Guests with no reviews

When I first started using Airbnb I had quite a long run of guests without reviews - all were great guests. I remember well the first guest I had who had quite a lot of fabulous reviews. I was quite nervous about hosting her! But she was the messiest guest. I can only think of one group in all these years that was worse.

Like @muddy I don’t understand your post but the comment I quoted above can’t go unnoticed. If hosts don’t review all guests honestly then the entire system breaks down. What’s the point of reviewing excellent guests but not writing negative reviews?

To say that ‘many’ hosts do that is, hopefully, totally incorrect.

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Do they actually run a background check or just accept whatever the guest gives them as i.D.?

@jaquo I doubt any hosts want to have to write a negative review, that much is true. I don’t care if they want to or not, as long as they don’t decline to leave a review just because it’s going to be negative.

I’ve read posts from hosts who say they’d been taught “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and say that’s why they don’t leave negative reviews.

But they are misinterpreting that old adage. If your Auntie proudly shows you the dress she’s just bought, which you think is hideous and looks terrible on her, telling her that would just be hurtful and serve no purpose, unless she is really seeking your opinion because she doesn’t trust her own judgement.

But as you say, a review system may as well not exist at all if every review on it only says glowing, positive things.

People read book and movie reviews to find out if the movie is worth seeing or the book is worth reading. It would just be weird if every book and movie review said it was fantastic. People would soon not bother to read them at all.

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I think that if they did, their fees would be so much higher and hosts complain enough about the fees as it is. Hosts who want to do background checks would probably be advised to do it themselves if they are willing to pay for them. And imagine how much it would cost to do checks on someone from China or Pakistan or wherever.

Too much that’s how much. I do not need a background check for someone who is leaving in 2 days, or 4 days or whatever.

RR

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