Writing so-so review for guests

Hi @Perezo,

I wish I could be a fly on the wall during one of your tutorials. Where are you located?[quote=“Perezo, post:20, topic:7751”]
We’d appreciate it if you didn’t send and read text-messages during this tutorial, or roll your eyes at us
[/quote]

That deserves an LOL, I think.

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This is NOT expected guest behavior. Please slam them. They are not even deserving of one nice word.

Hi, @faheem, nice to “meet you.”

Perezoso is Spanish for “sloth.” There is one outside our deck right now.

We are on the Caribbean Coast of Rica. In terms of cleaning and the deterioration of everything from the humidity and salt air, a friend calls it “Green Hell.”

If you’d like to see our manual, i.e. our pain - ha ha, I’m happy to send it to you via Forum email. Let me know :slight_smile:

Hey @Perezo,

Thanks for the friendly greeting! It’s nice to meet you too. By Rica do you mean Costa Rica? I’m in Bombay India. Far, far away from you.

Sure, you can send me your manual if you like. We’re within a stones throw of the Arabian Sea here, so we see plenty of deterioration too. Plenty of salt air here. Do you get many international tourists? And do they freak out with all the bugs and stuff?

@faheem

Yes, sorry for the typo, I’m in Costa Rica.

Email on its way! Let’s share horror stories about the salt-air!!!
:slight_smile:

I am in a similar position but the bad guest has already left her review. Nevertheless, I will wait until the last minute to post ours because I don’t want her to smacktalk me back on our page.

The last time I left a bad review - guest smoked in our absolutely no smoking house, left every single window open in a rainstorm, didn’t do her dishes and generally left the apartment as though she were a traveling celebrity at a chain hotel and felt some sort of obligation to slob it up - that guest was furious and wrote a whole diatribe excusing all of her bad behavior and calling me “snippy and unfriendly” on her own page.

The best part? She went into detail about stuff she had done that I never mentioned in the original bad review. Anyone who reads the two reviews will be able to see what happened, I only mentioned the smoking, she railed about why she had to leave her dirty dishes and why there was a mess on the floor as well as swearing that she never smoked, (I actually never said she smoked, I said I found a cigarette package when I was cleaning up on the bedroom floor and was very disappointed.) so we’re safe from pushback.

The good thing about bad guests is that they usually try to lie their way out of blame and they don’t bother paying much attention to what you actually said - so they give themselves away.

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I am waiting until the last minute to write a review for our most recent bad guest.

We have only started writing bad reviews in the last three months. We’ve been Superhosts for two years now so we figure we can risk a bit of retaliation.

In this one I am going to say we failed to educate this guest on the standards expected when staying at an Airbnb. We feel certain she will develop into a good guest but she is best suited to a more closely supervised situation, not a whole apartment, until she gets a few more experiences under her belt.

That is being very kind under the circumstances and I hope it will do the trick to warn other hosts that this guest is one of those people who is likely to treat you like a servant.

She left a $5 under her pillow - feh, disrespectful AND insulting. I’m not mentioning that but I won’t have her or any member of her family, back, you can count on that much.

Hi @Stephanie_Borns,

What did you do for your previous bad guests? Not write a review at all?

That’s right - if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

That’s how we used to do it. And frankly, if a bad guest doesn’t write a review first, I will often simply not bother writing them a review. It’s a lot of effort to be nice in a bad review and it gets us nowhere.

That’s one thing I keep meaning to mention here, thanks for reminding me. Some hosts simply do not review bad guests so if someone has been a member for a while and has never had a review, consider that a red flag.

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Oh man. Agree with others that your review should state clearly ‘cannot recommend.’ Sometimes a seemingly minor thing can lead to a ‘can’t recommend.’ I had a young couple stay in the spring…the young man took the electric kettle out of the kitchen and upstairs to the guest room. I guess the young lady didn’t want to come out to get her tea or whatever she needed hot water for. At first we were just annoyed by the peculiar behavior…later we found they had scuffed the top of the work desk we have by the window of the guest room. Argh! I left a thumbs down for these two.

