Please help - How to remove revenge false guest reviews

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How do hosts remove revenge false reviews ? I had a guest cancelled on the day of check in itself and left a scathing completely false 1 star review when she didn’t even stay, she went there to cancel, she demanded but couldn’t get money from me direct, plus we had a strict cancellation policy (we weren’t even paid yet from Airbnb)

At that point few months ago I was completely new to Airbnb 1 month in, we were doing well we had few 2? reviews of 5 stars then her 1 star rating basically shut us down I had a lot 20? then to now no bookings whatsoever, my listing fell to 4.0 from 5 for her 1 star horrible outlandish loony lies she said of my listing for example : puke everywhere )??) homeless approached her (??) no one approached her and there’s no puke, she even said to me we stink our building stinks our whole neighborhood stink etcs I felt her vileness had some racist element to it, my listing was completely ruined but Airbnb support won’t even remove it they couldn’t care less, they exhausted me for 3 weeks with their runaround this guest harassed us to the point pint we had support blocked her yet support still finds her lies “relevant”

In the end I found out she was able to get a full refund because I left potatoes, legumes in the fridge for guest use. Don’t ask me why.

Recently I had a 2 star from a 2nd loony guest who was fixing to get a refund or money from me with non stop irrelevant complaining about for example spare linens, seeing a raccoon in the yard claiming she felt “unsafe” from a raccoon (??) with her scary looking 60 lb pit bull by her side she described as a 15lb small dog she didn’t even mention any pet in her reservation, she bypassed our 99$ pet fee stating no pet on reservation she retaliated since I asked het about her pet and this time I didn’t even ask support for the removal seeing how we were treated for the 1st false one.

I’m ready to quit Airbnb for their injustice anyway we are ruined. Twitter might be our last resort had anyone tried to reach Airbnb via twitter ? Please help thank you

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Nothing you can do really to get that false review removed. Especially since we can’t, at this remove, see the chain of communication between you and Support. Did you, for example escalate things, asking to speak to the next level supervisor when Agent 1 didn’t help?

Maybe if you gave us a link to your listing so we can see how things are worded, etc. we might be able to give you some ideas on how not to attract negative guests.

With that second guest, you should have contacted AirBnb and had THEM “evict” her for violating your NO DOG policy. Not all Support people are created equal.

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I have always operated on the assumption that anything short of a pristine (almost sterile) refrigerator is a big risk. Guests do not know the origin story of any food they find in the refrigerator, and inevitably some guests will assume the worst (i.e that these are leftovers from a previous guest and are still there because the fridge wasn’t even cleaned between guests).

The only exception is sometimes when I have guests arriving late at night after an overseas flight, I offer to buy them a “starter bag” of groceries so they can have a snack waiting when they get in or have a breakfast snack when they wake up. They write the grocery list and I leave it all in the bag, with a dated receipt… so they think of this food as “their” groceries, and not someone else’s forgotten leftovers

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Sorry you’ve had such crappy guests.
.Are you using Instant Book? How do you vet your guests? How much do you communicate with them when they request to book or IB?

Having 2 guests like this, when you only started hosting a few months ago, is a high stat, considering a lot of hosts have been hosting for years and never gotten scammers, so there’s probably some things you could do differently that would help ward off guests like this.

As Ken suggested, maybe post the link to your listing here and other hosts may have suggestions as to rewording or adding wording.

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On the dogs…
We are also “no pets” – and we write everyone at the inquiry stage (or IMMEDIATELY just after an instant booking) and say “I just want to confirm you are aware we promise all our guests a pet-free and smoke free environment, and we achieve this by asking guests who smoke or have pets to seek accommodation at another Airbnb. Are you okay with these restrictions?” We persist until we get confirmation in writing on the platform that they understand.

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I agree with what @muddy said above - it’s astonishing that you’ve only just started and yet you’re getting bad guests.

But it’s great that you’ve found this forum. There is so much knowledge here about the hospitality industry itself and also about the way to run your business in such a way that you learn to use Airbnb properly.

For example. you’re taking the whole review thing far too seriously:

There are plenty of places advertised on Airbnb and other STR sites that have bad reviews and far-less-than-perfect ratings. This isn’t a good thing and certainly you should strive to offer great accommodation, but remember that you’re not the only one and in a short time those poor reviews will be buried by great ones.

