Low ratings from disgruntled and vindictive guest

I received two low ratings from guest recently because they did not get their way. One did not abide by my house rules and was asked to cancel their reservation and the other one expected a refund when my refund policy is non-refundable. Airbnb decided to suspend my listing for five days because my ratings dropped. How can we win when Airbnb allow guest to lie because they are disgruntled and vindictive?

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I’m so sorry. Truly unfair that Airbnb seems to always side with the guests. Hang in there.

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It’s like deja vu

My sympathies. I thought that if there was no stay there is no review. Hang in there and keep calling until you get that review removed

I agree keep calling till you get a sympathetic customer service rep. I cannot believe they were allowed to leave a review?

Airbnb allows guests and hosts to leave a review of each other if the reservation is cancelled by either the host or the guest within 24 hours before check-in.

It’s something to be prepared for if a guest makes a last-minute cancellation, demands a refund, and you don’t give it to them. If it happens, your best hope is that the guest wrote something in the review that violates Airbnb’s review guideliness (e.g. “irrelevant”) and Airbnb agrees to remove the review.

With the star ratings host are getting penalized for enforcing their policIes and rules. What’s the purpose of having policies and rules when they are over ruled by ratings. Airbnb only looks at the ratings, they can care less about response rate, cancellations and stays hosted. Time for new management.

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Nobody has superglued you to Airbnb, there are other platforms and sources of guests out there.

Well, you got a few billion in your back pocket then go for it…

JF

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johnF…you must have billions in your back pocket or you’ve drank too many of those glasses in your icon because you don’t seem to be bothered by low ratings.

I’m not, simply because I don’t have any. Three platforms plus Google reviews and I’m happy with how we appear.

Had the odd less than stellar review, but overall those are countable on the fingers of one hand.

JF

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There are plenty of hosts who don’t even look at their ratings from one month to the next. If you allow yourself to be screwed up by the occasional unfair or inaccurate review, you’ll spend a lot of time and energy worrying about it. It’s more productive to use that time and energy elsewhere to promote your business.

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When they go public YOU can buy out Chesky. Those kinds of buyouts were easier when you had to go to your local stockbroker’s office to check the stock ticker. No CNBC, no live stock quotes crawling across TV screens all day.

I have a friend whose father, a chicken farmer, and then as the suburbs encroached, a subdivision developer plowed his profits in the 50s and early 60s into stocks. Mostly into one stock, a Hollywood distributor of art and foreign films. Over 7 or 8 years he bought enough stock that he could show up at the annual shareholder meeting (he had made sure that his stockbroker/share custodian did NOT return the proxies) and installed his own slate of directors, and made himself chairman.

They distributed all of Truffaut, Fellini, early Roman Polanski, Bergman, Kurosawa. “And God Created Woman” with Bardot was their first real moneymaker after he took over, and “Papillon” was the last one before he sold out to a larger distributor and retired.

Poppa, who was an Academy member and voter, was still getting VHS tapes of all the nominated films until he died about 15 years ago, and still voting for the Oscars. My friend says that his dad was probably the only industry exec who pulled up to the Oscars in formal dress in his 12 year old (but waxed and polished) Rambler station wagon.

One of their sons made sure that our local film society always had a great choice of 16mm prints of foreign films for every season, and donated a pair of projectors so we could switch reels like a real movie house. Video stores are what put small local film societies out of business.

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Cool story. Seriously!

Put some of our money in the old boys pocket if he made money from European distribution.

JF

No just US distribution. But my friend has a huge collection of unused movie posters. The problem is they aren’t worth much, and would be worth a lot less if he released all of them to the market at once. He’s told his brother he could have them if he paid the freight — there are several thousand, so the entire collection probably weighs at least 100 kilos.

If a host reviews a guest- does air bnb wait until the guest reviews the host prior to posting them online? I will not be giving my latest guest a favorable review. If mine is posted first I suspect I will receive a retaliatory review. However, I did take pictures of the marijuana in a bag left on the buffet which is time stamped. It was not alot but more than enough to identify it.

No, but you can’t read each other’s reviews unless you post a review or the review time has expired.

Many guests are clueless and may not review until they get a notice that you have reviewed them. So you if you fearing a bad review, you need to compose the review in advance in a text editor, then cut and paste within the last 3 to 5 mins before the deadline.

On the last day, the review reminder will have a countdown by hours and then by minute. If you post right at the end they won’t be able to review you, but will be able to post a reply to the review. The replies can be quite revealing, especially if the guest decides to dump on you — displaying just why you wouldn’t recommend them and gave them 1 star — and are visible to anyone reading their profile.

@Katrina If both host and guest submit a review, they will be published as soon as they are both submitted. If only one party reviews, that review will be published 14 days after check-out, at which point it’s too late for the other party to review.

Reviews are blind- one party can’t read the other’s review before the published review (s) are visible to all. So a guest can’t leave a bad review simply because you did.

Thank you. It seems alot of air bnb’s policies are mirroring those of Amazon and Google.

Do have a look at Airbnb Help @Katrina it’s a good resource for finding out the basics around managing your Airbnb.

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I think all the lawyers tech companies hire all come from the same law schools and use the same boilerplate. Nor an original thought in the bunch other than “how can I change this so we can deny any claims?”

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