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A guest left two days ago and left me a review. This guest will certainly give me a five star review but this guest was far from five stars, breaking a number of house, rules, overstaying, etc. I couldn’t find an answer searching this forum, and Airbnb does not have this information on their help set up. I’m hoping to review this guest last minute in the hopes that reading my review of this guest it will be too late for them to remove their positive review of our airbnb.
Will this work? Will waiting till the last minute close their window of opportunity to remove their review?
When writing a review, it is sent into the innards of Airbnb without the option to edit or remove it. In any case, someone would have to reach out to CS to achieve anything. And then the question would be if Airbnb would really act on that.
What I would be concerned about as a host writing a review now, is that both will be published and both parties have the option to write a public reply (pending review I believe). Also, I’m not sure whether this is only possible during a certain time period (counting from check-out day or when the reviews were published?!?).
I certainly would call CS to find out - if necessary multiple times to get a couple of opinions LOL.
But waiting to the last minute should do the trick to minimize retaliation actions but not sure if it can be ruled out completely.
That is a great point - keeping a guest from writing a public reply. Happily, that reply would only show up on THEIR side; on our side, we would h=not have their reply on our site.
The question remains whether a guest can remove their review after the 14 day window has closed…
Yes, if you wait till the last minute to review them it will be too late for them to change their review. Once you click on “done” after writing your review, both reviews will be posted and they can’t be modified or deleted. I usually wait till almost midnight on the 14th day to write a review for an undesirable guest.
Yes, they can. A host or guest can always remove a review that they have written and there is not a time limit. I have removed a couple of reviews that I left for hosts and one that I left for a guest and all I had to do was contact CS and ask them to please remove it and they did.
(See at the bottom of the page: Remove your own review.)
However, it’s unlikely that your guest is aware of this option and so it probably won’t come up.
There is no question that Airbnb will act on a user, either host or guest, asking to have a review they wrote removed. They will always do that, without any “convincing” involved.
I read somewhere that it isn’t just an Airbnb policy, it has to do with online regulations.
Editing a review after the edit window is passed (when both parties have submitted reviews or the 14 days is over and your review is published) is never allowed.
Review responses can be submitted for, I think, 30 days after the 14 day review period, but not sure about that.
And responses appear on the responder’s review page, under the review they are responding to, otherwise they wouldn’t make sense.
Whenever I wrote a review before the guest submitted theirs, I never noticed any editing options of what I wrote. I always had the impression that once I complete the review process it’s out of my hands.
The edit option is there, but like a lot of things on their user-unfriendly site, is not necessarily easy to find. I recall seeing it, but can’t recall how I got there- it’s under “Reviews by you”, but hidden behind some other click.
I had guests leave us five stars but they complained in the review about being asked to conserve water (our area relies on rainwater and we were in the middle of a bad drought).
I responded, informing future guests that we were in the middle of a drought but usually have enough water.
I guess they decided I embarrassed them and they removed their review months after posting it.
Droughts are getting worse everywhere. People need to learn to practice water conservation now, rather than wait until they are forced to, because habits are hard to change.
Although there is no water crisis there currently, when I was just in Canada for 6 weeks, staying with my friend, I watched her 21 year old son wash and rinse a day’s worth of dishes under constantly running water. Whereas his mom has a dish pan she fills with hot soapy water she washes all the dishes in, then rinses them quickly under a small stream of water, as do I.
What laws are those - and how does that affect the situation? And more importantly, where is it written that a guest can remove their review (and star rating!) at any time?
We can ask Airbnb to remove our own reviews at any time, with no time restriction. Same for guests. Once, I asked a (nice) guest to remove her review and she did. She was a new guest at Airbnb and didn’t know how reviews work; so I reached out to her to let her know how sad and surprised I was that she had given me less than 5 starts. She called Airbnb and had it remove.
I felt I could do it because of the quality relationship we had during her stay in our home. For her to leave me with a less than 5 Stars made no sense. She understood, apologized and called Airbnb on the spot. This has happened before with guests who are new at Airbnb. They think that 4 stars is a good review.
I own a luxury boutique villa in Kollam, Kerala, India, which is listed on Airbnb. Recently, I’ve noticed a decline in bookings and would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions on how to increase visibility and attract more guests.
If anyone has strategies or insights to share—whether it’s optimizing my listing, pricing strategies, or enhancing the guest experience—I’d love to hear from you.
On a related issue I gave a guest 4 stars and then after they pointed out I mentioned a sick sheep (true story) in the review, and they neither had a sheep nor was it sick, I realised I had reviewed the wrong guests and should have given them 5 stars. I rang up Airbnb but they wouldn’t let me change the stars but they removed the review, as both reviews were up. I see their point which is to move on, even when a mistake has been made, but it still odd. So no I don’t think the guest can remove the review because they don’t like yours otherwise everyone would be doing it.
