Review removal

[Deborah1582]

Hi all,

I recently had a guest book one of my listings, which clearly states “free street parking” in the description. Upon arrival, the guest demanded for the ‘car park’ and became quite rude when we explained that the listing only offers street parking. He eventually parked directly in front of the building, but remained disgruntled throughout his communication.

After his stay, he left a one‑star review saying “there is no car park.” We have never advertised having a private car park — the listing explicitly states free street parking. He also gave one star across all categories, including cleanliness, despite never raising any cleanliness concerns during his stay. We’ve managed to have 10 5stars review in this very listing and past guests have not had issues with the parking as they can see it clearly in the listing description. 

I spoke with two Airbnb reps who both agreed the review was unfair and not factual as we did not advertise having a car park, they advised me to submit the review removal form. I’ve now submitted it twice, and both times I got a response saying the review cannot be removed. I’ve attached photos of the review and the listing description for context.

I’m honestly in total dismay. It feels very unfair and misleading, and I would really appreciate your thoughts or advice.

PS: Apologies for the rant — this situation has been incredibly frustrating.

 

 

 

[Sara-And-Rob0]

I am with you on this.  More later.

[Deborah1582]

Thank you. I am really hoping this is looked into

[Sara-And-Rob0]

Airbnb is troubled at the moment.  The AI has definitely had a negative affect on the community where guests are never held accountable for their failings despite the current change in guests habits regarding reading, understanding and following host information.

For example, this case clearly is an example of the guest not reading the listing, then negatively rating the host for their own failure.

Normal human reaction, that is not fair, the guest made their bed by not reading and they need to sleep in it (pun intended).

Airbnb reaction, the guest has made a subjective statement and we defend their right to not inform themselves and create a negative experience then penalize the host.

Airbnb's entire review system is heavily damaged and has been for years.

We are going through a situation where Airbnb actually created a negative experience and they also refuse to admit fault and remove a very damaging review.

It comes down to this, when the guest makes a mistake, the host pays, when Airbnb makes a mistake, the host also pays, and when, on occasion the host makes a mistake, the host pays.

The ridiculousness of this is that our search placement is heavily based on the review metrics and we are disproportionately damaged by even the slightest negative review.

Airbnb's mistake cost our top 1% a drop to top 10%.  It will take us 100's more 5-star reviews to achieve that standing again and we did nothing wrong.  

I have been engaged with a strong case with evidence for weeks and reach the same dead-end wall each time.  We are sorry this wasn't the result you were hoping for.

There is no winning this until all 5.5 million hosts work together to push back against Airbnb review removal policies.  As long as we act alone, we will get nowhere.

[Shelley159]

I agree with what you say @Sara-And-Rob0 

If I can give you a glimmer of hope, a listing's drop from top 1% to top 10% doesn't depend only on the overall rating. It also depends very heavily on category ratings, to a large extent the most recent ones, along with a list of other (vaguely defined) factors:

https://www.airbnb.co.za/help/article/3495

So while you probably won't quite need 100 5-star reviews to get your top 1% back, you're right that guest favourite is extremely sensitive to almost every little thing, and often changes through no fault of your own.

[Lorna170]

@Deborah1582  Reviews that need to be removed for falsehoods are no longer looked at by a human being.  AI doesn't remove a review unless the guest used defamatory language and cursed.

[Deborah1582]

Surely, there should be certain cases where human review and intervention are required, as it is not possible to rely entirely on AI to handle every case accurately.

[Sara-And-Rob0]

Airbnb will not do this. A human only steps in when it is a clear violation as far as I understand.  The operators will also deny that AI is used at all.  They claim it is 100% human from beginning to end.