I only wish they had a similar encouragement for hosts: “TELL YOUR GUESTS WHAT THEY COULD DO BETTER”.
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I’ve had similar happen to me. It’s been from newish to Airbnb people and it pisses me off, too! lol I mention in the listing and in person several times that there might be an ant or 3. It’s a seasonal thing here in Southern California especially with our drought. This last lady just had to leave a dig about the ants–which mostly head for the shower drain for water. Ach, I really don’t care–but I suppose I must if those types of comment get under my skin :))))
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@J_Wang I am terrified just thinking about guests dinging us about ants! I think our town is built on an ant hill! We spray, put borax acid out around the perimeter of the house, etc. but in Temecula a couple of ants could sneak in at any time.
I put a note about ants in my info book but I am always concerned. SoCal and our ants!!!
Stuff happens, no doubt, it is after all a natural/physical/mechanical world. Despite the fact all my guests leave a raving review, and in the private feedback they say ‘don’t change a thing’, I am still like Monk (the fastidious OCD detective) on the little things. Not one guest leaves that I don’t see something that needs tweaking, adjustment or fixing, and jump on it the instant they leave.
Heck, if I was an Airbnb guest I would probably travel with a set of tools. LoL
@SandyToes A simple stopper (serving as a limitor) on the inside, would have fix that annoying door. You would have been impressed had I been there. 
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(Yep, no doubt! I would have been impressed…and probably undressed…cuz’ that’s when I summoned help!)
What??? What a weirdo!! Who the hell ignores guest emails and then asks for a review. I hate it when a guest’s stay is less than perfect, and unless I know they’re gushing about their wonderful stay…I don’t ask.
With Air guests I cringe if one thing goes wrong (even if the guest caused the issue) because I know Air is going to keep reminding them to leave a review.
I’m glad I have a low tech shower “door,” --a shower curtain and rod! No squeegee needed!
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I would find this to be more than a minor issue. I don’t like to force objects in my own house much less other peoples’ houses for fear of breaking them. Also, I would be concerned that it the problem would worsen over time possibly trapping me in the shower.
I’ve seen that a lot of hosts complain about Airbnb prompting guests to “Tell the host what they could do better.”. I don’t think this makes guests rack their brains to come up with improvements. I have 237 reviews. Very few of the guests fill this section out. The ones that do usually say, “You can’t improve on perfection.”, “You don’t need to improve anything.”, “We’re struggling to think of anything to write here.”, etc.
Ha-ha! Perfect! Yes, it’s sort of a pain to squeegee, though having soft water helps to avoid spotting. And one learns that a quick zig-zag pattern of swiping gets the job done in seconds…sorta like the window washers do.
Now I’ve got to figure out what to do to build up the muscles in the left arm to match the right.
Hi Sandy,
I am annoyed for you that the host did not respond to resolve this issue. It’s one thing to have an issue - everything will break after a certain number of uses - and it’s another thing to not fix it.
We were in a very expensive B&B once for a special occasion ($379/night for just a room) and it had a really lovely updated bathroom with whirlpool tub (and cool rainbow light fixture) and a double-size marble shower with about a dozen shower heads. But after taking a shower the first night, the glass shower door came off its hinges and almost shattered on the floor! I was terrified that we had broken it! But the next morning when I told the caretaker about it he immediately called a repairman and it was resolved. So what I really remember about that trip (other than all the baths we tooks in 3 days) was the waitress who dumped a tray of drinks on us at a very expensive fancy restaurant and then we got lousy service for the rest of the night and the manager took an hour to come see if we were ok. Yeah, bad service is what you always remember, not all the great stuff.
So true. We really liked the place and I would have been happy to have submitted a positive review of our month stay. But after going another three weeks without hearing a peep from the owner about the shower door and another ‘minor’ matter, I was left with some hard feelings that I couldn’t overcome and decided not to respond. It was their loss.
There is a private review section and a special section to ABB. So, I am not sure what else you want.
I was commenting on Air encouraging guests to publicly find something to crab about. Saying those things in a private message is just fine.
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@Boruvka, I absolutely agree with you that Air’s wording encourages guests to come up with something negative. Even if it tells them to do it in the private part, just the fact they say, “tell your host what they could do better”, encourages them to think of something that they’re just as likely to put in their public review.
