Outlier reviews

1

Anyone tried getting an outlier review removed since Air’s latest announcement on the topic?
I’d like any tips on how to approach them about removing one.

I just got my first 1 star in all categories including overall. The review said “the sheets are not washed for a long time” which is of course untrue. They are washed for every new stay. The apartment has 404 reviews and rates 4.9 for cleanliness. The previous guest and subsequent guest both gave great reviews.

2

There might be other criteria that ABB will use (because we know they do what they want and then refuse to discuss it) but they removed a review off my metric last month for a guest that left 5s in all categories but a 1 overall. I had called ABB while the guest was there to alert them to some issues, so maybe they were looking at this one to see what happened, but when the review hit, they advised it was being removed because it wasn’t “relevant” to our hosting.

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3

Airbnb doesn’t just remove reviews simply because the star ratings are outliers.

So what happened with this guest? 1 star across the board is almost always a sign of some issue between the host and the guest and if you want to get the review removed, you’ll need to focus on what you can prove to Airbnb about that issue. Also, check the review carefully to make sure it doesn’t violate the policy

Notice that last paragraph where Airbnb says

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4

Thanks for the link, that’s helpful.
I was going by this comment from Airbnb which seems to suggest they might remove reviews if a bad rating seems out of place:
“At the last Host Q&A, in June, 2018, we said, specifically, that we’d look into outlier reviews. To be clear, one-off low reviews can be considered outliers when a host has otherwise great review scores, but a single guest leaves a bad rating that seems out of place.”

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5

they would look - didn’t actually say they would DO anything!

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Be very interested to hear how this goes.

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Don’t wait too long, Johnny!

At the time the outlier review topic was being discussed, an article appeared stating that Air doctored their reviews. This quite possibly influenced the decision to shelve the idea. As it stands, outliers cannot be removed on that basis only. It’s one of those maybe for the future cookies.

But if it were to happen, it makes sense that guests should also be able to access this

8

I called them and they were very nice but said the upper echelons of Air are very strict about which reviews can be removed. I agree that reviews should not be doctored. Most businesses get a 1 star review at some stage and it helps with proving the accuracy of the good reviews, so I’m okay with getting 1 star.

I tried to get it removed because the guest was so awful - yelling at his wife and she was always saying “sorry, sorry” to him. My neighbour usually loves chatting to my guests but she did not approve of that man.

I made sure I did not put anything in my review of the guest which could let it be removed. It’s his firsts review so it hurts him more than it hurts me as I have 1600.

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I didn’t realise this. Also, if ever there was a case to have a review removed this surely is it. One star all round demonstrates no genuine consideration of any of the criteria. Why can’t they get this basic stuff right?

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I hit the “do not recommend” button on him so hopefully that helps.

Businesses have to be careful removing reviews. You might find this article interesting:

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Part of that story says:

"The commission said that by altering the reviews, the company “engaged in conduct that was liable to mislead consumers…”

‘Your honour, the purpose of guest reviews is to make available to potential guests the fair opinion of guests who have stayed. One star in every category and one star overall clearly demonstrates a desire to mislead future guests. This is clearly behaviour likely to mislead consumers.’

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I don’t question the intention behind review authenticity. The issue is that we as hosts are held accountable for the metrics.

Metrics drive our positioning and even our ability to do business on Air. And they don’t take into account the outlier review.

Air doesn’t take into account that you have had ten, or five hundred reviews. You are as good as your numbers.

Having said all that, guests don’t see it that way. They read the last few reviews, look at the location and price, and book. A 4.6 is as good as a 4.9 to most of them.

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13

From my airbnb is very biased in favour of guests. They do not do a lot to help out hosts at all.

I’ve just tried to get a review changed.

Everything was 5 stars but overall rating a 4.

I asked what happened with the outlier review policy and was forcefully asking for the 4 star to be changed

The call centre operator disconnected the line.

Airbnb do nothing to change reviews from my experience

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I believe that it will not be removed by Airbnb. The best you can do is simply reply to the review. You can respond “Sheets are laundered after each stay.”