HI there. After a massive lockdown here in Melbourne, Australia - with months (March to December) of (fully refunded) cancellations in 2020, we are very fortunately to be finally clawing our way back to normality. Before lockdown we had gained 50 reviews, with a continuous 5 star rating and Superhost status for a considerable period of time. At the beginning of this year we were allowed to commence having guests in our house again. Unfortunately, one of our guests gave us a review that contradicted every review received so far and one that we have tried unsuccessfully to contest. She gave us 1 star, said our house was extremely unclean (despite having previously received continuous âsqueaky cleanâ compliments before this). She then asked for 500 dollars compensation and wrote a very long review that contained a number of untruths about the property and berated me as a super host. Since then we have received five star ratings again (six so far) with many compliments about our property (basically along the same lines as before lockdown).
The issue I have is that because of this bad review, and the lockdown not giving us the opportunity to continue to receive our five star ratings, two weeks ago we received notification from Airbnb that we have now lost our Superhost status. Our overall rating has gone down to 4.8. So basically, lockdown has not only caused us considerable financial loss, but has created the situation whereby one bad review can considerably affect our overall status. Obviously our overall rating and Superhost status are extremely important to us, given that we are trying to recover what we lost last year. We have asked Airbnb to consider adjusting their method of assessing Superhost status, given the lockdown situation (using their feedback facility) but I have not had any response. I would be grateful to hear your opinion. Please be kind as (rightly or wrongly) this review still continues to upset me. Thanks to all!
Well of course any host would be upset with a lying 1* review. And with Airbnbâs refusal to remove or discount reviews like this. I guess thereâs nothing you can find in the review which would contavene their review policy, like something that could be deemed irrelevant?
All I can offer is to tell you not to be concerned about the Superhost status. Hosts who have had it, lost it, maybe earned it back again, lost it again, have said it made zero difference in terms of their bookings.
Precisely because it can be lost due to something out of your control, one a-hole guest, tells you itâs not about being a great host. Itâs a carrot Airbnb dangles to keep hosts stressed out trying to accommodate bad guests in fear of a bad review.
The review will soon get buried amongst all your great reviews and any guest reading it will see it as an unbelievable outlier. And guests donât pass on a place they like the looks of because it has a 4.8 rating.
Also Airbnb has taken into account lockdown so hosts are still retaining their super hosts even if they donât have enough stays.
If you have a 4.8 rating you should have retained your SH status.
I had a similar thing happen as was rated overall like a hotel not a AirBnb. I got a email from AirBnb reprimanding me. My status went down to 4.7 if I canât get 4.8 I will lose my Super Host. I have a lot of guests with no reviews and that is a problem as they donât understand the star ratings a lot of the time.
I guess you can only keep going forward and try not to get too hung up on it.
Exactly. my only 4 star reviews all come after telling a guest no, no you cannot check out late, come early or have extra guests. I fully expect a less than 5 star review once I say no. I still say no. Thankfully I have enough 5 star reviews to even it out, but regardless I will not be held hostage for fear of a bad review.
RR
If you can show that the request for compensation was a âthreatâ for a bad review then you have justification to get the review removed. Hopefully all the communication was on the platform.
If youâve given up trying to get it removed, donât sweat it. A long list of positives will outweigh the one negative. It hurts but I remember a host who used to post a lot in the forum. She got booked a lot and took issue with a number of Airbnb policies/decisions. She commonly said forget about the âSuperhostâ status, derisively called it âSuperHo.â I still have Superhost status, but one day when I donât for whatever reason, Iâm going to FUGHEDABOUTIT and run my rental to fit me and my target guests.
Thank you for your understanding words. I think the most significant thing to come out of this is that our opinion or Airbnb has seriously plummeted. All through the ten months of lockdown we were praised by airbnb staff for our âgenerosityâ in allowing full refunds for every cancellation (we just considered that we could not take money for a service not provided). And then, at a time when they knew we were struggling to get our business up and running again, not only did they refuse to remove the post (which was significantly out of line with every single review we have been given - the guest had no reviews, we had 50) - they then sent us a request from the guest for the 500.00 âcompensationâ. They showed no hesitation in âsidingâ with the guest - they said they could see no reason why this lady would lie. Then, on top of this, came the notification that we would lose our Superhost status. One member of staff even berated me for not going to the house as soon as we received her texts to offer to clean the house again - when we knew that we had already cleaned it fully and what she was saying was untrue (she said we had not cleaned the toilets and the beds had dirty linen on them (we do our own cleaning). My request for Airbnb to âreconsider our Superhost statusâ given the lockdown situation has been met with silence - no response from the feedback that I took a considerable amount of time to complete. Promises of compensation from a âspecial Superhost fundâ did not eventuate as we did not âmeet the criteriaâ which turned out to be extremely rigid. And all this, after Airbnb themselves had to make a video apologising for giving full refunds automatically without letting hosts know about this first! Whoever I have spoken to at Airbnb has been extremely âsorryâ about the situation but then they say âour hands are tiedâ. This happens again and again. Absolutely no flexibility, no care and zero support. At the moment we have struck out all dates for future bookings as we are reconsidering whether we want to do this anymore - and if we would be able to use another platform. Thanks again for taking the time to respond
Thanks for this - could you tell me where you heard or read this? We have definitely not found this to be the case. Airbnb support staff appear to be unaware of this also⌠fingers crossed that this can actually happen!
Your 4.8 may be a rounding up⌠I am sitting at 4.9 0n the app, but 4.87 on my laptop.
If they ever said something like that to me, I would ask them right back why they are accusing me of lying, and why they couldnât see that a $500 refund would be a very obvious reason for the guest to lie.
How infuriating.
As for them thanking you for fully refunding guests, thatâs just Airbnbâs gushy blah blah PR, it has nothing to do with true appreciation or valuing you.
Most hosts first started hosting with Airbnb like it was a true romance. Then the honeymoon is over and reality hits. You can usually deal with their dastardly ways if you have no illusions about them âcaringâ, that all they are is a listing platform that only cares about their profits, and know the tricks to dealing with them, as well as quoting them the appropriate policy when they try to steamroll you.
Sorry youâre feeling so bad about this. Hopefully another platform might give you better service.
Yes, you are right - they really donât care! I suppose I just thought that they would apply some common sense to our situation, given that we have a proven track record and she had none! Oh well⌠thanks again for your understanding
They said this in the host newsletters they sent out and itâs probably on their Airbnb Help website
Superhost is decided only on the past yearâs reviews. I lost mine for three months because a lie filled 1 star review pulled my rating down. The 1 star effects it more when there are fewer reviews.
The crazy lady who ruined mine lied and said I had bedbugs, I had shown proof from a pest control company that there was no sign of bedbugs and they still refused to remove it. Luckily the lady wrote a review mostly in all caps that was bonkers nuts crazy for all future people to see that she obviously was the problem.
I can tell you that losing Superhost did not seem to effect my bookings at all. Make sure that you compose a VERY professional response addressing the lies in that review for other people to see.
I agree, having a formal response is really necessary to combat these terrible lying reviews. Youâre really lucky she made it apparent she was crazy with the all caps. We had to do the same for our one bad lying review.