I had a guest stay with me for one night recently.
Several days after the checkout, she made a long list of things that were not working. Yes, there were some minor issues, but she made up a few along the way. Nothing that warranted a significant refund.
I told her that she should have contacted us while she was staying so we could fix those issues. We cannot fix those issues now.
She contacted Airbnb and they shut her down as it was well beyond Aircover applicability (I believe 48 or 72 hours) .
So I figured I could push the compensation issue since ABB was on my side. I asked her what she would do if I did not provide her compensation for the issue. She promptly replied she would write a review that I will not like.
Then I wrote back saying I will give her appropriate compensation after the review period ends, as I don’t want the review to be positively impacted by my compensation. I wrote that so Airbnb could see I was not trying to incentivize a positive review.
After she wrote a two-star review, I contacted Airbnb and told them it was retaliatory. I sent them all the screenshots of relevant messages from the scammer and my message about not providing incentives for writing a review. Airbnb removed it in a day. It felt so good to beat a scammer at their game.
I kept my word and gave her a $15 compensation for the minor issue she had. It was lower than what she wanted but appropriate for the issue she faced.
I host for one night frequently to collect more reviews, but sometimes it doesn’t work. In this case, I did not get the review I wanted and wasted a lot of time with this scammer.