Hello everyone,
See the question in the title. One would think that Airbnb would easily be able to answer this question, but apparently not. Here’s a message I wrote to Airbnb recently.
As background to this, see
Short short version. Problem guest. Stayed twice. First time August 20th to August 22nd. Second time August 26th to August 30th. Second visit ended very badly. I want to leave a review, but plan to wait to the end of the second review period. But I decided to check with Airbnb about when the first review period expired. The email below summarizes a bit of back and forth. I had a similar (but slightly worse) exchange with someone else (I think) on Twitter AirbnbHelp. This person told me the review period had expired when it had not! If anyone cares, I can post the details of that exchange too.
Hi xxxxxx,
I’ve now asked you the same simple question twice. You still haven’t
answered the question. I’m not sure why this is so hard. Here’a a
recap.
FM> Can you tell me exactly how long I have to write a review for
xxxxxxx xxxxxx? I’m referring specifically to his stay of Aug 20
- 22, 2016, reservation code xxxxxx. Can you give me the precise
date and time, preferably in terms of Indian Standard Time (IST),
that the option of leaving a review for this stay will expire?
AIRBNB> You have 14 days to write a review for xxxxxxx and he has
the same amount of time. So it looks like tomorrow is the
deadline.
FM> Yes, but what is the exact date and time at which this expiry
happens, please?
AIRBNB> That would be September 5th (tomorrow).
If you read what I said, you’ll see I asked for the date and the
time. Twice. You just gave me the date. Which in fact was
incorrect. See below.
In fact, what I observed is that as of 5.30 am IST on the morning of
6th September, the review was still open for editing. However, at
12.30 pm IST on the afternoon of 6th September, it was not. So, some
time between 5.30 am and 12.30 pm IST, 6th September, the window for
submitting the review for the stay from August 20th to 22nd closed.
So, for the third time, what time was that, please? Thanks in advance.
I’m not holding my breath for a response.
So, does anyone happen to know the answer to this?
Here are my current thoughts. It seems unlikely that Airbnb would tailor the expiry time to individual hosts. So it seems unlikely that it would be tied to my individual checkout time, which is, for the record, posted as 11 am. How would they get code to use that value automatically? Similarly, it seems unlikely it is tied to a particular time zone. There are many time zones. Here one of the responses on Twitter seems relevant
@AirbnbHelp: Hi Faheem, the review period is calculated based on UTC time. Hope this helps!
But as with the other person, he or she did not answer the question.
Now, as I mentioned in the email above, the time-out occurred sometime between 5.30 am and 12.30 pm on September 6th. Note that this was approximately 15 days (not 14) after my official checkout time of 11 am August 22nd. I’d appreciate it is someone could confirm this is correct, so I know my brain has not turned to cheese.
Based on the Twitter mention of UTC, I thought the expiry might happen at 5.30 am IST, which is midnight UTC Sep 5th/Sep 6th. But that didn’t happen - I waited a bit past 5.30 am.
To the question still remains, what time does the review period end?
ADDENDUM: Just heard back from the rep who I sent that email to above. Her response:
I am not sure of the exact time, But the time frame has expired so there will be no review.