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So since when can guests easily edit their reviews? What should they do to edit their review?
And even then, the review was NOT the reason the host’s listing was taken down by AirBnB. The reason was the guest reporting the listing. Can she withdraw this reporting? I don’t think so. How would the situation have been had the guest reported the listing without having left a review?
The problem is AirBnB, not the guest.
GutHend, while I concur that the root of the problem lays with Airbnb, the guest could have easily send a letter to Airbnb or PuppyLover, left a message to that respect on the message thread. She could have called Airbnb and said: well, I can’t prove it, but do me a favor and eliminate my review. She was capable enough to hire an attorney.
The always scary thing is, how little it sometimes takes to get kicked off the platform. One report and boom … It is not the first time we have read it. One would think they have enough CS folks that could pick up the phone and call the previous and subsequent guests to inquire before kicking a long standing host off their platform.
Other users seem to have carte blanche and trash through listings and nothing happens to them. Go figure.
We need more hosts like you. Most people would lay down I would think. Fingers crossed you get a strong result against Airbnb.
She’s cost me 7 months @ $2K so far … $14K.
As the judge told her attorney, even if you make a review on a good-faith basis, you need to correct it when you realize it is defamatory.
Leaving a false review online after receiving a request to correct it crosses into negligence.
Just stick to the facts and whatever your country’s law on defamation are … false information is actionable …
She knew how to contact AirBNB to make her false report. She knows how to contact them again, especially when facing a lawsuit. I have to suppose she is either stubborn or getting bad legal advice.
The attorney tried this tact and pretty much got laughed out of the courtroom.
??? It’s a public review, that led directly to my delisting and loss of income, and I’ve linked it upthread, it remains live now. You can read it for yourself!
That’s the crazy part! I have 650 guests and around 500 reviews, no one ever has noticed or mentioned about something in the dog’s toy basket, but AirBNB overreacts to a guest with FOUR reviews providing a public, false review, and lets the guest keep noodling around on the platform.
Agree, I’m getting strong feedback from some local hosts that this case could be a LOT higher. Until AirBNB started making some effort to at least reinstate me, it felt like a $50K case to me – I planned to keep hosting maybe for a couple of more years, and BANG! that rug got pulled from under me.
This case is at minimum worth $14K of direct loss of income, not inclusive of loss of reputation and dread/fear of money problems at age 64. The clock has been ticking at $2K a month for the guest who is balking at making an effort to remove her defamatory review. If and when AirBNB removes this review, my understanding from a lawyer is that the clock stops ticking in terms of continuing the monthly income part of the damages.
@Brian_R170, if you recall where you read the guest’s side of the story, please PM me if that is possible. I’m honestly wondering what her version is.
THANKS I appreciate your good wishes.
@AlexSJ
good point — who is at the root of the problem? To me it is the guest, because AirBNB didn’t make the first move here. But boy AirBNB is around 49.9999% of the problem at least …
I didn’t make any real distinction for whether the guest needed to withdraw her report or edit/remove her review. Just asked for relief in terms of “correcting the record” with Air, however that might be achieved. WITHOUT her assistance, though … we all know AirBNB won’t lift a FINGER to help a host based on the host’s word. So the guest staying silent after receiving photos of the bendy training pistol … that’s where her legal troubles more or less began. And where the guest’s responsibility skyrockets.
Who says she hasn’t tried correcting it? Maybe it’s AirBnB who’s not cooperating?
No, no, no… If you think that AirBnB reads any of the reviews, think something else. The guest reported you with (what she thought was) good reason, and that was the moment AirBnB ruined it for you.
Maybe the guest is convinced that she saw another gun in the basket 
.
A question: What do you think are this guest’s motives for her past and current actions, or lack of it?
I stand to be corrected, but the Host Guarantee, verification, etc. all appear to be outsourced. The last set of updates on terms made it very clear that Air is arms length. Which begs some obvious questions as to why Plus can be so specific, but that’s another issue.
Unreal. She is compounding her defamation now in multiple sites. I guess we have an answer, @GutHend (see Brian’s post directly above) … she’s being stubborn. And she is not only not correcting her review, she’s compounding it. Jeez. She really thinks she saw a gun, holy moley.
@GutHend not sure if you are clear – she wrote a public review, not private feedback (as you wrote above). That in the U.S. at least is a critical part of defamation: the public aspect of the false information. See:
FindLaw: Elements of Libel and Slander
You DO have a point that AirBNB’s ACTION in response to her private report created my damages, but it was the PUBLICATION of her public review that provides the final nail in a successful defamation suit.
If the guest saw another gun in the basket … she planted it there.
Brian’s link gives your answer on guest motives:
I was concerned for the safety of others renting after myself and the potential for children to be in the residence as well. I viewed leaving a public review reporting the gun as a moral obligation.
I wonder if:
You’re just playing devil’s advocate and casting doubt for the sake of arguing your point. There is no information to suggest that its Airbnb who isn’t cooperating.
