When guests lie and Review Guidelines

[Dan132]

I've been a host for about a year now and love Airbnb. I really like being a guest but hosting is another matter. I've had some strange reviews from guests who didn't respect the guidelines of the house and clearly didn't read the profile. They didn't have the experience they wanted to left reviews with outright lies in them. 

The last review was the worst I've gotten. I contacted customer service and they said that the review didn't violate the review guidelines so they would not remove it. I asked if lying was acceptable and they avoided the question....repeatedly! I asked how far within the guidelines a guest could lie and, again, the avoided the question. I gave a hypothetical scenario....a guest claims there is no Airbnb at all and had to pitch a tent! Again, customer service refused to answer the question. 

I can understand why they don't want to mediate reviews, but when someone leaves a review that's totally inaccurate and downright false I find it troubling that Airbnb is not more supportive. Again, I can understand why they don't want to get involved or hear from hosts who can take honest constructive feedback....if your place is a mess then it needs to be cleaned, etc. 

In the recent survey they sent out I addressed this issue. As of today, I am really distressed to find such a large loophole in their review policy. For example, I have two brand new air conditioners in the house that have worked fine for everyone, but the last guest claims they "did nothing." We had record hot temps, he had done a long-distance six hour bicycle ride in that heat, and he was clearly not doing well after the ride. I also checked in with him to see if everything was okay, which is my routine, and he said nothing about the house not being cool enough....frustrating because I have a third unit in my studio that I could have provided.

I wonder if Airbnb is addressing this issue. A lot of hosts find this frustrating! I've invested a lot into this space and more improvements are forthcoming, and yesterday I pulled my business permit as the county is now requiring it. It's frustrating to think we have no recourse to guests who lie!

Dan

[Farah1]

@Dan132 I understand your concern and this has been discussed so many times here in the forum. The only suggestion I can give (which is something that I want to start doing as a habit) is to ask and check on the guest using the airbnb messaging system. I am not sure how well this will work, but what I am hoping is if there is a difficult guest who leave a false review, we have proof that the guest claimed that everything was great with their stay (for example). It happens so many times that we ask in person about how the stay is going and guest says it is good and smile, then BAM! the bad review come and it is a lie/false. So, I am still practicing to ask through the system instead of in person. Hopefully this will work/help.

[Dan132]

Farah, that's a great idea....having a trail of communication that Airbnb admins can look at if there's a problem. The deeper problem, though, is that it seems that Airbnb won't do a thing about it even if someone is caught lying, etc. I'm really amazed at the fact that they would not answer my question about blatant, provable lying....all they did is deflect the question!

The company would really benefit from evolving this component of their service. 

I think I'm going to get in the habit of using the Air email!

Thanks again, 

Dan

[Sarah-and-Derrick0]

seems air bnb has not changed their process since this thread was made, I have gone the email route, I dont think they even reviewed anything.

[Parklands0]

Hey Farah, I have had to be tough on lies guests write, and making sure you have written/text communication or collect all the voicemails or audio clips the guest sends you. You can send screen shots to AirBnB.

The sad thing is, a guest can leave a terrible review and terrible star rating, while mentioning a list of issues as negatives "There was no kids playground" (none was advertised). "There was no daily cleaning" there was none advertised. "We had to pay sales tax before arriving" that was mentioned clearly in house rules before booking on airbnb. In my opinion complaints that are unreasonable should give hosts the right to request removal. And any lies by the guests, that should also be reason for removal of the review if you can prove the lie. 

However the reality is. Air BnB allows for a lot of lies & bad vibes, and won't help you. But they will remove a review if you can prove there was blackmail/threats/manipulation in regard to getting a good review. For example, a guest might say before or during the stay.... do this for me or I will write a bad review. If you can prove it (in writing), that can be clear grounds for removal of the review.  We know for sure. We finally won a case!

[Christine4243]

I came across this message thread and wanted to share my experience. We had multiple guests that stayed before this Karen came to our property and multiple guests afterwards that all left five star reviews and didn’t cite any problems. As a matter of fact, we had a guest checking out on the same day Karen was checking in. This guest came to our property with the intention of getting a discount or staying for free. In fact, she actually says in the Airbnb message thread that she’s staying at one of our fellow neighbours rentals and it wasn’t up to her standards so she was going to try to get a full refund and then move over to our rental. That should’ve been a red flag right there but she also didn’t state which rental she was at etc. etc., then she came over to our property and did the exact same thing. We already knew at that point she was problematic so I offered her a full refund for her stay and she could go elsewhere where she’d be happy. She also arrived at 10 AM instead of our regular check-in time which is 3 PM.  we let her know that if she wasn’t happy and she preferred to stay elsewhere, we would give her 100% refund and she could move. She then proceeded to stay on the property anyways citing that there was nowhere else to go, meanwhile, it’s a weekday in the middle of low season and about 90% of the rentals where we’re located were available. She didn’t even have enough common courtesy to leave the next day at her checkout time. She complained the entire time about her stay, which started off about being about a chip on the floor , which turned drastically more hostile as the day went on, and as we weren’t willing to provide further discounts to her Since we knew she was problematic, we had our staff film every single room before we turned them over to her. So we have documented evidence with timestamps on it of how she received the property. I contacted Airbnb around 5 PM that same day because I wanted to notify them about the situation. I then get an email from Airbnb around 11 PM stating that the guests wanted a full refund… The guest that was currently staying on the property that I already offered the full refund to and that they could stay elsewhere. Clearly the guest just wanted to stay for free like they just did at our neighbours the night before. I guess Airbnb asked them for photo evidence of the chip and the things that she was referring to which we obviously had our own documentation. We stopped communicating with the guest  because I know just how hostile they can get especially when you’re at their mercy and they’re currently staying on your property and in your home. She  either used the shower or the bidet hose on the wall in order to flood our room so she would have the photo evidence she needed to get her money back. We sent in the videos to Airbnb and told them about the situation that happened and they did absolutely nothing and in fact, I got a hosting violation for the water issues… So just to recap the guest did damages to our property and I was penalized. I asked Airbnb repeatedly like how did this water damage occur then if it wasn’t the guest, did a plumber come during their stay? Was it a pipe that burst or how did this situation transpire because I’m letting you know that the guest did this with either the shower or bidet hose and we have an outdoor camera that points towards that room so we could show and prove that they stayed in the room no plumber came and the whole thing was just an act. Again, Airbnb did absolutely nothing and I didn’t realize what a huge gap in the security measures that they provide to their hosts. 

