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Hi Airbnb friends,
Well we got our first 2 star review today - why? We apparently had no hand soap or milk (We actually do have milk and have three hand soaps in the kitchen and two bathrooms but for whatever reason the guest seems to think we have none-so he gave us 2 stars overall. The funniest thing is he stayed with us a couple of weeks ago and absolutely raved about the place “the best place we have stayed in by far” and now he’s really changed his tune. The funniest (well i’m sort of laughing now but still v mad/upset) is he even downgraded our ratings in every single category including location (so our house must have moved?) and communication (even though we sent exactly the same messages as last time and wrote back within minutes to him)… So we really just have to try and laugh about it.
It also reminded me of some other ridiculous reviews we have received including:
You didn’t say you didn’t have an air conditioner (in a reasonably cold location where AC is not the norm)
there was free food in the freezer which we had to consume
I have a new Airbnb blog and thought this would make a funny post to pull together some of these funny stories- SO- if you are willing to share, I’d love to hear about your ridiculous / silly guest complaints and reviews that you have received (which were surely heartbreaking/ frustrating at the time but hopefully we can all lol together now
Post the link to your listing, so we can see what your place is like. If you are getting more than 1 or 2 “strange” reviews like that in a year, there may be something not quite right with your listing descriptions, etc. No guest gives you a 2 star overall review because he thought you had no soap. There’s something else going on there…
Last year was one of the hottest summers on record in Europe, and many, many hosts were ‘dinged’ by travelers from other parts of the world because they didn’t even offer a fan to help cool things off.
I think many of us had fans in our homes and listings last summer Ken in Europe. In fact in many parts of Europe it gets really hot each summer so this is pretty standard and many on the Med and Eastern Europe have aircon.
I had a tower fan in each bedroom and one in both living spaces. (Actually have had them for the last three years).
The people who were actually complaining tended to be from North America from what I have seen on the UK forums and seemed to assume we all had air conditioning even though we haven’t got that ticked in our listings and it was unusually hot for the UK.
Here’s hoping we get similar weather this year and that guests who see aircon as an essential make sure they only look at listings that have it.
@jodes how awful for you and I wouldn’t assume this is necessarily anything to do with your listing.
In your situation I would drop the guest a friendly note and say that you noticed they marked you down substantially from their last stay and ask what it was that they found different from their previous stay that led to this, to help you improve.
I would also respond to their review and say how disappointed you were that you weren’t able to give them the experience they had on a previous stay that led to them awarding you five stars across the board and which you strive to offer all guests. And puzzled too as when you check the listing post their stay, the items that they said were missing (soap and milk) which led to them awarding you a two star were actually there.
We got lucky I guess. We only had one 2 star review, nightmare people with an untrained puppy, when questioned after they left about the strong urine smell they blamed it on us.
The review they left was simply “n”
No other info.
It sounds like they were pissed. Why couldn’t they ask for a soap for God sake if the soap disappeared? The cat ate their tongue? The fact that they downgraded you in every category it means they were pissed and wanted to hurt you.
I didn’t get any 2 star review but I got a 1. Does that count?
It was a guy from a foreign country with whom I communicated very poorly over the phone, despite the fact that I sent him the bullet list of rules and instructions on how to get in that I send to everybody.
No, he wanted to be led by the hand. He had no GPS (seriously, you travel for business and have no GPS or google maps or waze on your phone? What kind of millennial are you?) and he was treating me like Pontiac’s Onstar…
He got into the house after he kept me 30 min on the phone. Two days later he had to leave so the house could be cleaned up for other people that were coming the same day. he didn’t want to leave. He was like I need internet. can I stay in the living? No! I told him to go to a starbucks and gave him the addresses of a few starbucks around him. An hour after the check out time he was still there. I was very firm and told him that if he doesn’t leave I was going to call customer service. He left but gave me 1 star review and the comment was a dot “.”
