reviews for guests

[ChuckandCarole0]

A couple of days ago i got a request from "A" who had 49 five star reviews. But when i actually went into the reviews, i could see the star rating some hosts left that were pretty awful for cleanliness, communication etc, and by delving a bit deeper, had not respected check out times and left a bunch of garbage....Sometimes i can see the Five star review breakdowns and other times in the same 24 hour period, even though i was on my iphone each time, the Star ratings were not there. 

One question i have is, how does someone get 49 Five star ratings when they weren't all Five stars?? and as a host, with my reviews, if someone even leaves less than a Five star on any of the categories, it brings down my rating seemingly forever. 

Also, why can't we always see the Star Ratings? , as it was only by seeing those that i realized i don't want this guest...

then because all i got was the first initial of his first name, "A" 

when i received another request two nights later from "A" i thought it was the same person and didn't even get involved as it was almost past my check in time....

[Inna22]

@ChuckandCarole0 I do not know the answers to your exact questions. I feel like they are constantly messing with how guests names, pictures and ratings are displayed. I would say two things:

I do not accept same day bookings. When I did, they brought nothing but trouble. Now I have a setting for one day in advance.

I also try to care less about the quality of guests. So a guest leaves some extra garbage. Not the end of the world. Staying past check out is a bigger issue. I would still accept the guest but would send a message and say "I have noticed a few hosts mentioned that you stayed past check out. Would you like extra time for a fee? Or I have cleaners scheduled so I want to make sure you know my check out time or something along those lines. Of course, I have my limits with guest behavior 

[ChuckandCarole0]

Thanks so much for taking time to respond @Inna22 ! i have been doing same day booking with wonderful success, and no issues,  for 14 years actually.  Like is stated, this guest Alex Spencer, had 49 Five star reviews, which i was checking and sometimes i could see the star breakdown....he never had just one complaint, always at least two or three, and because communication was poor and he did not prearrange a check in later than our 9 pm cut off....airbnb graciously cancelled the res for me. 

My questions are:

1) How does a guest get a solid 5 for a star rating when they actually had less than 5s on the breakdowns?

2) Why can we not always see the Star Rating breakdown for a potential guest, when it is critical to our decision on whether to approve or deny a request?

 It would seem the lower ratings on communication, cleanliness etc would have a guest coming in around 4 which i would not accept, especially upon reading the prior host's comments....

3) How do we remedy this with airbnb so we get this critical info?  It takes our time and energy to rate each guest, which we have to do when we leave a review, but then this info gets left out, when the next potential host is viewing that person....

thanks so much!

[Pete28]

I believe on the guest side Airbnb rounds up, so anything above 4.5 is shown as 5*

[Joelle43]

Hello @Pete28 

I agree with you and just wish our host rating system was based on the same generous guest system.  Why two different methods in the calculation and why is the calculation so lenient towards guests and harsh towards hosts?  

You really have to read ALL the reviews left by hosts to discover that the apparent 5* guest isn't actually a 5* at all!  And bravo to those hosts who actually leave an honest review - I know I dodged two bullets this summer thanks to some great hosts who explained in what state they found their listing after the guest left😱

[Pete28]

They need us to host guests so lie about their rating. As time goes by, almost everyone is going to be on Airbnb, a fair few are bad news 😞