A tip is to look at the reviews of your favourite book on Amazon and the chances are that it has some bad reviews. But it’s your favourite. Everyone is different but no one books accommodation entirely because of the reviews or the ratings. (Many guests don’t understand the ratings anyway.)

And remember you can always reply to a bad review to put people right about your rental. Nicely. (Often review replies do the host no service at all.)

And in answer to your Twitter question, I’ve never done so myself but others have had a great deal of success - more so than other contact methods. However, do remember that Airbnb is essentially an advertising platform and it’s up to you to run your business.

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Yes, there is something you can do. Call Airbnb directly. They do take down false reviews. +1-415-800-5959

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Thanks for your kind words @muddy we also have 9x 5 stars, 2x 4 stars,1x 2 stars,1x 1 star so far out of 13 reviews I think it’s a 4.3 or 4.4 now, without the cancelled revenge false guest’s 1 star it would have just been a normal 4.7? or so

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Tried to remove for 3 weeks in March …, nothing … it’s still there about homelessness , puke, I don’t know how this guest make stuff up to this extreme but she’s born with it she will kill for money

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Fridge was pristine it’s brand new stainless and past guest thanked us for this same food this guest got a refund for - after get we removed everything except bottled water - no one complained before or after her anyway about the new fridge - nothing makes sense anymore on airbnb

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Thanks to all fellow hosts who penned a word here you guys are amazing !! I’ve not decided if I should paste my listing here for all to see and critique I’m embarrassed

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Would you rather be embarrassed by what we write or have your business hurt by what a guest writes in their review? We might catch something to avoid the latter.

But put your armor on - some posters are pretty blunt. They mean to help you, but it’s not always gentle.

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I didn’t mean to imply you had not cleaned the fridge.

My point was this: if the fridge is empty nobody will ever end up being uncomfortable not knowing the origin and implications of the perishables they find inside. If you put food – especially perishables – in the refrigerator you create a risk that sooner or later someone will misread the situation, and write a review that you can’t undo that begins with the sentence “Within minutes of checking in I found some leftover vegetables in the refrigerator.” Even if you jump in and respond to the review with a clarification, the reader browsing the listings doesn’t know who to believe.

My own judgment is to leave the refrigerator empty (especially perishables) and provide a check-in surprise that has no room for misinterpretation, but that’s just me.

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Embarrassed about what? Yes, people can be tough love sometimes, but it is because we want to see other hosts here succeed without issues. (And not all of us are sweet and tactful by nature. :wink:)

Sometimes it takes an objective eye to catch wording or lack thereof that may be contributing to attracting bad guests.

I remember reading a post from a host who was upset because the guests in her attached studio were always asking to borrow kitchen gear from her to the point that her own kitchen didn’t have the essentials she needed.
When reading her listing, in the first part of her description, she said, “If guests need anything, just ask, I may be able to loan you something of mine.”
Guests were doing exactly what she had told them to do! You’d think she wouid have been aware of that, but she wasn’t.

Other hosts have posted distressed about multiple groups of guests throwing parties and trashing out the house, and when you look at their listing, they have written it up as basically the perfect party house. Reiterating how they’ll have the whole place to themselves, that it’s perfect for entertaining, that no one will bother them during their stay, even saying they live out-of state.

A few tweaks to the text, making it sound like a home the hosts care about, rather than sounding like an impersonal real estate ad, adding wording that makes it ambiguous whether the host lives next door and might drive by anytime, or on the other side of the country, marketing towards families or quiet groups, reducing their high guest count, or upping their price, can be the fixes they need to stop getting party bookings from yahoos.

Re the veggies in the fridge: Some guests may be appreciative of some food provided, but guests need to know it isn’t someone else’s leftovers. I know some hosts who have chickens or big veggie gardens will leave fresh eggs for guests, or some of the veggies or fruit they grow. If leaving food you think the guests might appreciate, I think it’s important to leave a note letting them know you have put it there for them. Something like “Hi XX, I put some fresh vegetables in the fridge for you- they were on sale so I bought more than I need, thinking you might like them- they aren’t previous guests’ leftovers. If you don’t want to make use of them, just leave them in the fridge and I’ll use them myself or share with family and friends.”

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I think all the regulars in this forum are very successful hosts, which means every one of us can be totally sweet and tactful when there are consequences for not playing nice.

