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A guest who spent 2 nights (5-7 March) with her husband in our studio sent me the following message yesterday after reading my review. She hasn’t left me any reviews.
<<Please remove this comment from me, I will pay you off in early April! Or don’t worry I will have fun creating several different accounts and I will ask a multitude of friends to leave negative comments Thank you very much" (translater by Google translation)>>
My review on her:
<<I cannot recommend Melodie and her spouse. They were friendly but unfortunately very careless and negligent. They only stayed 2 nights but broke a glass without properly picking up the glass debris on the floor and without telling me. They had burned a new pan and also burned something in the oven, which triggered the smoke detector and the carbon monoxide detector which they then removed and wrapped in a bath towel on a shelf! They left €20 for the pan which costs €49. Melodie promised to reimburse me the difference in her message but she never did.
My answer to her message yesterday:
Imagine arriving in an Airbnb that provided a burnt stove, an oven that smells of burnt too, a very dirty floor with stains, traces of shoes and broken glass, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors removed and hidden in a towel on a shelf, would you find that normal?
Be considerate, careful and respectful next time and you will have a good comment. Explain to the next hosts that you will be more vigilant when cooking and that you will no longer do anything careless. What a twisted mind can think of taking revenue for an honest and sincère review!
If she sent the message via Airbnb, either report it or open a case with CS, review extortion is (well, should be) enough to have her bumped from the platform.
Melodie did send me the message via Airbnb and I reported it to the CS who said he had taken note of that… but he never mentioned any actions Airbnb would take. I found the CS lenient
<<Airbnb Support 7:56 AM
… It was a pleasure speaking with you on the phone and I am sorry that you had to reach out to us under these circumstances. As we discussed I have taken note of the message that Mélodie sent you, and in the event that one of her friends books with you to leave a negative review, let us know so that we can investigate. For your future reference, I have included our Review Policy in the link below.
If you would like to do so, you may also block Mélodie on the Airbnb platform so that they will not be able to book with you, or send you any further messages. You may find the instructions on how to do so here.
I hope this helps, and should you need further assistance, please feel free to reply to this message within 48 hours or you can reach us through our help center at www.airbnb.com/support/contact_us. Our goal is to provide you with excellent customer service experience and will be happy to provide you no less. If you feel that the concern was not fully addressed, you still can reply on this message thread for further assistance.>>
I did report Melodie to Airbnb who has taken note of her message. The CS of Airbnb hasn’t mentioned any further actions they intend to take against Melodie. That’s why I think they are too lenient with guests. They seem to apply double standards that favor guests and penalise hosts.
Not to worry. People who behave like don’t actually have friends, and since she isn’t willing to pay you for damages, she’s not going to be willing pay somebody else to book your place and leave a bad comment.
When calling Airbn CS I would mention that given the threat ( I read it as extortion) you are considering involving your local police. That would certainly depend on your location. I would cease messaging with the guest. This guest should be barred, but as they say, can develop alternative accounts.
I did follow the suggestion of Airbnb CS and block the guest. Actually over the phone, Airbnb CS did ask me to consider involving our local police, which I haven‘t done yet.
I agree with you. Don’t think she is willing to pay someone to book our place and leave bad comments. But as her husband works as truck driver for a company in Nice while she lives and works elsewhere (and that’s why she has booked our place to spend two nights with him), I hope he isn’t as crazy as she is.
Regarding her threat. Some people are so crazy that would actually spend the time to do that…
I don’t really understand why ABB let’s guests who cancel still review you. I mean, they could potentially have had a bad interaction with host after booking, then cancel, then leave a legit review. But it doesn’t seem worth it to allow for that when it leaves the platform open to fake reviews.
Also, I feel like any new abb user who gets a bad review could just open a new account with either a new phone number or email and start over. Does anyone know how easy it is to do that?
Lord in heaven, I feel for you. There are some crazy and quite nasty guests out there. My learnings from guests like these, is don’t respond because that’s what they want: to get satisfaction of seeing you pissed off and feeding off eliminating the joy from your day. Use the BLOCK function to shut it down. I gave a Dec2019 guest a poor review about bad communication and cleanliness, while she gave me a good review, which was along the lines of “went above and beyond, picked me up from the train, allowed a whole day after checkout to sleep and took me back to the train”.
She harrassed me for days afterwards, sometimes for hours at a time, making my phone ‘PING’ with every message, interrupting me cleaning for my next guest. Eventually she stopped. Well, 16 months later, she began harrassing me again. Two days ago, a diatribe of three separate messages, which I didn’t respond to. then this morning, another lashing of her crazy mind. Threats, and an insistence I apologise for giving her a bad review because she is ‘autistic’. When do autistic people use their DSM to attack people?? Anyway, finally managed to block the crazy woman.
ABB are in the meantime, taking some amount of time to examine her diatribe, and my earlier 2019 and Jan 2020 responses to her. I hope she’s dropped from the community so none of you have to suffer.
Actually, that’s not surprising. A friend of mine’s partner has a grown autistic daughter. She got some idea in her mind (or just was jealous of sharing her dad) that my friend was only with her dad because she was after his money. Which is hilarious, because he’s just an average middle class guy, not even close to wealthy.
She went on the warpath, calling all sorts of authorities to report my friend.
Reviews are for other hosts to see - without specifics it is pretty useless. For example, if the guest ruined your home, we other hosts would like to know that. And if it was the ‘they left the dishes unwashed’ reason, knowing that is also important for us to use, to rationalize.
