Airbnb reviews are what’s gonna push me over the edge into being homeless on the street. At this point I need the money I make from Airbnb to afford to live. But I don’t how much longer I can go on. Reading people’s reviews has not been good for my soul. The 4 star for location sends me into a blind rage. You can see where I live. Everyone wants us to live closer to downtown. I mention exactly how far I am from downtown. If you want to be closer to downtown then you are going to have to pay double what I charge. Someone recently complained about how they didn’t like sharing a bathroom with other guests. WHY WHY WHY did you book my house? Why? I do not hide that you will be sharing a bathroom. Please don’t complain that it is small. I also do not hide this. I don’t know how else to say it. I list in every place possible. Someone complained there were 2 stink bugs. Help me, Jesus. He even acknowledged it wasn’t my fault. I know I need to calm down but these people… they push me over the edge
Hello Faheem
We do not currently have a feed back form but also have been considering it as clearly guests cannot bring themselves to say things to you personally. Since my post I have had a 4 with glowing words so it does not always work although we had a plumbing issue which was not immediately fixable but only slightly inconvenienced the guest, I guess it was enough to clip off a point even though they never mentioned it in the review. This is what we currently say in our house book… Graeme
Other than that, we are here to make your stay as easy and enjoyable as possible so if you find something wrong or need something please just ask. Our ability to host guests depends on happy customers so it is disappointing to find out in a review that there was a problem!
Whilst we are mentioning reviews, a few words about the AirBnB review system…… Basically it does not work so well. Although there are five levels really only two numbers count being 5 (good) and 4 (there was some problem) in the over-all review category. Five is not five star hotel stars it simply means you were happy with your stay. Even a 4 is fairly catastrophic for the host (Even AirBnb tells us off) so please, please advise any issues when you notice them so we can try to remedy them.
Hi @Graeme,
Thank you for the reply.
There is no guarantee that they will say it in the form either. And I try to look at the form before they leave and ask questions about it (though that doesn’t always happen), so it’s not like leaving comments in an Airbnb review, where the guests have already left and don’t have to concern themselves with what the host’s reaction to their criticisms might be.
Yes, I’ve also had 4 star reviews with no criticisms voiced.
Coincidentally, we also recently had a plumbing issue which inconvenienced a guest, and for which (I think) I got one star taken off, so a 4 star review. But in this case, the guest was quite clear (and reasonably so) that they were inconvenienced. In this particular case they were within their rights, I think. If I had had to deal with the same issue, I would have been unhappy too.
Your house book statements look good to me, and very similar to what I would say, down to Airbnb threatening hosts over 4 star reviews, though that hasn’t happened to me yet. (I look forward to it.) We seem to have come to similar conclusions independently.
I’ll think about whether to include some wordings in my guest guide. I think that guests are more likely to look favorably on such statements at the end of the stay than before it happens (I email them my guest guide in advance). I usually verbally communicate roughly what you said at checkout. Most of the time I get little or no reaction. Occasionally people say things like - yes, like Uber. Meaning Uber has a similar policy/attitude to star ratings. I’ve heard rumors that Uber toss drivers off platform if they hit like 4.2 stars, so they may be more extreme than Airbnb.
Have you had any reactions to this content in your house book from guests?
The second “Even” should be “even”. I.e.
Even a 4 is fairly catastrophic for the host (even AirBnb tells us off) so please, please advise any issues when you notice them so we can try to remedy them.
or you could rephrase it a little differently, e.g.:
Even a 4 is fairly catastrophic for the host (AirBnb routinely criticizes hosts over 4 star reviews and in some cases even threatens them) so please, please advise any issues when you notice them so we can try to remedy them.
Hello Faheen, Quite right even. I like your longer suggestion but the paragraph is already rather lengthy. I will think about changing it though. To answer you later question we have never had any comment about this from anyone.
We live in an age when reading beyond 7 words defeats many people and unfortunately this especially applies to your ABnB listing. I think many people look at the price and a couple of recent reviews, scan the pictures then book or not book. Like you, the location rating I find difficult. Hang in there though, most of the time we enjoy our guests.
Everyone is different. I recently read that being a clergy member is the most fulfilling career (according to a survey). Artists, musicians, yoga instructors were up there as well. I find boarding dogs in my home to be extremely enjoyable most of the time which is why I retired early to do it.
Airbnb probably could be soul nourishing but not for this poster. Not all souls can withstand and/or enjoy the same things. If I were crushed, enraged or despairing by criticism I’d have been dead long ago.
use Baileys instead of milk and it’s an Irish Russia
@konacoconutz GREAT LIST. I’m feeling the frustration of a good value not being good enough to meet some guest expectations.
I just received a review that included “spotty internet” and “netflix not working”. The guests didn’t reboot the modem which is posted in the unit as a to-do if the internet isn’t consistent. They didn’t call about Netflix. It’s probably that someone logged me out of the app.