[Sarah-and-Derrick0]

we had the same experience, did anything help the situation

[Robin-and-Mami0]

Yeah, it seems 1 in 10 guests is bonkers and there is nothing you can do about it.  I just had another one.  A half dozen times I asked them to let me know if they had any questions or concerns.  Never did they mention anything.  On the review they gave me 4 stars  because the size of the space was "smaller than advertised", when in fact I supplied a floor plan with dimensions and square footage in the photos and the square footage in the text description.  The 4 star review broke my perfect 5 star record.  Dat make  a me aaangry but there's nothing I could have done to avoid it and nothing Airbnb will do to help me.  To rub salt in the wound, Airbnb will send me a message chastizing me for "over stating" the size of the place and if my average stars fall below 4.8 more chastising from Airbnb when in fact it's the crazy guests that need chastizing and the review needs fixing.

[Rich-and-Yan0]

That really sucks. We're new to hosting and are learning a LOT from reading these forums. I had no idea that such a thing could happen. Hopefully it's just a one-off and you'll be back to hosting only good guests soon.

[Craig499]

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to consider adding the room dimensions to my room info. 

[Chris1537]

Guests are permitted to review the accuracy of our listings. I feel that hosts should be able to review the accuracy of the guests reviews.
I've taken to not only checking reviews that have been written for guests, but also the reviews they have written for other hosts.
When looking at their reviews, click on the hosts that wrote them, then look at their reviews and find the one written by that guest.

I've just had my first negative review and there are several things in it that are just not correct. I've discussed it with Airbnb and am waiting to hear back as to whether it can be removed.
I'm told that it will depend on whether the guest is in breach of Airbnb's content policy.
Looking at the content policy, it states that, among other things, the following is not permitted.

"Reviews that do not represent the author’s personal experience or that of their travel companions"

Now clearly any lie or false claim, does not 'represent the author's personal experience' and is grounds for having the review removed.

If you can prove any lie or false claim in a review, then this should be enough to have the review removed.

[Maja69]

. . .and if this’s was only true then the whole lying issue would be manageable, but the fact is that Airbnb offers ZERO support to hosts, even their suupposedly extra valued Super Hosts. I have had MULTIPLE cases where I was able to prove the jest was lying, and Airbnb case managers even RECONIZED that this was clear from the mail in the Airbnb mail thread, yet the false review was NOT removed , just as I have had cases where it was BEYOND proof that the review was written by a third person and hence NOT based on a personal experience — the person ADMITTED openly in Airbnb mail that he/she was never around during the stay and had ZERO personal interaction — and again Airbnb just flat out DENIED to remove the review. I am hoping/waiting for someone in North America launching a class act suit over this issue with Airbnb to FORCE this company to take adequate responsibility.

[Christine4243]

When you launch the suit please let me know, same issues 

[Mohit14]

So I'm also another of the SuperHosts affected by the review which was a total lie. As a matter of fact, we accepted guest's alteration request since he cited his daughter's medical issue, and he returns the favour by giving us a 1 star.

Contacted Airbnb and quoted their policy where they should be removing reviews where "Reviews that do not represent the author’s personal experience or that of their travel companions"

All I got in return were two standard answers that everyone of you will have got -

a) Review does not violate our policy (you can try to prove it otherwise in any way but they will behave like bots and keep repeating the same line)

b) You can respond to the guest review with your viewpoint (load of crap since you will come out looking bad whatever you reply and most guests would rather trust the one bad review over tons of positive reviews)

And lastly when you tell them that your rating has also been screwed, they have no answer but to say it will get better after you get a couple of positive reviews.

The whole conversation will continue in this loop till either you give up and hang up, or they put you on Mute and do other things till you get tired and hang up.

I don't know who will read this rant of mine, but if you do, please pass on one suggestion to whoever at airbnb can listen -

Don't allow guests who have cancelled or altered their dates to write reviews because 99% of times they will screw over hosts by either giving a bad review or holding them at ransom with threats of negative reviews in return for waiving cancellation charges.

Their customer service are simply too vain to understand that their callous attitude to this issue can result in loss of jobs and livelihoods beings destroyed!

[Dawn-and-Tom0]

I'm thinking a lawsuit (possibly class action) against Airbnb for libel might do the trick. If they publish libelous information and refuse to remove it then they are just as liable.  Yes, an attorney speaking here...