The Airbnb rating system doesn't work!

[Robin4]

Here are a couple of reviews I have received in the past month which have related to the cleanliness of my listing.

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Wow, this is chalk and cheese, how can that be?

Now this is the area we are talking about which is scrubbed thoroughly between guests........

There is not a trace of a human hair, a fingerprint on the chrome, there is nothing in that bathroom that has not been scrubbed and sanitised.

95% of my guests agree, a few are neutral but, .08% make me look like a dirty host!

I would not care about this if Airbnb did not place such emphasis on the .08%, and concentrated a bit more on the 95%.

I thought I might lose my Superhost ranking last assessment as I thought my ranking might drop below the required 4.8 because of the number of perfect reviews I had which only warranted a 4 star rating.......

  

And still they are continuing! I can learn nothing from these reviews because they don't give me a hint of what I might have done wrong.....they tell me I did everything right but, Airbnb tells me I am not good enough, I need to improve!

This category star rating system is useless! It is useless to hosts and it is useless to guests......none of us can learn anything from it.

In the final analysis it boils down to how the particular guest woke up that morning, and what issues they might have going on in their lives at that moment.....they will look back kindly, or they will look for negatives!

Bloody awful way to run a business! 

Cheers.........Rob

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Robin4 One man's wine is another man's vinegar I am afraid. Guess the one thing that is needed is for hosts to take reviews with a pinch of salt.

[Kelly149]

Or people equate dirty to uncomfortable or cluttered or not my taste. Bc honestly I’d be SHOCKED if any person on the planet kept their own homes as clean as most fastidious hosts keep their spaces. But we’re all more forgiving of our own faults. 

my space is old & rustic. I think the best solution there is to leeeean hard into the oldness as a personality feature. Those opposed will hopefully choose to stay elsewhere and everyone else has been warned. 

[Fred13]

My goodness @Robin4, how maddening. Did they arrive with a 60x microscope?

[Mark116]

@Robin4   I think you hit it on the other thread, a lot of people equate 'old' with dirty.  It reminds me of our second guests, who gave us 3 stars, and in their private comments they said the place would only be habitable if it was fully renovated and painted.  But, 4 weeks prior to their stay the living room, dining room, hallway, kitchen, bathroom and all the moulding in the apartment had just been painted.  They were from Florida, where even the old stuff is pretty new and they simply did not like the space, did not like that it was old.  They also nicked us for a lot of random things like complaining there was only a ceiling fan [they were here on Halloween, so by no means 'hot' by any standard].  Sometimes you can't win.

I would probably reach out to that guest and say you were surprised and disappointed to get a low rating on cleaning and have it called out in the review, and to please let you know what the issue(s) were so you can address.

[Gillian166]

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@Mark116 wrote:

@Robin4   I think you hit it on the other thread, a lot of people equate 'old' with dirty.  

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bingo! and it's hard to make an old rustic cottage look or feel "squeaky clean" like a modern place can be. 

[Richard531]

@Robin4  What a nightmare. . .   I really feel for you on this.  You absolutely MUST put together the best set of words you can and make contact with those that left you the less-than-5-star reviews.  I have different ways that I try and tease out of them at least some information.  And it's even possible to get a conversation going and get more. 

Don't just give up and decide to not make contact, whatever you do!

[Ryan2594]

Are all the 4 star overall reviews related to cleanliness? 

Having hosted for about a year now and had 130 guests stay I am starting to get to grips more with the review system but overall you’re right it is deeply flawed.

Personally AirBnB should use the same rating system that Booking.com uses.

All of my written reviews are positive and yet I have been marked down. Sometimes the guests would explain the reason for marking me down others I was left scratching my head.

I had one review say I was great value for money yet marked me down for value 😂

Another, left a lovely note saying how she enjoyed her stay but then gave me the worst AirBnB marks out if any guests. I asked for clarification on why my cleanliness was marked down to 3 stars. She told me the bathroom and guest room were spotless but my carpets and couch had marks and worn stains in the lounge which I share with guests.

My place is dirt cheap and i’m a residential host.

I’ve worked on making my place as accurate as possible and loading a lot of photos so people have a good idea of what they are purchasing. I’ve also started to only review guests if they have reviewed my place first. 

Despite this I’ll no doubt still get the odd down grade but at the moment it’s looking good.

[Bubba-Lee0]

Personally, I think AirBNB should implement the following programming for their reviews, for BOTH hosts and guests:

If a guest/host leaves 5* across the board, they need not provide feedback on the individual star ratings.

BUT if they mark a host/guest down in any category, they should be *REQUIRED* to provide *Private feedback* to the guest/host for categories that are not rated 5*. The programming should require a response of at least 100 characters or not allow a less than 5* rating to be processed. 

If the guest/host puts some inane words to "defeat" the requirement like, "blah blah blah", the guest/host should be allowed to have that individual category star removed. If the guest/host cannot quantify why the guest/host deserves less than 5*, they have no business leaving less than 5*.

If the guest/host leaves overall less than 5*, they should also be required to provide private feedback as to why. Nothing is more frustrating than to receive 5* across the board and 4* overall with nothing but glowing words to support the review.