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There is a new trick for quest to retaliate, and like always the guest has AirBnB’s full support.
Guest are allowed to retract their positive 5 star review at any time.
We had some property damage and filed a claim with the guest, and as a reaction he withdraw his 5-star review.
And AirBnB support says this is allowed and they will do nothing against this kind of retaliation.
This has always been allowed. Either Guest or Host can request to remove a review:
You can remove a review you’ve written if it no longer reflects your genuine experience as a guest or Host. You can reach out to our [customer Support team] with your request to remove a review you’ve authored.
Honestly unless you only have a few reviews who cares? On less 5 star is not going to make much of a difference for most of us.
RR
I think the policy of being able to retract your own review is not just an Airbnb thing- it has something to do with regulations about digital content.
It can also be a welcome policy for hosts in the event that they gave a guest a good review, only to be subjected to verbal abuse and threats from the guest after check-out because the guest made bogus claims to Airbnb in order to scam a refund, or found that there were damages or thefts the host or their cleaners didn’t notice on the initial inspection.
Always? They didn’t just allow you to retract a review even just 3 years ago. It had to violate review policy to be taken down. Whether the review was good or bad.
You can always take down your own review to the guest and visa versa. Not the other way around. I too recently learned of this.
I stand corrected. I was not aware that previously Airbnb did not allow a review to be removed by Host or Guest.
Because a review is supposed to tell potential guests about their experience at a rental, I don’t see how a host filing a claim for property damage could still be classed as a five-star experience.
So if you write a 5 star review, saying you had a great time, the place was clean, great location, great value, but your let your kid write all over a freshly painted wall, the host cannot claim, because the claim changes your experience?
Of course the first Defence is always: It was already when we came in, you cannot prove we did it.
Until you show him the invoice of the painter that was just there the week before……
I didn’t say that.
If I stay at a rental and consider it a 5-star experience and then the host files a claim for damage I didn’t do, I would no longer see that as a 5-star experience.
Note that I am NOT saying that you are trying to scam the guest but for every dodgy guest there is an equally dodgy host.
Once again, I am not saying that you are in any way a dodgy host, I am explaining why a guest might remove a 5-star review if the overall experience turns out to not merit those five stars.
The interesting part is that if he would have written a bad review mentioning the claim, it’s against the standards and I can get it erased with 1 single message. Because according to AirBnB the claim has nothing to do with the experience.
So AirBnB is having double standards.
There are also guests who withdraw the nice review they left when they see that the host left them an honest, but poor review (without filing a damage claim). There are also hosts who do that.
That’s just childish, IMO.
Yes, that happened to me. Guests were loud and obnoxious at all hours and drank some of my gin, but they left the place clean and communicated well. I stated as much in my review and when both reviews went through they had left a 5-star rating.
Then the bashing started, with accusations that I was trying to charge them for parking and that I had tried to convince them to let me pick them up at the airport (for a charge). Despite none of that ever happening, he claimed to “have proof.”
Then he deleted his positive review and wrote a very negative response to my review. I just dropped it because it wasn’t worth my time.
This happened to me recently after a Guest left what I consider to be the BEST review I’ve had all year. I was so upset that they had it removed after I filed a claim for a smoking violation. I, too, thought this should not be permitted; however, I do understand the part about internet and digital content and the legal standpoint behind it. The good thing is that I was able to screenshot the review in the initial email I received and used it on my listing’s social media account. I also have the review they left in my Guestbook that I can use for social media purposes 
That a guest can ask for their review to be removed can be advantageous occasionally. I know a homeshare host who had a guest who stayed for several weeks, but aside from the guest being young and sort of clueless, there were no issues the host was aware of, but the guest left 3 stars in all categories. The host contacted the guest, asking why she had done that, explaining how it hurt her (she was a long-time host, but did mostly long-term stays, so would have lost her Superhost that quarter because of that rating- her other ratings for that year were fine, but she didn’t have enough to balance out the 3 star review), and the guest said she hadn’t understood- she thought 3 stars meant it was an okay stay. She ended up removing the review, much to the host’s relief.
@muddy That is most definitely advantageous for the Host. I often wonder if Airbnb frowns upon a Host doing something like that. I don’t see the harm, as many Guests really do not know how the rating system works or how it may affect the Host. Educating them can’t hurt 
Well, I’m pretty sure that host prefaced her communication with the guest by asking if there the guest had been unhappy with the stay- if she felt there was something that needed improvement. Airbnb certainly wouldn’t object to that. When it turned out the guest just didn’t understand the rating system and the host explained it, she then asked the guest if she would mind asking for her review to be removed, since it really wasn’t an accurate rating and would lose the host her Superhost status and the guest complied.