The only thing that neutralizes that is that ALL hosts are under the same system. If it only said that say, for new hosts, but not for veterans, then that would be extremely unfair. But since it says it for all hosts, and since prospective guests are comparing your reviews to someone else’s - as long as everybody’s playing under the same rules, it won’t make any difference.
As far as your shower door… I recently decided to make a habit of using our guest bathroom and taking a shower in it at least once every two weeks. And I’ve been amazed at what I found!!
Before instituting this new procedure, we always thoroughly cleaned the bathroom whenever a new guest checked in. But we never really checked it during their stay. When we did check it we would basically just peek our heads in from the door, take a quick look around, determine everything was okay and move on! But what an amazing difference it has made to actually use the bathroom!
The first thing I noticed when I went in to use the toilet (sit-down style), is that when you close the door and sit down on the toilet you see everything from the direct opposite angle than what you see by peeking in through the door. And the first thing I saw was a bunch of hair over behind where the door was when it was opened! You also see the fingerprints on the light switch plate. I realized immediately that if I was a guest, the most disgusting thing for me would be to see someone else’s hair!
When I took a shower, I saw that the silver plate around the water nozzle wasn’t very clean. We always clean it between guests, but I didn’t realize it got dirty looking after just one day. (If we have 4-6 people staying at the same time, then one day is the equivalent of 4-6 days usage by one person). So I realized we have to clean that every day. And just cleaning that one thing makes the whole shower experience a whole lot more pleasant!
I also realized we had to sweep the bathroom every single day - not just between guests as we had done in the past.
Oh and when I sat down on the toilet - I was shocked to discover that it MOVED! It actually moved! We’re in a new modern apartment - not some cabin out in the woods - so it’s something you’d never expect. And it’s something I never would have known about if I hadn’t decided to use the bathroom once every couple of weeks myself. No guest had ever mentioned it.
And like the daily shower nozzle cleaning, I realized we needed to at least wipe up around the bathroom sink every day and keep it shining all the time as well. Because again, with 4-6 guests, the daily usage of the bathroom is the equivalent of 4-6 days use by one person.
No one had ever complained about any of these things. And at the same time, no one had ever mentioned in our reviews that our bathroom was really clean. Since we’ve made those changes though, we’ve now had several people mention how happy they were that the bathroom was spotlessly clean every day. And one guy wrote in his review that the whole place was extremely clean. And no doubt, the new clean bathroom formed a large part of his opinion - because the rest of the place has always been extremely clean. But it wasn’t until the bathroom was also spotlessly clean that someone raved about how clean the entire place was. They’ve mentioned it, but they never raved about it like this guy recently did.
The rest of our place is always spotless because we use it just like guests do so the minute something is out of whack we fix it (or clean it). But we had totally ignored the bathroom. It just seemed like such a little thing that it didn’t merit much of our attention.
But in the end, the big lesson to us was that the bathroom is a huge part of the guest’s experience. They’re basically paying for a bed and a toilet. If you can keep both of those things in perfect shape, you’ll do well.
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Great ideas and suggestions.
Perhaps the wording should be; “If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the Private Feedback section.” The last thing they should be doing is making it easy to whine.
That stupid ‘Resolution’ button should be more circumspect.- it screams ‘free stay’ for the predatory type of guests.
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I got so dinged once about my Wi-Fi. He was a techie from Silicon Valley and was so proud of himself in the public review giving the speed readings in BPS (bits per second). I immediately got an extender. It was an expensive gem of feedback.
bytes
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What is an extender? If this new modem doesn’t fix the glitchy issue, I have no idea what I am going to do.
An extender, or repeater is a device that helps extend the signal to the location which may be glitchy because the signal is traveling too far from the router. Wireless signals get attenuated the further they are out from their source. The extender is like a cell tower, which helps carry the signal from the router to their device. The code of the extender will be your same code as your router except with a " _ext" on the end of it. Guests will log into the extender, not your main router. They are readily available for between $25-$55. The more expensive part was being marked down by this guest. Hope this helps. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Version-Wi-Fi-Extender-WN3000RP/dp/B004YAYM06/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1477407915&sr=8-2&keywords=internet+extender+wireless
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