The guest left a poor review simply to get a refund

[Luis3261]

Airbnb actively participates and backs guests who perform review extortion. They clearly violate their own terms and conditions. 

The guest left a poor review simply to get a refund. The 3 guests after her left all 5-star reviews. Airbnb refused to remove it without a refund. And even when the guest called Airbnb to remove the review, Airbnb wouldn’t remove it unless a refund was issued. Violating refund policy and review policy. 

** [Title updated by Community Manager for relevancy]

**Private conversation hidden

 

[Sarah977]

@Luis3261  You weren't really forced to refund, and IMO you should never have agreed to. If you want to stand up for injustice, don't participate  in it. 

A bad review isn't the end of the world, and you could have refused to refund, and pursued having the review removed, not contingent on a refund.

Too many hosts are way too invested in reviews and end up screwing themselves because of it. 

[John5097]

@Luis3261 Had they not called you a scammer at the very end I don't see what else violated the review policy. So I also think you dodged a bullet on this one to have the review removed more on a technicality than the substance of the review. The guest main complaint was that it was unclean. The rest of the reviews, 4.8, in cleanliness is the lowest of all the categories. Also they claimed you told them to vacate immediately, etc, which implied you were kind of reactionary and unhinged, and nothing here in your comments or dialog with customer service would contradict that. 

I don't think the first CS agent was trying to extort you. People make mistakes or could have phrased it better. I think they were just tying to be efficient and even the good CS agents aren't going to know all the subtleties to every situation, and the supervisor took care of it.  

[Luis3261]

Just an update to anyone who thinks there is no justice for mistreatment, actually, if you present a solid logical case against the mistreatment, with some patience and persistence, you will see that Airbnb will correct their mistakes.

Not only did Airbnb take full responsibility and apologize for the lack of knowledge from the CSR and confirm that the situation should have never occurred, but they issued a full payout for the "canceled" reservation. 

The bogus review remains deleted. 

[Sandra126]

@Luis3261 I'm thrilled and a little surprised,  it's an unusual situation. Happy ending,  thanks for letting us know .

[Sarah977]

@Luis3261  I'm glad you got some justice and thanks for updating. 

It's just too bad that it takes so much persistence and patience to try to get someone to do the right thing. It shouldn't be that hard. 

I don't understand why Airbnb doesn't realize that they are wasting their money on support staff that can't understand an issue, give out bad advice and make poor decisions. You'd think it would be more cost effective to hire staff who could effectively and fairly resolve things in 10 minutes, than pay people to screw you around for hours until it finally gets passed on to someone competent.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

It's crazy really. 

You probably won't remember, but at the beginning of the pandemic, I had two cases where guests were wrongly refunded. Both were long term guests, so would normally be required to pay for the month following their cancellation and be refunded the rest. As both had checked in already, they were not covered by Airbnb's COVID EC policy.

One of the guests was perfectly happy to pay for that month because her university had confirmed they would cover it. The other guest was also fine with it initially and later asked if I could refund her more, which I agreed to. Airbnb CS spoke with both and all seemed okay until a series of mistakes, almost a comedy of errors.

To cut a long story short, CS refunded both guests not only for the remainder of their stays, but for nights they had already stayed with me. In one case, the guest was refunded the entire stay, including the two weeks she had already spent with me, and was told to sort out the payment directly with me!!! Once she had her refund, this guest said she would pay me back at some later date. Right now was not convenient as she was waiting for a refund on another Airbnb, had lost money on theatre tickets etc.

I was outraged. How could CS do this? Given the circumstances, giving the guests a full refund for unspent nights even if it was in breach of the EC policy, was understandable. Giving a guest an entirely free stay at my expense is quite another!

I cannot begin to tell you how much time I spent battling this and how much I got the run around from CS, but it was around a month of constant chasing for both cases. In the end, CS had to admit that they had screwed up and refund me every penny out of their own coffers because the guests and their refunds were long gone.

I know that CS was a total mess at the time, but really? The most difficult part of dealing with CS is that, if they make a mistake (no matter how obvious), they seem to go to any length to deny it. This was not actually a complicated situation and could have been sorted out in one phone call, not a whole month of endless calls and messages.

[Lisa723]

@Luis3261 Im astonished. Congratulations and thanks for the update.

[Roberta-And-Ed0]

We were the target of attempted extortion this week. After several text messages (very nasty), has has not, as of tday, submitted a review. So, having not received his reimbursement, he may have just diasppeared. Bottom line, it is probably better to tell him to submit his review and then you challenge it.  Push for clarity if his extortion not explicit. AIRBNB said they would need screen shot of him stating very explicitly "I will give you a bid review if you don't reimburse me." So I messaged him via AIRBNB asking for him to clarify his reference to review and reimbursement.

[Cate12]

Wow so true!

I've been a super host for 7 years and have most recently come across these review extorting guests. The most recent one gave all one stars completely across the board. From what I understood, their only was that the unit wasn't completed upon their arrival, but they were fine with that and just went for a walk on the beach. I had someone there within 5 minutes to profusely apologize and quickly got the unit ready for them. They said no worries at all that they totally understood and that they were in the cleaning business. 

Next thing you know after they check out Airbnb is asking me to refund them a free night. Very crafty of them to wait to see if Airbnb was going to agree with me so they waited on their review. I graciously gave them $50 for their 2-hour delay in having access to the unit.  The $50 obviously wasn't enough so she came back with all one stars and a horrible lie of a review.

Airbnb would not remove it. Not only that, the language barrier with the people at Airbnb is absolutely ridiculous. They have automatic responses that have nothing to do with what you're trying to relay. 

[Destination-Byron-Bay0]

yes the language barrier is a major issue i have just had the same thing they do not understand the nuances of the english language and a veiled threat is not something they are capable of identifying. i had someone calling daily through airbnb asking to be refunded after they moved out cause they did'nt like the location of a property. i had eplained t them the conditions under which a refund would be possible and that was reselling.she would ignore me saying that can call are bnb and have them call me this went on for days and day on end it was a barage on purpose!! the day she left she posted i hhope this can be amicably reached and you do a refund. Airbnb offered zero support i said the ts and cs are what they are its new years peakweek i cant refund unless i resell. then of course she gave me all 1 star and made up nonsense complaints tht were news to me. airbnb cannot see that she was bullying for a refund and when it wasnt comeing she punished me. the ** call center people just dont understand the use of language.

**[Location removed to avoid Generalizing Content in line with the Community Center Guidelines- Location/Language of a Support service has no correlation with the overall service. Please be mindful when talking about our Support Staff ]

[Richard3441]

I have noticed this trend on ABnB platform as well.  A guest recently called 3 days after having checked out complaining they saw a spider, and "didn't want to leave a bad review, but was wondering if they could get a discount on a future stay because of this."  I have seen this behavior in an increasing number of ABnB guests.  Now, if the guest had said something when they were there, when I could do something about it, or even verify it is a real issue, that would be fine.  But, when it's obviously an extortion for bad review, I shut it down, bad review be damned, and I return the favor.   I've delt with ABnB enough to know they always back the guest, so i don't even bother any more.  Instead, I charge ABnB guests slightly more than other platforms to pay for the inevitable issues (enabled by ABnB), and call it a day.  BTW, even a $5/day difference has shifted my business dramatically toward another platform, where I never seem to have these problems.