A family of four stayed two nights in one of the apartments I host. Very communicative, good manners, seemed ‘better than average’ upon my first impression… The first night she messages me on the Airbnb app that the sofa bed is not working, and included pictures. I responded within minutes and offered to come over right then to show her how to do it (it was late, like 9 pm) or I could show her in the morning at a time she could decide.
She thanked me profusely for responding so quickly and said the metal bars were bent/broken which I was unaware but not too surprised as the sofa beds in general seem to get shoved around and man-handled fairly often by guests converting them from bed to sofa and vice versa. She decided that she could use pillows to solve the issue and I could look at the frame tomorrow morning. Fine with me of course.
And so I did while the family was away at breakfast. Indeed, the metal on one side was askew, preventing the headrest portion of the bed to ‘pivot up’ for sleeping. I used some tools to bend the metal back (matching the way the opposite side looked) and the bed headrest was fully functional again and pivoted up correctly. I left before the family returned, left her a message and when she returned she sent me a nice message thanking me for ‘fixing the issue so quickly’.
I happened to see her and her family in their truck so I stopped and thanked her for being so patient and accommodating to us. I mentioned that the sofa bed is kinda weird how the headrest pivots up for sleep and pivots down for converting back to sofa position, and the instructions I leave are probably not the clearest. Bad engineering to begin with, you know with that weird pivot up/pivot down thing… She says oh I know how they work - they all do that pivot thing. (This was news to me, I figured this sofa bed was unique and difficult not usual and ordinary.) I said as much to her and thanked her again for letting me know that the metal got misaligned and giving me access to the apartment to fix it. She said no worries, thank you, and I walked away to go back home.
I thought that was that and was happy I could fix the issue, although when she explained to me the night before that the bed was actually bent I had already decided that if i could not fix whatever was wrong right on the spot and quickly - that I would just switch out the sofa bed with a similar sofa bed from the unoccupied listing next door. Whatever I was faced with I knew that I could solve the problem either by repairing it on the spot or switching it out on the spot. I thought the issue was addressed as reasonably uneventfully as possible.
So I leave her a great review - including me acknowledging her patience as I fixed a maintenance issue she made me aware of - and thought I would get a decent review, perhaps better…
Well here’s what I got - bad grammar and misspellings included:
GUEST REVIEW: “I would have to say im torn with my experience. The host’s were quick to respond when we had a issue with the couch bed. but all in all the couch bed was extremely uncomfortable for our boys. The master bedroom smelled very old like my grandma’s house i also had a big on me in the middle of the night and under the dresser (note: I always check for bedbugs and other insects and there where none so im not sure where they came from but none the less could not sleep both nights). Bathroom was okay i would give it a B on clean. and location was okay, very close the the peir and downtown but very congested and not in the best of neighborhoods. So i went back and forth on my review but ended at a 3 star due to the hosts promptness.”
I was aghast. Why did she not mention any of these things to me in messages or when I happened to see her? And the sofa bed is a very high quality leather sofa bed that is about a year old and cost $1600 when we bought it brand new, but it is a sofa bed. Which they knew they were getting! I didn’t bait and switch after they got here! Like bunk beds and full-size beds, some do not prefer sofa beds… good grief.
And she saw a ‘big’ and could not sleep both nights! OMG how could that be? Umm, the apartment is 875 feet away from the Gulf of Mexico get a fucking grip. Thank god she didn’t claim we had bed bugs too, and she gave a ‘B+’ for bathroom cleanliness - WOW!
The review is so vague and yet so powerfully repellent for other guests to read. I have responded to 90-95 percent of reviews I have received and I think only one review was more or less negative out of all of them. Mostly I respond with “Thanks for the rave review [guest name], let’s do it again soon!” but I have to respond to this review as it is clearly terrible and I need damage control. Her three-star review brought the score down to 4.81 (only 28 or so reviews on listing so far) and that has Superhost status in jeopardy as well!
Help! It has been two days since I got the review and I need to respond ASAP! Thanks fellow hosts!
) so I do have a section in my House Manual (that people are required to say they read) where I note it’s quirks. As you’re aware of the mustiness, why it’s that way & what you do to keep it in check, it may be worth mentioning if you cannot get rid of it.
). We had another thread where the host was fortunate enough to get a poor review removed. They noted they’d had no bookings since it went up & once it was gone the bookings immediately started rolling in. If they had not been able to get the review removed, would you recommend a response or not? I do know that one was more severe as it accused of bed bugs (I think, I’ll go look back). I guess if I read a review that suggested a place smelled, especially old & musty, I would think “mold” and look elsewhere. Especially when coupled with broken furniture (I’d have automatically thought the furnishing were old also).
