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.

[Don-And-Emily0]

Hi @Liv 

We just saw your reply. Thank you for doing that. We have opened a ticket about 2 weeks ago, and nobody from AirBnB has contacted us or removed the review yet. We have given up hope honestly.

 Sorry to say, AirBnB host support is close to non-existing. It’s a missed opportunity to partner up with the people who work hard to provide your accommodations. 

[Karol22]

"why is AirBnB not looking at the entire picture with some perspective, taking into consideration both parties’ track record"

The short answer is they don't have the manpower to do so. Looking at the entire picture with full perspective of every single case is not only scalable but nearly impossible (at least until they develop AI to do it). Why? Because negative reviews are a sensitive thing, which they get a sea full of complaints about and tsunamis of requests to take them down. The best we can do as hosts are 1.) review bad guests 2.) respond to negative reviews on our profile publicly and 3.) move on.

[Don-And-Emily0]

Hi @Karol22  and thank for writing.

The “big picture” is not that big really. 

One can look at the fact that this individual has zero history with AirBnB (no reviews) and we have nine 5 star reviews, no cancelations and reply to everyone within an hour.  You can determine all of the above in a shorter time than it takes to read his winded rant full of lies.

What AirBnB needs to do is train and allow their 3rd party CSR to make more important decisions than just qualifying someone’s writing. 

Another idea is to only allow multiple choice reviews without endless 1000 plus word essays.

We have a long term property in Paris listed with a local agency. Their review formula is just assigning scores for location, truthful  representation, landlord responsiveness to maintenance problems, decor, cleanliness, noise level…etc They don’t allow essays for this very topic we are discussing here. @Liv

[Sheri229]

I have found raising your rate slightly higher than your competition helps get better quality guests. It may not be every single time but that is how I am trying to combat this being something that can happen to me. (because this has happened to me, lesson learned!)

Also getting them to send you a drivers license for all adults that will be staying sets a standard that you are above board on your rules. I also don't rent to anyone 27 years of age and under.

Sorry this happened to you, good thing everything is replaceable and can be restored!

[Sarah977]

@Sheri229  You know that if a guest reports you for turning them down because they are under 27, Airbnb can suspend your account for age discrimination?

[Don-And-Emily0]

Hi @Sheri229 

We are priced pretty high already. It took us some time to gauge how to price it low enough not to discourage high end guests from renting and high enough to discourage party groups.

We honestly don’t want to charge this much, but in order to discourage party people from renting, we have to. 

[Antonio2433]

FYI:
Circulating
(Printed in media networks).

Process at Airbnb are good, if followed with proper knowledge and criteria by customer Service Reps, Supervisors or Case Managers.
 

Sometimes they do have a lack of attention to review a particular case, or maybe negligence by poor knowledge of policies and/or bad criteria...
 
What to do in those cases???
 
Currenrly nothing else but look into other ways to equilibrate your business outside the platform. Resignation in other words.
 
Today, there is still only one level for any escalation process. If they said it is black or white. That's it. No one will review your case anymore. CRM is clearly one way, and no one else is there available with a 2nd level review for true examination to see if all policy under a proper criteria was applied.
 
We all actually need to find a way to make this a massive complain in/out of Airbnb to have this huge issue solved ASAP.
 
Because this will hurt many customers, (can even take us out of business).

In many ways, this complain urgently Needes to be attended throughout making noise on yoir local social networks to go vs this monster corporation, where we just became a number for them. 
 
We are not machines by definition, but requiere human rights treatment in every case with quality assurance.
 
That is, in special cases, when required, a 2nd chance revision. A must to have within Airbnb's supervisor process, (2nd level escalations available after cases are maintained open for more than obvious logical time frames).

[Susan1711]

The two occasions we have asked for compensation for damage caused to our property we have received a revenge review. Platforms such as airbnb booking.com and Google are not interested in fairness. They just fall back on their 'criterion' policy. They are only interested in creaming off their commission. Fairness is not a parameter they consider.

Sue