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Today, I had the experience of a guest who threatened me with a bad review because she wanted a full refund. I gave her a 50% refund to cancel the reservation as I members here made me realize that one should not host people like that.
I cannot write her a bad review and warn other hosts about her because she won’t be staying with me. There are also other guests who leave you bad reviews for petty reasons (e.g. it was raining while we visited and there was no umbrella). They are not disaster guests but you would rather not host them for the 4th of July when it’s easier to find better guests.
That makes me wonder if there is a place where you can submit guest profiles so that other hosts don’t have to put up with such people? I know this database cannot be comprehensive until a large number of hosts provide this info.
Exactly. I don’t like it. You have no idea whether some stranger is slagging someone online just because they have some unknown grudge against them or want to mess with them.
Just because someone is a host doesn’t mean I trust everything they have to say. There’s plenty of a-hole hosts out there. As far as anyone else knows, it could be a host’s own behavior that led to issues with a guest.
Talking about reviews, I have a guest about whom I was already planning the less than glowing review.
My retired school teacher dad School-ed me yesterday. The guest is driving me crazy. I text her, I message her through Airbnb, she calls me about the message. It’s clear she hasn’t read it. Since booking this has been a time consuming host/guest relationship.
Dad simply says, “Anne, be kind. She can’t read.” It all fits. Talk about humbling…(well more like I feel like an arrogant bitch)
I used to get irritated when Mexican workers in my employ or who I was trying to ask if they had time to do a job for me never answered my texts. But they would usually answer a phone call. It took me awhile, but I finally clued in- they were actually illiterate.
Amusing story. My neighbor is a beautiful, dark haired, porcelain complexioned, 30 something. Our condos were being re-roofed. She had a special request about her condo with which they complied. The next morning I was the carrier of the coffee & doughnuts she purchased as a thank you for the workers.
She speaks to a worker, “where’s your supervisor so we can give him these doughnuts & coffee for the crew’s break?” Blank expression. She flips into Spanish. The look on that young man’s face was, “I looove you.”immediate crush.
GMa & parents escaped Cuba as Castro came into power so she speaks Spanish. In my area her appearance makes it unexpected. (Yes I know sounds racist but it is the way it is)
I finally figured that out about someone I worked with for almost 10 years. He was a fantastic audio editor, and could do numbers just fine, and the one frustrating thing was that he couldn’t seem to deal with the editing notes about tapes submitted by reporters.
Then I noticed that the only notes he took had just a few initials, mixed in with time calculations when the story had a time limit, so I just started reading the notes out loud when tapes came in. He might have had severe dyslexia, but he could remember every word when it was read out loud.
Illiterate or dyslexic folks often cope by being very good at disguising their disability.
In my case I cannot review this guest because I got her to cancel.
You can review honestly but there are some nitpicky things you get to know only after the fact in their review. In the review they often give 3 or 4 stars because of some petty reasons. Many hosts don’t operate a Ritz Carlton hotel so they cannot provide everything these high maintenance guests require.
It doesn’t sound racist, it’s that most people are just quite ignorant- lots of Cubans are totally white skinned, as are many Latins. There are Mexicans with lily-white skin, way whiter than my olive-toned Jewish skin. Which is another ignorance- people thinking all Jews are dark haired and dark eyed. My mother had super pale skin, and red hair. My oldest daughter, whose father was also Jewish and did have brown hair and eyes and olive skin like me, has porcelain skin and green eyes and almost black hair- she could easily pass for Irish.
It’s also really ignorant for people to put forth notions like “the Hispanic vote”. Many Cubans in Florida, for instance, tend to be conservatives. Many voted for Trump. The Cubans who got out when Castro took over were the Cubans with money, the wealthier class. Communism was the last thing they wanted.
They tend to have quite different views and politics than Mexicans and Central Americans who immigrated for quite different reasons and come from the poorer classes.
I read a post here just yesterday that said (paraphrasing) “I didn’t review these terrible guests…” and if all hosts DID leave honest reviews the idea of a database of bad guests would never occur to anyone.
Regarding the famous ‘guests don’t read’ thing, Google says:
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy.
I have guest cancelled their reservation and asked for fully refund, then I fully refunded, and i got 1star review, ,haha, what a happy ending! Next time ,any of these guests for any of the reasons will get 0.
Don’t let them discourage you. Maybe because they didn’t stay, they didn’t know what to do or maybe they were just unhappy they couldn’t make the trip.
You did them a kindness by refunding. I’ve become more selective about refunding last minute cancellations. (Rebook = refund).
