spite, claiming I spied on her (apparently, that's how I knew she had 4 pax in the house), said the house was dirty (it was spotless, as always - when she arrived) and also claimed I overcharged her for the booking, which she happily booked and paid for on Airbnb, the normal way 😳. By the way, it was a heavily discounted winter rate ...for 2 persons, 1 bed. She didn't even bother to hide the blankets and pillows on the couches 🙄

Anyway, of course you can write your review of the guest at any time. It's making a damage claim that prompts them to write a scathing fictitious review, as this guest most certainly would have (unlike a review, they receive the claim the moment you hit "send").

And since you're very unlikely to win that battle within the Airbnb system, it's just counterproductive to start it at all. And even if you do want to make a claim, wait until they write their review. They can't take it back. 

Really, all you can do is write an honest review of the guest to warn other hosts, and let them write a nice review about you and your place, and go your separate ways. You've already been injured. Why knowingly add insult to it? 

[Sarah977]

@Elaine701  Now that's something I just can't understand about people who lie with impunity. I understand that people lie in order to try to get what they want, like telling a host they are booking for a quiet weekend with their boyfriend and then throwing a rager party. I understand that they leave revenge reviews to get even and try to ruin your business.

But what can they possibly be thinking is the point of lying directly to you in a private message, saying the place was dirty, when both they and you know perfectly well that it was immaculate? I guess that's a question for a psychologist.

[Elaine701]

@Sarah977 

Yeah, I know 😳

This particular guest was, let's say, not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. She made so many errors in judgement, it was actually amusing to watch. I won't bore everybody with the details, but I actually felt a bit sorry for her. It was as if she didn't expect anybody to notice. But it was pretty apparent that she was "quite a long way from shore", so to speak. 

I heard a good line once:

"When you're dead, you don't know it, but everybody else does. The same is true when you're stupid".

[Sarah977]

@Elaine701  Because I, and probably the majority of hosts here tend to hang out with intelligent people, it's taken me most of my life to realize that some people are simply unintelligent. I used to try to figure out why they were behaving or speaking in such a way, until one day I had the revelation, "Oh, they're just not very bright".

[BenkaandKeith0]

Congratulations @Lisa723, you are our hero. Airbnb USED TO BE fair, fast responding, and fair mediator. They've lost the way and forgot the point (well, no, they actually switch their focus from contentment to profit exclusively). In over 7 years of involvement with Airbnb, we know for fact that working WITH them was an immense pleasure, but in the recent years, forking FOR them is a nightmare. We submitted 3 claims in last 3 years and was never reimbursed anything, despite submitting the claims on time, with photos, proofs and receipts. Airbnb simply does not care about the hosts any longer, as so many people mentioned already in this thread. They used us when they needed us and they abuse us now when having enough of us. Just a true face of the company that used to be 100% reliable for everyone, but lately sides with the guests regardless. We, the hosts are not the whores forced swallowing it all for $. We share our homes and some basic respect of our places IS MANDATORY to this all deal. Airbnb has been disregarding this simple fact lately and it may be time we all stand against it.

[Colleen253]

 "It's best not to charge guests for anything and to make it all the cost of doing business with AirBnb." Oh, they get 'charged'...in the form of steadily increasing rates across the platform, lol. We all have to do that, to cover the 'cost' of doing business with Airbnb and the bad guests they are breeding.

@James2566  

[Don-And-Emily0]

@Colleen253 

Couldn’t agree more. 

[Dave52]

@James2566  You are 100% correct.  Yet there may be a solution if airbnb just puts some simple effort and coding into it.  Here is how it should work:

1.  Host submits damage claim to airbnb.  DO NOT approach the guest directly about it, don't say anything.  Just submit the claim to airbnb with the photos before the next guest arrives.  Request that airbnb Hold the damage claim and does not forward to the guest (see step 2).  

2.  This next step is key.  Airbnb HOLDS the claim until the guest either a) posts a review or b) their review time expires.

3. Airbnb then forwards the claim to the guest for damages.

It seems entirely manageable and removes the entire chance of a revenge review.

[Don-And-Emily0]

This is very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

[Sarah977]

@Dave52  It's hard for me to believe that the powers that be at Airbnb are too stupid not to have figured this out.

I think it is set up the way it is intentionally. They want hosts to tiptoe around bad guests, bowing and scraping to every entitled demand and overlooking disrespectful behavior in terror of getting a bad review.

The last thing they want is for hosts to be able to deal with guests without having to worry about the review.

Good guests, bad guests, makes no difference to Airbnb, because the money they pay in service fees is indistinguishable.

[Dave52]

@Sarah977  I can't guess about the motives.   Airbnb has every incentive to stop parties, the image of out of control airbnb party houses doesn't help them at all.  Maybe they haven't put enough thought into it.  

Hopefully somebody at airbnb reads this forum because revenge reviews are a hot topic.

[Don-And-Emily0]

I agree. This thread is treading high right now with 553 views in 24 hrs 

[Dave52]

@Don-And-Emily0  What are the odds one of those views works at airbnb and can do something about it?