Others have posted here that it’s exactly 14 days after you get the email reminding you to review. But then some people cut it too close and miss it or even forget! Waiting matters in some situations because when you review the guest gets a message saying something like “Lililou reviewed you, leave a review to see what she said.” So as long as they think you aren’t going to review them, they might skip reviewing you. Then when you review anyway last minute they do review you. Also reviews post in order of home country and date. So if you review right away and so do they that ugly review sits there 13 days at the top. Anyone looking at your listing sees it. If, like me you may have 5-8 reviewed stays in 2 weeks, that bad review is down on the second page and a prospective guest is less likely to notice it.
No, they don’t mitigate this at all. We hoped they might when they talked about making the review system more fair, but all they’ve done is add coding to identify inconsistent ratings. (Like if your guest marks 5 stars on all the sub-categories and 2-stars overall, it will say “are you sure?”). This does nothing to help with retaliatory reviews.
If you’re lucky they say something in their review that violates Air’s content guidelines. But most often Air will say “it’s the guest’s experience” regardless of how retaliatory or false it is. All you can do is reply to it.
A bad guest can’t take away your SH status, other than damaging your host rating. Those bad guests are exceedingly rare, so hopefully you have enough 5-star reviews to overcome a rogue low rating.
It had been about 50% successful in getting it from the guest (that is going down as I increase the fines and the instances of violations increase exponentially) and then 60% of the refusals are paid by Airbnb (although increasing with camera evidence) so I get the money about 80% of the time.
Yes, I have gotten LOTS of bad reviews when doing this which is why I had inquired of the group about how to avoid this. I now wait until after the review period is over to submit the claims (when it is for fines and extra people and not for damage which must be done right away) and I have gotten NO reviews from the offenders (even one who has threatened bad reviews and legal action many times by voicemail and text).
Unfortunately, Airbnb does NOT mitigate this at all and would certainly take away my SuperHost status if I was ever able to achieve it. With the number of bad reviews from offenders it will likely be a while (like maybe next year now that I don’t submit Resolution claims until after the review period when possible).
The stress/trauma is unfortunately something I am more than used to dealing with in my life (abused as a child and young wife, and then also 24+ years in the Army, and dealing with hundreds of deceased/fallen heroes and the aftermath) so it passes once it is “done and dusted” but the damage claims I have actually only ever had one. The damage was done by a guest dog and he refused to pay it. Airbnb paid me half because they said I couldn’t prove that it was the guest’s dog and not my own that did it. Usually my claims are for smoking or unauthorized pets or people or not cleaning up after their dog or leaving their dog loose in the house when no one is home or leaving the house unlocked when they leave, parking and driving on my lawn. All these things are clearly spelled out in my House Rules along with their accompanying fines.
Interestingly the one damage claim I did since the guest never had to pay it I ended up with a good 5 star review across the board.
wait what?! are you serious? this is nuts.
Unfortunately, yes. The claim is still ongoing. You can read about it in this thread:
https://airhostsforum.com/t/review-assistance-requested/31152