Leave a bad review for single mom?

This seems to understate what happened though I appreciate its straightforwardness.

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Yes. And threaten to slash my face before knifing me. As you can tell, they didn’t.

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Not everyone but it helps with most and you don’t have to answer unfamiliar numbers .

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“Untidy” really wouldn’t convey the extent of what the OP encountered, to me. Plenty of hosts are okay with untidy and untidy doesn’t take 16 hours of concerted cleaning to remedy. And if in the future she didn’t happen to have the dogs with her, the whole last part would not be relevant. This guest trashed the place, albeit from neglect, not intention, but the result is the same and I don’t think stating that needs to be tempered.

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YES. I’ve just hosted a guest with 4* across the board and yet every host wrote a glowing review. They left a lot of rubbish and unwashed (actually unrinsed) dishes about the place, and my cottage is very small, it was just rude/lazy. V nice people though.

Def state that the owner didn’t take much care with the dogs, I am SO tired of guests claiming their dogs are “well-behaved”. Literally EVERY SINGLE guest with a pet says that to me and it’s rarely true. The review needs to include this info that the dogs DO jump on furniture and the owner has no control over them.

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We’ve had several over the years, and never a scene like that.
She’s a slob, and – if she ever makes a booking request to us in the future – we would appreciate an honest heads-up from you. I expect most other hosts would feel the same.

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Geez that must have been disconcerting!!

I think @muddy would agree (since I’ve read her stating the same elsewhere) that factual reviews with judgment removed are more powerful. So personally I would simply enumerate the facts, which tell a powerful story of a complete horror show:

  • Muddy dog paw prints on duvet covers and towels and careful stain treatment and bleaching did not remove the stains
  • Muddy paw prints on every piece of furniture
  • Guest washed linens and turned them blue so all linens had to be replaced
  • Guest left garbage in every room, in the beds, on the floors
  • Kitchen left extremely dirty
  • Shower rod broken
  • Toys I provided for children to use were left outside in the mud
  • Dog faeces left all over backyard, melting into faecal puddles in the rain
  • Took a team of cleaners 16 hours to clean the house, not including treatment of destroyed linens
  • Guest left backdoor unlocked

Then you could end with something bland and understated that would make other hosts recoil with horror: “I was disappointed that this guest treated our home with so much disrespect.”

A dot-point list would powerfully tell a clear story and tell future hosts as well as the guest everything they need to know about that stay.

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I really like the factual bulleted approach with the ending suggested. I’d rank the points from top to bottom starting with the ones that cost the host the most money/time to remedy .

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Are you sure the person who made the reservation is the same person who showed up? Did she look like her profile picture? Do other reviews mention kids? It sounds like a different person to me

And believe it or not, and this is 100% true, it was someone from an online forum! (Not this one, of course. We’re not a bit like that. :slight_smile: )

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Now I think you have just posted to wind us up.

What sort of host wants to leave a review saying the guest who left their listing in a disgusting state is ‘wonderful’ @anon2055013

Why would you want to deliberately mislead your fellow hosts???

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I would think the same but for all the posts I’ve read over the years from hosts who say they never leave a negative written review, they just ding guests on the ratings because the guests can’t see them. Or say they simply don’t leave any review for bad guests.

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Just a couple of points.

Firstly, Airbnb doesn’t ‘require’ a host to write a review of a guest. There are many selfish hosts who don’t care about other hosts and simply don’t review. Or lie and say that poor guests were terrific.

Secondly, I suspect that some hosts think far too much about what the guest will think when they read about themselves in the review.

I don’t think I’ve ever, ever looked to see the review that a host has written for me as a guest. I’ve moved on. I’ve got better things to do than look to see what some stranger has written about me.

And if a guest does see a bad review about them, the host doesn’t want to have them back anyway so it doesn’t matter.

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There seem to be some hosts who are just too “nice” and don’t realize that being raised with the notion that “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” doesn’t pertain to the purpose of reviews.

I can understand a host who has had some guest send them a barrage of vile, threatening messages after getting a well-deserved negative review feeling apprehensive of writing any negative reviews, but that’s really something they need to move past.

If a host is just concerned about pissing off or offending a terrible guest, I don’t quite understand why they would care about that. Respect is something one earns. A guest who was blatantly disrespectful doesn’t deserve respect in return.

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I don’t want to host someone like this; please, as a fellow host - be honest for my sake.

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I think it says a lot about you, personally and professionally, that you are giving so much thought to this, so for my part, well done because I would feel the same way. In an overall, I do agree you have to give a heads up about the state the place was left, but, like you, I do have consideration for the fact as you put it, that she may “have her hands full”. Maybe you could put some emphasis on the fact that maybe if the dogs were not a factor she might have been a better guest!! I also like the bullet points but keep them concise and keep them about the furniture/towels etc. Its definitely a tough one, becasue when you have interracted with guests and have exchanegd pleasantries, it’s not as easy as if you had no interraction with her!

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Well said!

The other thing that @anon20255013 can do is to leave a private note with the public review that says something like “My review is not of you as a person but your conduct here as a guest. Please know I understand that it is challenging to be a single mom with three little girls and two dogs. My personal best wishes for you all.”

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Be factual - tell
It how it is, not so much how you felt, though in this case it’s warranted.
Disappointed, appalled, let down and disrespected perhaps.

Blame it on the dogs, lol. It’s their lack of thumbs that kept them from cleaning up the Airbnb!

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