However you want to spin it, this is on the guest who made up a story for attention. She blatantly made up details, like the fact that it was a 9mm hand gun. Whatever Airbnb rep had to push the big red button to shut down PuppyLover was just following CYA. I wouldn’t want to stay at an Airbnb with guns laying out because its poor judgement so I would expect Airbnb to step in there.
Airbnb wasn’t there so they don’t know what happened. They have to take the cautious approach because an Airbnb shooting would shut down the whole company. So no, I don’t blame them. The guest made a very alarming false report. She’s been held liable for that in a civil court so I think this has already been decided by a duly appointed judge who had all of the facts to consider.
From the Airbnb hell post
I stayed at an Airbnb in Baltimore for a weekend last summer and was aghast to find a hand gun at the front door, just set out and unsecured.
You’ve got to be kidding me. When someone uses the word aghast you know they’re faking it. She’s got a lot of faith in her social justice flag. Save some moral outrage for the rest of us tiger!
To me - what undermines her entire claim (aside from the fact that I know it was rubber) is the fact that she never said anything to the host, didn’t call Airbnb and stayed for the entire time. Her high and mighty tone is because she was being sued.
By the way I loved the point in the audio where the judge said, essentially, “can we stop calling it a gun? It wasn’t a gun.”
I mean seriously, who has a gun in a basket with dog toys? She’s really a bit of a dumdum. And an entitled one at that.
And I am very anti-gun - had I walked in and seen what I thought was a gun I would likely have said very nicely, “Hi, this is probably a dumb question - but can I ask you if that’s a gun?”
I probably would of picked it up to have a gander lol
She doesn’t even mention your name and/or listing 
. To be honest, if I were her I would not only appeal until the last possible appeal, based on your publications like the video and this forum, I would counter claim.
So it’s not about the damages caused by AirBnB, it’s about winning a defamation suit? Well, first of all it appears I’m the only one finding all this odd, so I will try to stop discussing after this post, but to me her anonymous post on AirBnB Hell, only fully confirms the point I was trying to make the whole time: She didn’t have any bad intentions, but felt it was her task to use the two tools offered by AirBnB (reporting it to them and review) to keep people from harm. And she does still think that her perceived reality is… well… uhm… reality.
Did you get to see the reviews she left for other hosts? (AirReview) Maybe there you could find an indication that she likes to cause trouble for hosts.
@Mexican There definitely is ! Why didn’t they immediately take down the review that got one of their guests into trouble? Why didn’t they reinstate the host’s listing before it got to court? Why don’t they pay a lawyer for their guest, who was just using the companies tools for what they were designed for?
You know what, at first AirBnB simply wasn’t interested (automated systems and low paid workers simply do not care) and after that it’s all about washing their hands clean.
I highly doubt that this judgement will stand when being appealed. If this happens it will put a BOMB beneath everything that is review based. Also, if the guest loses the appeals again, I will have to say “only in the USA”.
@Puppylover I do really hope that you totally win your case against AirBnB. What they did to you, really is not excusable in any way and should be punished, very hard. It’s a really good thing you are taking them to court and lots of success with it 
.
And it should, I think it is too easy for people to leave a bad review and get away with it, even if they think it is true or not. It is about time that people get held responsible for what they write.
She gets punished for making a stupid assumptions, and sticking to them.
She has the same mental illness that more and more people suffer from in our modern society: “lack of common sense” or as in your native language “Hausverstand”.
Normally, in her situation you would double check if what you saw was real.
Because common sense would tell you that a gun in a basket at a door would not be normal.
If she really believes she saw a gun and sticks to, it without proof, and the owner can proof she is wrong, $5000 is right.
My native language isn’t German 
, but apart from that: What do you think of AirBnB shutting hosts down, because supposedly they uttered something racist? The guest reports the host, there’s absolutely no proof and AirBnB shuts the host down.
If I recall well, we had a case like that on this forum. The guest was actually dissatisfied with whatever and chose to draw the racism card. AirBnB didn’t give the (also experienced) host the slightest chance to defend himself and just shut him down. In this case there was bad intent from the guest, but even then it was AirBnB’s responsibility. They designed a certain review/report system to be (ab)used by guests (and hosts). This system is a liability for both guests and hosts, and therefor they should handle these cases with a bit more care: Call the guest and host to ask/tell them what’s going on, don’t shut down hosts from one day to another, keep a record of reports (3 strikes = out),…
Guests can be very, very stupid because some people are just plain stupid, but from a company like AirBnB one should be able to expect better.
If a similar situation arose here, the guests would bolt and within a few minutes we’d find the building full of the Policia!
JF
Exactly the same, if I would know the guest who did this, I would take it to court.
If it is a gun or racism not much difference.
You should not expect much common sense from a company like AirBnB either.
AirBnB employees are people, and since people in modern society are losing common sense, AirBnB employees are doing the same.