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I love hosting and have had enjoyable stays in many Airbnbs we have stayed in over the years. I learn from other hosts and the properties we have stayed in…both what to do and what NOT to do.
I’m currently looking for an inexpensive place to stay for one night as we travel from Vancouver, WA to Seattle, WA. I’ve bookmarked a couple of possibilites and then came across this review fro A Room in Rochester …
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"Rating, 1 star
September 2024
The address does not exist. The neighbour where the address is will threaten to shoot you. Airbnb will abandon you. This spoilt our 3 week holiday.
The photos are 2 year old and from a real estate agents site 7 miles away.
Again, this is a scam. Airbnb don’t do due diligence on their properties. The address does not exist."
Yikes! Lesson learned - don’t fake a listing and steal photos! Or "how to make your in-laws angry…list their space on Airbnb and supprise them with guests? lol
Can you post that listing for us? It won’t help them anyways if we click on it and don’t book - if anything it will get buried further down the search results due to not booking after looking at it.
I’m curious to see a fake, live listing on Airbnb with a review from over 2 months ago without their algorithm picking it up for a manual review.
There are some guests who just don’t realise that Airbnb is essentially an advertising platform - they don’t have control over the properties. Imagine if Autotrader online had to inspect all the cars.
I am guessing that whatever it is that flags bad rentals doesn’t kick in until after three reviews as properties aren’t given a star rating until that time. I suspect that once Airbnb ‘sees’ a one star rating (from 3 reviews) then it’s flagged.
Airbnb’s logic for that is that one terrible review can be an outlier.
In this case though, with such a terrible review, it’s unlikely to get any more guests so therefore any more reviews.
Therefore, so far, Airbnb has not noticed and the guest thought that simply writing the reviews was equivalent to reporting it.
What a useless system to spot fakes - if it really works the way you say it does.
Why would more people book the place if the first review already states that it doesn’t exist?
According to that “system” scammers could set up fake accommodation by the hundreds and just close them after one or two reviews before Airbnb’s algorithm would pick up the scam???
The part where a guest writes that an accommodation doesn’t exist.
Even if it were a retaliatory guest review because they had some beef with the host, such an accusation of being non-existent should be removed if the owner can prove its existence and availability.
I went through quite a few hoops to get our second studio approved on BDC who required me to make a continuous video showing the street sign of our street and then walking to our property into the accommodation, filming all the amenities etc.
After getting a claim, I wouldn’t see why Airbnb couldn’t do the same to sort out this mess real fast.
It’s too bad guests don’t understand how to vet listings.
This listing is full of red flags even without the bad review.
There is no description of the place, no information. It is listed as a room, yet says 2 bedrooms and shows the entire house and 2 bedrooms in the photos, with no mention of the house being shared other than “shared bathroom” at the top of the listing. Which probably means the scammer “host” thinks “shared bathroom” means 2 bedrooms in an entire house listing use the same bathroom. Which is never listed as a shared bathroom, but as “1 bathroom”, unless the rooms are rented separately, in which case he would need 2 listings, one for each bedroom, showing only one bedroom in each listing.
Additionally, the amenities list indicates there is no heating, hot water, or essentials.
And how is it that it says the"host", Daniel, has “2 years hosting”, yet has no other listings and no reviews for other places on his profile? How can that happen?
Reverse Google image search shows that the photos have been ripped from the Zillow real estate site. I didn’t dive any further than that.
Exactly, no actual photos of the room have been taken because it doesn’t exist.
It’s a shame that with today’s technology it would be an easy task for Airbnb to weed out such listings by having scripts run and search the interwebs to find sore thumbs like this one to trigger a manual review of the place.
While fake listings may be a thing, they surely aren’t the majority so Airbnb could throw in a little more effort to maintain a certain quality standard (one that is easy to uphold) but hey, what do I know…
Well, aside from Airbnb not doing reverse searches to weed out fake listings, I am quite curious as to how someone’s profile can say they have been hosting for 2 years when they have no other listings and no reviews for other properties.
I do suspect, though I could very well be wrong, that if the guest had actually reported the listing, rather than simply writing the bad review, then Airbnb would have paid attention.
A few years ago I reported a truly terrible place I’d stayed (terrible for many reasons) and it was almost immediately removed from the site.
All listings have a ‘report this listing’ link right there on the listing’s main page under the box showing the fees.
True. I had a guest whose profile said “also a host”, but they had no listings or hosting reviews on their profile- when I asked them about it, they said they had once listed their place years before when they went on vacation, and then unlisted it, and the guests hadn’t left a review.
There is a developer side to a problem and an end-user side.
Clearly, Airbnb did not consider that some guests are unaware that fake listings need to be reported aside from mentioning it in their review, which is the only thing Airbnb encourages the guest to do after a stay.
But presumably they did try to get in touch with Airbnb customer service immediately on arrival when they discovered there was no property for them to stay in. You would have hoped that complaint and accompanying request for refund/ help finding another property in itself might have triggered an investigation or suspension on the listing…
It says in the copy of the review “Airbnb will abandon you”, so yes, it sounds like the guests did call Airbnb when they found the place didn’t exist, but that Airbnb didn’t help them at all.