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Believe me, I have read through the posts on this topic and I’ve come away believing that the deadline is midnight Pacific Standard Time, on the day the guests checked out.
However, I’m 3 days away from that date, and today got an email from Air that I have 2 days to review the guest. Can anyone make sense of this?
I do not want to miss the chance to review this guest. They did damage and we have an open claim. I also don’t want to invite their review and want to post mine at the last possible minute.
But this is where the timing and finesse come in. You want to time it so you can leave yours and the guest won’t have a chance to crack back. Unfortunately with the way time zones are, you MAY expire before the guest.
Almost always works in my favor because Hawaii is one of the last time zones in the world.
Obviously, if you are on the east coast and the guest is on the west, then it’s not going to work for you most likely. Find out the last minute the guest can leave a review. That is really the time you need. And of course, you will still need to be in active review period as well.
I find this whole “down to the last second” reviewing to be a silly waste of time. Neither you nor the guest can read the other’s review until both are posted anyway. So what conceivable difference does it make when the review is written, especially if you’re going to leave a negative review anyway?
I can’t say whether this is actually the case, but in instances where I’ve monitored review deadlines, I noticed that, after I received the 2 days remaining notification, exactly 48 hours later, the review period ended. Checking the timestamp might help.
Arrrghhhhh… Why do I have to keep explaining the sneak attack strategy?!! It DOES work. It DID work for me, and it was suggested by an Air rep for my bad party girl guest.
No,they can’t see your review until they write theirs. But the point is, if the stay wasn’t good… And you write one the second they check out they know it will be bad, and it triggers them to crack you. What do they have to lose? Nothing.
As mentioned above, it doesn’t always work in your favor depending on the time zone you are in.
In the case of my party 'ho I knew her expiration time. I knew mine. I waited until the last second to write it. Had it all ready to cut and paste and cracked her bad and hard. No doubt she was shocked. I used up every word of the 500 I had. That will teach you to hold a freshmen rager in someone’s house, inviting strangers over, wasting water, damaging furniture and thumbing your nose at the host who asked you to stop.
Shameless promo for my service: Smartbnb now automates reviews (in a soft automation, so you can always edit everything of course), and there is basically a sneak attack button that schedules the publication of your review 5 minutes before the review is due to expire. It can be actually 5 seconds before now that I think of it…
Thanks for the responses and discussion. I love the sneak attack button!
To follow up, I called Air today and was told you have 14 days to the check out time, host’s time zone. Though the day of check out is Day 1. That’s what I’m going with.
This is what I am going with too. 5 minutes before review expiry means 5 minutes before check-out hour 14 days after check-out of the guests, in the host’s time zone. I am, however, 101% certain this will fail, because it doesn’t make any sense, because the review is not created at check-out time.
smart, what do you mean by it will fail? Timer starts upon check out (host’s time), not at all dependent when review is written right?. Just double checking for my own understanding.
The review is created when you receive the email notification about it. That should be what starts the timer.
The timer doesn’t start upon check-out. As it was clearly documented in another thread, it is perfectly possible for a host to receive a notification of a review before the check-out time (not the actual check-out: the check-out time in the listing). More commonly, it is actually created after the listing’s check-out time. Sometimes the next day.
Things will be sorted out for sure when a “bad review” is sent and the guests publishes their review after the listing’s check-out time. If that is the case, it means all customer service explanations given to date are wrong, and it would make more sense to add 14 days from the moment the review is created (so there is actually 14 days * 24 hours * 3600 seconds to review).
If the review I have eyes on is made public at that time, it means the deadline is the check-out hour, 14 days after check-out time.
If it is not, it is 14 days * 24 hours * 3600 seconds from the date of the creation (the option that will make a lot more sense from a technical standpoint).
The actual difference is 40 minutes in this case. This is minimal, so I appreciate that customer service would simplify it as “before check-out time”. It is still ample time for a guest to write a review.
Remember it’s EASY to figure out your own deadline; more challenging is to figure out the GUEST deadline, and that is the one you need for the sneak attack! Disclaimer: It may not work in all time zones!
Both reviews are created in tandem at nearly the same time (there may be a 3s difference due to server lag (?)). Because reviews are double-blind, both reviews are made public, or expire, at the exact same time.
No… that is not what I discovered , they DO not expire at the same time.
I wrote one for my guest and submitted it just before her deadline of midnight PST. It was still 9PM my time HST and I technically had three hours to go. I wrote it early just in case. But actually I had three more hours to write it. I verified this with the next set of guests I had.