However they could & did call & text me about a dirty washcloth UNDER the bed and send me pics of the alligator that startled them when they saw swimming under a bridge they were crossing. (Alligators are common is SE-USA. We have snakes in the forest and sharks in the ocean too.)
During the slow season, many of my competitors have moved to “Smart pricing” so I did a two week test. I left my 2 BR condo at my usual pricing. I moved my 1BR unit to smart pricing. Both were rented this past weekend, the ridiculously cheap smart pricing unit is the one generating the complaints. I’m going back to my usual pricing.
I feel your pain. Reviews are soul crushing when they are so unfair and mean.
The review system has taken all the fun right out of hosting.
When I was at college, electronic technician, we had to wire a mains plug (must’ve been early in the course). All 3 wires are cut to slightly different lengths, so to get it looking tidy was quite a task. Normally it wouldn’t matter, you wire it, and screw the back of the plug back on, but we were being graded out of 10. We were each given 8inches of cable, or 20cms for those of you playing at home. I worked out that I could snip and fit willy nilly, and once finished pull the 3 wires tight from the other end of the cable.
This gave it the most polished finish, the other apprentices gathered around, and gasped in awe. Like Captain Kirk, I had cheated the system to get a win. But I only got 9 out of 10 (think of it as a 4.5 star review). The fellow apprentices asked the tutor why, and he tapped the side of his nose, and smugly said “I just don’t believe in giving 10 out of 10”.
I haven’t given a monkeys about reviews since.
Thank you for writing this. I had a good laugh.
I always remember my boss , the nicest Iranian guy who had no personality when it came to dealing with people. After each insident of encountering human stupidity he said: people are stupid, Yana, very stupid😂.
For the past 2 months I worked very hard with running singlehandedly 7 rooms . Sometimes my days were 16–18 hours . Most guests were good but some were piece of work.
One lady guest sent me 39 messages on my only night out about this and that and that.!She got me drunk that night I swear .
Money is my big incentive . I lost a lot of sensitivity about annoying people like that since I started hosting.
Also majority of my guests are amazing.
By the way you are not alone on “location” rating. We all get it more or less.
There’s no standard pronunciation of the o vowel e.g. hot, or, move. I have no idea why the English chose to use the ou spelling in several words like favour because none of the root Latin languages do. However we English are always right anyway of course.
To tell the truth, I haven’t gone traveling using airbnb (yet), but before I found this forum, I would have been at risk for giving an unwarranted four stars. The way it stacks up in my head is like this:
1 star: horrible!
2 stars: bad
3 stars: meh
4 stars: pretty good
5 stars: transcendently amazing
Which means that in my head, four stars feels like a perfectly decent rating. But that’s not airbnb’s rating scale. Theirs goes like this:
1 star: sucks
2 stars: sucks
3 stars: sucks
4 stars: sucks
5 stars: acceptable
I can’t help feeling that my star system is a MUCH MORE FUNCTIONAL SYSTEM. The way they do it, it essentially turns the question into a binary choice, only with four different ways of saying “no” and only one way to say “yes.” It allows for no gradations of experience. With the airbnb system, I have no way to address a stay that WASN’T perfect for some reason–say the ceiling fan didn’t work and I was too hot–and say, “But, you know, great place, spotlessly clean, all in all not perfect but not bad either.” The “not perfect but not bad” has been totally removed from the equation.
I don’t like it. And I don’t think we should necessarily blame the guests for not understanding that airbnb was giving them a binary choice between “sucks” and “doesn’t suck.” I blame airbnb for having a rating system with no nuance.
and they continue to promote it that way, without any effort to fix it, by requiring hosts to get 4.8 stars to maintain SH, “Collections” and “Plus” listings.
Superhost was too easy to get. I haven’t made up my mind if the new standard will be too hard. What I think is unfair isn’t the SH rating, it’s expecting everyone to maintain 4.7.
And while I think the system is unfair in many ways, I also know people give more stars than they should at times.
Well, the only thing that is standard is the pronunciation of the vowel itself; they say their name…well, sort of. 
And you are right! The British ARE always right! :))))
This really irritates me! I have it in my house rules NOT TO LOG OUT OF NETFLIX OR HULU which I provide,. If folks want to access their queue they can do it on their own device or I even provide an HDMI cable if they want to stream. I also have it in the tv instructions which are laminated and placed right next to the remotes. But still, every so often, someone logs out. 
I got four stars having given a £30 discount - my own fault, I reduced the price and made parking an add-on fee, instead of charging more money with free parking. I forgot to untick the free parking box, so the first guest had the reduced price and free parking. And gave me four stars. I quizzed her on it, my message is in the grey. You can see that as a guest, she feels 4 stars is very good. You have to read from the bottom up
Hee’s ignoring the fact English is a barsterd langwadge.
Perhaps we need a new world fascist to standardise the spelling for us? Might Donald Trump oblige if he gets a second term?