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It would have been 4.58.

The math is:
9x5= 45
2x4= 8
1x2= 2

Total 55/12 reviews= 4.58

It takes a lot of 5* ratings to recover from lower ratings. So when you’re a new host, or a host like me who might only get 10 or 12 reviews in a year because I only have a viable 6 month booking season and guests stay for a week or two (and not every guest leaves a review, although almost all of mine do), it takes longer to bring the rating back up than for hosts who get 1, 2 or 3 night bookings with high occupancy rates.

If you haven’t already, make sure to read Airbnb’s review policies. They don’t adjudicate reviews as to whether someone is telling lies or not (I know, it’s nuts that someone can claim there was puke all over when you obviously have a bunch of 5* reviews). So telling Airbnb the guest is lying doesn’t help. You have to see if there is something in the review that violates one of their review policies and ask for it to be removed on that basis, quoting the relevant violation to them.

Airbnb CS is poorly trained and most hosts know far more about the policies than the reps do. Some hosts have found that if they are persistent, and stay polite and businesslike, ask for it to be escalated, they may get passed around until they finally get a rep who agrees that the review should be removed. But it’s a crap shoot, really, and time consuming. Some hosts have managed to finally get a review removed after months of back and forth with CS.

You just have to not let it get to you emotionally, think of it as a business chore, like working on your taxes- “Okay, time to message Airbnb again about that 1* review.”.

Also, when a guest keeps complaining about things and are a real pain, sometimes it’s best to say to them, “You know, it’s obvious that you’re not happy here, so I suggest we amend your booking to check out tomorrow and meanwhile you can look for another place that suits you better.”
Yes, you’ll have to refund the unstayed nights, and yes, they can still leave you a bad review, but sometimes it’s just better to get an awful guest out of your life ASAP.
And if they see that you are ready to boot them out rather than try to appease their entitled BS, they might even say, “No, no, it’s fine, I’d like to stay” and shape up and stop acting like a jerk.

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Blockquote
we also have 9x 5 stars, 2x 4 stars,1x 2 stars,1x 1 star

I think you might want to consider what you could be doing better. I get a bad revenge review or whatever once every 30-40 reviews, but have a 4.96 rating. If you are sitting below a 4.9, i think that you need to be willing to reflect on what you can be doing better. It might just be communicating expectations of your property in the description. Impossible for me to say, but it even if your two 1 star reviews were removed, it just seems like the stats point to you having some opportunities to improve your property or communication or some other aspect.

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Thanks Joe for your kind words. Imagine if when you just started Airbnb you got rave feedback, great reviews we had maybe 5 guests in the first month with 2 leaving a 5 star everyone thanked us, then someone comes along to shut it down with homelessness puke etcs false accusations when you don’t pay them money direct for monies day of check in we haven’t even received from Airbnb - shall we call it extortion ? It’s mind blowing what she put us through, we aren’t perfect but we aren’t anything she said either. Certainly there’s improvements on our on any hosts’ part to be made, but we don’t have even the opportunity to improve when bookings stop after her, we don’t have 30-40 reviews to even it out

We didn’t do anything warranting this shut down it’s about guest wanting monies with Airbnb, we couldn’t have paid her direct like she demanded.

There was nothing else for her to pick on than fresh grocery left for guests ? And she had to make up everything else .

It’s a brand new remodeled apartment 2.9 miles from the beach, everything is new, furniture, expensive mattresses, top appliances, there’s really nothing else we can renew.

As to communication, dealing with guests breaking house rules or lying for their benefit I feel like host can’t say anything or face revenge backlash reviews opening the door to ruin hosts listings.

The 2 star guest trashed the place, peed on our rug we had to replace because I asked about her dog and Airbnb has not paid the damage

How do we get to improve with no opportunity since there no more bookings after this guests outright lies that Airbnb won’t remove ? Rest of guests existing bookings are not seeing what she lied about but that’s because they saw it for themselves being there, the rest of the potential guests skip this listing and doesn’t book

Because we are new, any horrid negative 1 star are much more damaging than for a seasoned host, because it’s 1 of the first 3 or 4 reviews our listing cant stand in its infancy and all this from guests lies for money

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I recall some hosts have shut down their listing with the bad reviews and created a new one to start over. Maybe some other host can come on here with advice on how to accomplish that.

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