Refusal to remove a slanderous, biased review

[ChuckandCarole0]

"Please know that Airbnb always has your back." ??? was in the message I received from Airbnb this morning. 

 I have been a Superhost for 12 years now, and have over 560 reviews from our former homes where we worked with Airbnb. We have a new home with only 19 reviews, and  just had a guest arrive after check in time, bring two cars, fail to park in the designated area, and  sneak in an undisclosed, unpaid for adult guest. When I finally was able to speak with these guests about the issue, she then cancelled the rest of her reservation, and left a sneaky review that states I was "over involved and somewhat invasive".

She neglects to mention what provoked me to be  somewhat invasive" was me trying to enforce my house rules, which she had broken. This review was biased. 

I came out when they arrived late at night, and greeted them and kindly asked them to park where I had asked.  The next morning, after realizing they had a third guest, she ignored my attempts to reach out via messages, and even a phone call, for 40 minutes. Finally I had to knock on the door, to request that the undisclosed, unpaid for guest leave our home.  So her review is  biased, slanderous, and knocks down my star rating, affecting my reputation as well as my income. 

Airbnb support is being quite nonchalant about this, and says "While we are sorry to hear that you have received an unfavorable review from Chelsey, we will have to keep his review, as we did not find any violation of our Contents Policy in it."

This in my busy season, when other potential guests are viewing the review that I need to have taken down in accord with Airbnb's own policy statements, that we can "host with assurance" that they will in fact take down retaliatory reviews...They are not complying with their own policy, and "Please know that Airbnb always has your back." ???

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@ChuckandCarole0 Forget slanderous and biased as these do not break Airbnb rules and will only confuse the issue. The only hope you have of getting the review removed is that it is retaliatory for the guest being called out on breaking the house rules.

[ChuckandCarole0]

Mike-And-Jane0 Thank you so much! My understanding, according to Airbnb "Policy", was that a biased review would be removed....The review in question is quite slyly written, as it does not mention any of facts, only the subjective feeling of the guest stating "there was some over-involvement and somewhat invasive tendencies by the host. She knocked on my door to my private space after I didn’t respond to a phone call/text for less than 5 minutes. She also came out onto the street upon our arrival from dinner to talk with us. There seemed to be an expectation to check in via text message often, which was not for me." 

 The guest in question, is a school psychologist, so knows how to supersede an angry review, which could get removed as retaliatory,  and still do harm to my reputation and income, by being exactly that.....  

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@ChuckandCarole0 I would take @Fred13 's advice and write a simple response that is aimed at future guests NOT the guest who stayed with you. Keep it short and sweet and it will limit the damage to yourself. Perhaps something like 'I am sorry you have retaliated against us calling you out on breaking the house rules. I hope future guests will rely on our reviews from non rule-breaking guests'

Others may have better wording suggestions.

[ChuckandCarole0]

That is perfectly worded, I have already written a response saying that in a few more words. Thank you, I would still appreciate any tips on how to escalate this to someone at airbnb who has the ability to discern that this is a retaliatory review.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@ChuckandCarole0 there is no escalation route within Airbnb (clever of them really). You could just leave it a week or two and try again with a different support agent.

[Fred13 · Accepted solution]

@Mike-And-Jane0is correct, forget fighting this via Airbnb, unless you can proof the review is irrelevant.

On the other hand, you can be just as cunning as that guest and make her look like a fool in one smooth sentence. Reviewing an occasional fruitcake is easy when you have a string of great reviews already, let the reviewer see through an absurd guest, they will. Host responses in such cases are always an opportunity to show future guests what a cool guy the host is, which is important.

As a general rule, is best to never discuss one guest with another.

[ChuckandCarole0]

Thanks so much! I hope I did that in my response, but none the less, my star rating dropped by her,  from close to 5, down to 4.84. & I could lose my superhost rating.  a good # of guests filter by those two factors… 

[Dawn241]

I never speak to guests outside of Airbnb messaging. You have use Airbnb messaging to document the breaking of the rules in order to prove the guest review was retaliatory.