In our Hollywood townhouse, the only space we really share is the upstairs bathroom. I’ve learned from experience that sharing the kitchen is a bad idea, because I am way too uppity about people ransacking my cupboards, misplacing and destroying things. So, I have a little server set up in the dining room with cups, plates, cutlery, etc. with the coffee and tea and bread, completely separate from my kitchen. Everything for the guests is separate from our dishes and utincils. The only thing that is actually in the kitchen is the electric kettle (which I point out when I greet them). They can just leave used cups and things in the sink if they want…I don’t mind washing up (since I am anal about my kitchen anyway, i am constantly washing my own things). My house rules make clear that cooking and food preparation is not part of the experience they are paying for. Works better to encourage them to be out as much as possible. This is not a camping site.

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So glad you are back and giving some of your awesome great advice. I agree with just about everything you say my friend!

Hmmm…just about?

Lol.

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Well… I mean I like reading your posts because I’m simpatico!

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hahaha I love this bit too.
Now, for those that won’t read your house manual you must read this sentence to them as soon as you meet them (right after “hi I’m Perezo nice to meet you” and before they look at their phone!)

===

That was my first impression when I read the OP. Some people are just nerdy, smelly and totally clueless that they are annoying, so for those types I’ve diplomatically had to ask them to please not do or do whatever. My deal is the trash, which is a house rule that it has to go out immediately because the ants will be out in full force.

It also depends on the duration of the stay. If it’s a couple of days I just ignore it and leave a ho hum, short review: I enjoyed meeting …

I like this idea. I know some here want to “hang 'em from the nearest tree”. I get my dig in if the guest writes something that rubs me the wrong way by writing a public reply to his/her comments: “Well you wouldn’t have had ants in your bed if you hadn’t been eating chips and candy bars in it.” I didn’t say that exactly, but similar to a guest who crabbed about there being an ant or two in his bed.

Out of the 200 guests I have had I’ve written 2 bad reviews, both deserving in my opinion… 1 was a overnight guest who clipped all her fingernails & toenails then left them on the floor for me to clean up :rage: that just really disgusted me. what a pig…

The other one was for a couple who did all their clothes washing in the kitchen sink, then had a 20+ min shower each twice which subsequently used all the hot water… She then texted me complaining there was no hot water ??? She also called me at a family function wanting me to return immediately as there were ants everywhere in the unit. As I spoke to her she said, there is one, oh I can see another… (she saw 2 ants) !!!
Upon cleaning the unit when they departed I found they had left sugar all over the kitchen bench which most likely attracted the ant(s)…

I wrote a review commenting only on the hot water suggesting they realize an AirBNB house is not a hotel & does not have unlimited hot water… well, similar to @Stephanie_Borns post about the guest who wrote a diatribe - my guest went into a massive 200 word rant stating there was a smudge on the mirror & the outside garbage bins had to much rubbish in them & just went on & on about similar minor insignificant things :confused:

Anyway I thought out of courtesy to other hosts these people should receive negative reviews stating why I dont recommend them…

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Don’t know where you’re located, Stefanie, but if you’re in Europe, don’t miss the chance of writing your review through a misunderstanding of the “last minute” you can write, as I did with my Danish Girls from Hell.

I was specifically told that the 14 day review period ended on the 14th day at your stated check-out time and not, as we’ve all understood on here, at midnight in the guest’s time zone. I don’t know if this applies just to Europe, just to Spain or just to my personal Customer service rep, but sure enough the ability to write a review ceased soon after 11am, so perhaps you might want to call Air CS to check.

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It’s always best to call and get the exact time that works best for you. In my case, I was advised that the deadline for bad guest to leave a review for me was midnight in her time zone. Once that time expired I then had three more hours to smack her down until my own expired at midnight. Now it is possible that the time has changed to your check out time. If so that’s changed from 2015 when I last did it.

Hi @Malagachica,

I actually spent some time trying to get a straight answer from Airbnb CS about this. I’ve been writing to two different people about, but no sensible response. I’m planning to start a thread about it.