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Just review at the very, very last minute. Then they won’t have a chance to review you back. I learned on this forum that you have 2 weeks to the minute from the time you get the first email from Air telling you to review. If you just got the 2 day review reminder email, that should have the same time on it. So just review like 2 minutes before that time on Wednesday.
Yeah, it shouldn’t… but the sad fact is that it does. If it’s going to hurt my business by leaving an honest review right away when I know the guest will retaliate, I will wait until the last minute.
Wait until the last minute. Look for the first email that air sent you to review your guest. Look at the time, if it came at 2:00 on Saturday then two weeks from Saturday at 1:58 hit send on the email. Guest will only have two minutes to respond…
It honestly bothers me to read how many hosts are so worried about bad reviews. Every business in the world gets bad reviews from time to time. Guests are bright enough to make up their own minds and other hosts need to know about guests who are troublesome.
Not sure why erryone is getting in a tizzy over my legit concern and consideration here. I never said I didn’t want to leave a review. On the contrary, actually ツ I said that I was hesitant to do so at this time for the reasons mentioned. I absolutely want to make hosts aware, which is why I came here to collaborate with y’all, more seasoned, hosts and discuss the options on the table, and their associated implications… Thus allowing us to offer a review, in the most strategic way, where I can mitigate the chances of a poor review from this guest.
It’s clear that most hosts would stick to their morals regarding guest reviews, but it’s not unreasonable to also be prudent and mitigate the potential for a poor review if it could be avoided.
Yeah, it shouldn’t … but the sad fact is that it does. If it’s going to hurt my business by leaving an honest review right away when I know the guest will retaliate, I will wait until the last minute.
What we know is that they measure reviews for Superhost status. It could be one of the factors that goes into their search algorithm. There are other factors that may impact the overall system of trust but not you specifically in the short term. Some of us hope bad reviews will drive these kinds of guests off the platform but if no one is willing to review them honestly they can just move on to victimize the next host.
I agree to a certain extent, but I do think that one bad review can indeed hurt your business. As a guest I will do a certain kind of risk assessment:
Does the listing in itself communicate trustworthiness?
What’s the good reviews / bad reviews ratio?
What kind of problems do the bad reviews mention? I wouldn’t be bothered by an occasional cleanliness or amenities issue, I would be a bit wary with check-in issues and more wary with cancelation issues. More importantly there are definite NO GO issues. I won’t give an example of these since it’s a public forum and I don’t want guests to get any ideas, but if a NO GO issue is mentioned in one review between many wonderful reviews, I will still move on to another listing.
That’s not what Air have told me, it’s exactly 14 days from your check out time. I do it at 10.59am on the 14th day anytime I don’t want a guest to review me and it works every time. It also works when they have reviewed me, because if it is less than favourable we have such a high turn over it will already be down to end the page of 2. I make sure I review all guests after the complainer quickly so I get lot’s of new reviews in. I also respond to a couple of positive reviews with comments like: gorgeous guests anyone would be pleased to host. So that the person who does the complaining looking like a real whinger.
You can be really lucky and if the problem guest doesn’t come from your country then their review goes after all your reviews from guests from your country. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen to us often.
And look at the outlier review as making the whole process seem real, everyone understands there is always someone that whines. As a guest I don’t take any notice of the occasional complainer on a listing but I have learnt that if the reviews are really mixed it’s a horrible place and half the guests are just too nice to say so.
Well that’s wrong. If that was the case then I would be missing the deadline to review because the email they send is a couple hours after checkout. I have done this a few times. My checkout is 11 the email usually comes between 1-2 that day.
For me the no-go is a cancellation since I don’t want to take the chance that I spend hours picking a place and then they cancel on me if they get a better offer or grandma comes to town.
Also if I see any whiney replies to reviews or hosts who don’t seem to understand how airbnb works I move on. Of course since I filter first for IB and then for SH I pretty much eliminate those hosts. Fourth thing is I look for is clear “owner hosts,” not property managers and absolutely no sub leasers.
@Poppy and @RiverRock thanks for chiming in about this. From my experience working at software companies, and using a lot of different software (like Airbnb) I would definitely trust a user and their actual experience before I would trust a customer server agent (who may have started working at the company a week earlier!)
It would make sense that the 14-day clock starts ticking from the moment they send that first notification. I’m going to shoot for leaving the review at that time and let y’all know how it turns out!
Haha! you nailed it! BOTH! Before my wife and I got married we thought that even after we get married we want to keep “dating” each other… keep the marriage fresh and alive, like when we were dating! And of course her last name became Dayton as well so she’d always be a Dayton! After we got married “alwaysd8on” became our username and mantra!
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what is IB and SH?
Before my wife and I got married we thought that even after we get married we want to keep “dating” each other… keep the marriage fresh and alive, like when we were dating! And of course her last name became Dayton as well so she’d always be a Dayton! After we got married “alwaysd8on” became our username and mantra!